A senior campaign adviser to Donald Trump suggested Friday that if riots occur because the Republican presidential front-runner is denied the GOP nomination, they won’t necessarily be violent.
Sam Clovis, who joined the Trump campaign last August, was asked Friday in an interview with CNN’s Alisyn Camerota to respond to criticism of Trump’s prediction that his supporters will riot in the streets if a contested convention leads to someone other than him becoming the 2016 Republican presidential nominee.
“What do you think about the idea that [Trump] was suggesting that there would be violence? Threatening that there would be violence?” Camerota asked the evangelical conservative activist.
“I don’t think he said violence, he said riots …” Clovis responded.
“Riots are violence, by definition,” the CNN anchor reminded Clovis, to which he responded: “I don’t accept that.”
Clovis’ strange response comes just 48 hours after outspoken Trump supporter Scottie Nell Hughes told Camerota’s colleague Wolf Blitzer that riots “aren’t necessarily a bad thing.”
“Riots aren’t necessarily a bad thing if it means it’s because it’s sitting there and fighting the fact that our establishment Republican party has gone corrupt and decided to ignore the voice of the people,” Hughes said Wednesday afternoon on CNN.
