Liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who recently said Donald Trump has never suffered any “setbacks” despite losing a brother to alcoholism, is siding with the Republican presidential candidate on one controversy.
In his latest op-ed, Cohen called on anti-Trump protesters who have disrupted his rallies, in a way that has sometimes led to violence, to resist further attempts.
“[W]hile the protesters are entitled to make their case, so is Trump. If they have free speech, so does he,” Cohen wrote. “A silent protest is one thing; a mass attempt to shout him down — in other words, to silence him — is something else entirely. The response is often violence — an attempt to shut up the shut-uppers. To Trump’s constituency, there is something particularly galling about college students — seen as spoiled and the establishment-in-waiting — silencing the candidate whom they revere as their champion.”
Critics have suggested Trump is responsible for ginning up his supporters, some of whom have physically confronted protesters who show up at the rallies.
A planned rally in Chicago last week was canceled after the venue was packed with scores of protesters and the campaign said that it was indefinitely postponing the event out of concerns for safety.
