Donald Trump’s campaign defended the candidate’s son on Thursday, claiming the media took his comment about Democrats “warming up the gas chamber” for reporters “out of context.”
“The liberal, dishonest media is so quick to attack one of the Trumps that they never let the truth get in the way of a good smear,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement issued hours after Donald Trump Jr. made the controversial remark.
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Earlier in the day, Trump’s son had told a CBS radio affiliate in Pennsylvania that the mainstream media has been Hillary Clinton’s “No. 1 surrogate” in the general election and that if Republicans were letting Trump slide on as many issues as Clinton, Democrats would “be warming up the gas chamber right now.”
“Without the media, this wouldn’t even be a contest, but the media has built her up,” said the eldest son of the Republican presidential nominee. “They’ve let her slide on every discrepancy, on every lie, on every [Democratic National Committee] game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of this thing.”
The comment drew immediate blowback on the internet and the Clinton’s director of Jewish outreach slammed Trump’s son for what she described as “just the latest string of outrageous comments and offensive actions form the Trump campaign.”
“The bottom line is this — offensive references to the Holocaust are never acceptable, especially from a Presidential campaign,” Sarah Bard said in a statement released by the Clinton campaign.
Miller said Trump’s son “was clearly referring to capital punishment to make the case that the media continues to take words out of context” to benefit Clinton.
“Something that’s only gotten worse as Trump’s poll numbers have improved,” he added.
