Donald Trump argued Monday night that the Black Lives Matter movement has helped fuel anti-police rhetoric, and said as president he would have the attorney general investigate the group.
“You see them marching and you see them on occasion, at least, I have seen it, where they are essentially calling [for] death to the police,” Trump said on Fox News. “And that’s not acceptable whether you like them or don’t like them.”
If elected president, Trump said he would look into a group like Black Lives Matter “very seriously.”
“I’ve seen them marching down the street essentially calling death to the police … and we’re going to have to look into that,” he said.
“When you see something like that taking place, that’s really a threat, if you think about it and when you see something like that taking place, we are going to have to, perhaps, talk with the attorney general about it or do something, but, at a minimum, we’re going to have to be watching because that’s really bad stuff and it’s happened more than once,” Trump said.
Trump said in “certain instances” the group is a “fuse-lighter in the assassinations” of police officers.
“It’s a very, very serious situation and we just can’t let it happen. Now, everybody is free to say what you want to say up to a point,” Trump continued. “But when you are calling death to police and to kill the police, essentially, which is what they said, that’s a real problem.”
He spoke just days after five Dallas police officers and three Baton Rouge officers were killed in separate incidents.
