You can now safely say that the campaign of Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump will not unequivocally repudiate the comments of one of its delegates and advisors who said presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton should be put in front of a firing squad and executed. In past years you could expect a mainstream candidate of one of the two parties to totally and absolutely repudiate a person who’s calling for the death of their political foe. Now we’re seeing a hedge worthy of being planted in central park — and yet another frightening lowering of our political standards by Trump.
New Hampshire state representative Al Baldasaro, who is also a Trump delegate from the state and has appeared with Trump at campaign events, made the comments on the Jeff Kuhner Show.
“I’m a veteran that went to Desert Shield, Desert Storm. I’m also a father who sent a son to war, to Iraq, as a Marine Corps helicopter avionics technician. Hillary Clinton to me is the Jane Fonda of the Vietnam,” he said. “She is a disgrace for the lies that she told those mothers about their children that got killed over there in Benghazi. She dropped the ball on over 400 emails requesting back up security. Something’s wrong there.”
“This whole thing disgusts me, Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason,” he added.
Baldasaro has spoken at several Trump events, introducing Trump multiple times, including at an event in late May where he admonished the media for focusing on questions over Trump’s donations to veteran’s charities.
He later added in the radio interview that Clinton was a “piece of garbage.”
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Boston Globe followed up with Baldasaro after BuzzFeed News’ report and he said he stood by his comments.
Trump campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks told NH1 News, “We’re incredibly grateful for his support, but we don’t agree with his comments.”
So they just “don’t agree” with those comments?
This is a perfect example of where our politics has now landed. Just name calling and demonization and making up “facts” that fail fact checks are not enough.
Now there are calls to kill political opponents.
And suppose some nutcase out there (that is, one that isn’t writing a blog, hosting a talk show, or attending a political convention) decides that to Save The Republic Hillary Clinton must be assassinated, just where do you think he/she/it is likely to have gotten some of his/her/its ideas?
From our toxic politics — which may be toxic on both sides but is mega toxic on one side,
Talking Points Memo Josh Marshall had the same reaction I did when I saw the Trump campaign’s reaction: the campaign is winking at the call to murder Clinton because it doesn’t want to lose any support and wants to keep supporters fired up about Clinton as The Enemy Who Threatens All You Own Or Aspire To Own Or Be:
Calls for violence or the killing of a political opponent usually spurs the other candidate to totally disavow the person in question. Frankly, it’s a pretty new thing for a prominent supporter of a prominent politician to call for killing opposing candidates at all. But the Trump campaign is still “incredibly grateful his support” even though “we don’t agree” that Clinton should be shot.
This too is not normal.
Maybe you didn’t notice her statement until now. I assure you Trump’s more rabid supporters have – or at least noticed the conspicuous lack of any clear denunciation.
Do I think people on the Trump campaign really want to see Clinton injured or killed? No, I do not. But I do think they believe that exciting a climate of agitated grievance, militant anger and aggression helps them galvanize, gain and intensify support. On one and three they’re likely right. Just as importantly, they clearly believe that any clear denunciation of the growing chorus of angry and occasionally violent threats would demoralize and dishearten a key part of their base. Trump’s brand is dominance and submission. Provocation is his calling card. Calling a pause on their more febrile supporters would simply be off brand and would be hard to clearly differentiate in kind from the campaign-endorsed demand for her incarceration.
I’m not sure I’ve seen a better example of the wink-wink attitude of the Trump campaign – here not just Trump’s impulsive retorts but the campaign apparatus itself – to things that used to get people totally written out of the world of legitimate political discourse. I’m working on a piece about how the biggest legacy of the Trump campaign – assuming he isn’t elected president – is the re-normalization of racism and anti-semitism in American political life. This is another part of the same story. We’ve already discussed the numerous ways Trump has embraced the stylings, policies and speech of a would-be autocrat. He’s now moving on to the kinds of banana republic politicking where the cost of political defeat is imprisonment or death or even a legitimate form of ‘activism’ in advance of the ballot.
The Secret Service is now looking into it — which means Trump supporters will now use the false issue of “free speech” to obliterate the advisor of a major Presidential candidate calling for the death of the person running against his candidate. New Hampshire’s WMUR:
The fallout from Republican state Rep. Al Baldasaro’s remarks that Hillary Clinton should be “put in the firing line and shot for treason” came quickly on Wednesday, with the most serious reaction coming from the U.S. Secret Service.
“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of this matter and will conduct the appropriate investigation,” agency spokesman Robert K. Hoback told WMUR late Wednesday afternoon.
The official was referring to Baldasaro’s comments on a Boston radio program that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee should face a firing squad for treason in connection with the Sept. 11, 2012 raid on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Baldasaro, a retired Marine and a co-chairman of Donald Trump’s national veterans coalition, is in his fifth term in the New Hampshire House.
After his comments to WRKO went viral on Wednesday morning, Baldasaro doubled down in an interview with WMUR.com.
Federal law makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years imprisonment, for “whoever knowingly and willfully threatens to kill, kidnap or inflict bodily harm” on a former president, the immediate family of the president, president-elect, vice president or vice president-elect, or on “a major candidate for the office of President or Vice President, or a member of the immediate family of such candidate.”Baldasaro did not directly threaten to kill or harm Clinton, but he did say that she “should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.”
Political reaction was harsh.
The Trump campaign said through spokeswoman Hope Hicks that while Trump is “incredibly grateful” for Baldasaro’s support, Trump “does not agree” with his comments.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte said, “This kind of rhetoric is totally irresponsible, it has no place in our society, and violence should never be encouraged against anyone.
And the Clinton campaign responded:
Clinton national campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said the comments reflect the tenor of Trump’s campaign.
“Donald Trump’s overtaking of the Republican Party, and his constant escalation of outrageous rhetoric, is in danger of mainstreaming the kind of hatred that has long been relegated to the fringes of American politics where it belongs,” Palmieri said. “This week at the Republican convention, we’ve seen the clearest embodiment yet of this dangerous phenomenon.”
State Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley called on Horn to ask Baldasaro to resign his House seat (see our earlier report below), while New Hampshire House Democratic Leader Steve Shurtleff, an Army veteran, said that while Baldasaro has been known to make provocative comments, “This really goes beyond the pale.
The problem is each time something like this occurs in changing the nature of our politics, debasing it, and enabling, provoking of excusing behaviors that would not be permitted in the past, it becomes the new normal.
And with Mr. Trump, he is doing all he can to lower the “normal” in American politics.
Just think all he can do if he gets into the White House….
By Desconocido – Revista Sucesos – http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-124241.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41258396
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.