Google the words “Donald Trump violence” on any day recently, and you are likely to get in the neighborhood of 68,100,000 results. That’s 68 MILLION, and they’re all about Trump and his doings. Google the word “violence” with “Bernie Sanders,” “Ted Cruz,” and “Marco Rubio” and you also get millions of references, but they all refer not to what they did exactly, but to things that they said about Trump.
Google the words “George Wallace violence” and you get 11,000,000 results, which is remarkable as the Internet didn’t exist in 1968-72 when Wallace was running for president. But most of these entries tend to be recent, and are comparisons of Wallace to Trump. This year, more than 20 people in both major parties started out running for president, and 19 of them were never compared to the bigot and demagogue.
No other campaigns drew raucous and violent protests, or had fist fights erupt at their rallies (egged on by the speakers), or had campaign managers who wade into crowds and manhandle reporters (and repeatedly lie about touching them), or had large numbers of fans who routinely call critics “kikes” on Twitter and email, or tell them they were happy their relatives died.
These things tell you all you need to know about the Trump campaign, and all you need to know about the #NeverTrump movement, which has nothing to do with establishments, privilege, parties in Georgetown or even any ideas he may have at the moment. It has everything to do with the fact that a truculent thug whose role model seems to be Vladimir Putin wants to change this into the world’s biggest-ever cold-weather banana republic, minus bananas, but plus a great many other bad things.
As crunch time approaches, and votes become precious, Trump found a new way to pressure the party: Make it an offer it cannot refuse. “I think you’d have riots,” Trump said, if he wasn’t given the nomination at Cleveland, even if he did not have the required number of votes. He dismissed the 1,237 rule as a mere technicality. His fans, he said, would not take it well if “we’re a bit short of a number” and did not get it anyhow.
Roger Stone promised “days of rage” at the convention, telling supporters, “March on Cleveland … we’re going to have protests, demonstrations … We’ll tell you who the culprits are. We urge you to visit their hotel and find them. … we will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal.” Another aide added that riots weren’t always a bad or a “negative” thing. “Can we not pretend like Stone isn’t issuing a barely-veiled threat of harm to delegates?” asked Hot Air’s Allahpundit. But it seems that a few people can’t.
Largely due to events such as these, Trump has won very few reputable backers, but those who have backed him have yet to suggest in any way whatsoever that they’re at all bothered by such things. “MOST ABSURD Q OF NIGHT: ‘Do you worry about the scenes of violence at Trump rallies?’!!!” Laura Ingraham tweeted in March, citing the crimes committed by illegal immigrants as the reason that running a presidential campaign on the rules used by George Wallace and/or the Mafia may be more than just barely okay. No word as yet from Jeff Sessions, Chris Christie, Ben Carson and Scott Brown, who not long ago had good reputations. But if they don’t condemn things such as these, then we should assume they condone them. And we will judge them by these from now on.
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
