President Obama warned Democratic opponents of Donald Trump not to resort to violence like the nation witnessed at a rally for the billionaire businessman in San Jose, Calif., Thursday.
“It is very important for us to remind ourselves of who we are and what is best about American democracy and not slip into some of the bad habits that currently manifest themselves in the other party,” he told a crowd gathered for a Democratic fundraiser at the home of a wealthy South Florida personal injury lawyer.
“We saw in San Jose these protesters starting to pelt stuff at Trump supporters,” he said, referring to the eggs protesters threw. “That’s not what our democracy is about. That’s not what you do. There’s no room for violence. There’s no place for shouting.”
Even if people “vehemently” disagree with Trump, Obama urged Democrats to “at least listen to the other side.”
“Because I believe if you’ve got the better argument, then you don’t need to do that,” he said. “Just go out there and organize and persuade.”
Obama also praised Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who was on hand for the fundraising dinner.
“She’s had my back — I want to make sure we have her back,” he said.
Some party activists have called for her ouster as the head of the party over her obvious support for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the more competitive-than-expected contested Democratic presidential primary.
Sanders also is supporting her primary opponent, Timothy Canova, a professor at the Shepard Broad College of Law in Florida’s Nova Southeastern University.
The fundraising dinner took place at the Southwest Coconut Grove home of Robert Rubenstein, a “car accident” lawyer, according to his website.
Some 90 people paid $10,000 to $30,000 each to attend. Besides Wasserman-Schultz, Florida luminaries circulating in the crowd included musician and producer Emilio Estefan and former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the Republican-turned-Democrat who lost a three-way Senate GOP primary against Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
Without naming Trump by name, Obama urged Democrats to take this election seriously.
“Celebrity and fame is such a driver in this culture — and everything’s so contested,” he said. “I want to run scared the whole time.”
Republicans, he said, are “looking for a ‘they’ to blame for whatever frustrations people understandably feel at any given moment in time.”
“So being able to say that it’s immigrants or it’s gays or its somebody that is taking something away from you -= that’s the essence of the message that the Republican nominee is delivering, and frankly, has been the message that’s been delivered by this Republican Congress for to long,” he said. “And it’s divisive. And it’s factually wrong.”
Eventually, he predicted, the “Republican fever breaks” and they will become once again a “sensible center-right party that can have a coherent policy debate with us and we can actually get some stuff done.”
