Hillary Clinton said Monday night that the physical altercations that have rocked campaign rallies for Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump evoke the kind of mob violence “that led to lynching.”
“When you are inciting mob violence, which is what Trump is doing in those clips, there’s a lot of memories that people have,” Clinton told Chris Matthews during an MSNBC town hall. “People remember mob violence that led to lynching. People remember mob violence that led to people being shot, being grabbed, being mistreated.”
“It’s something that has a deep, almost psychological resonance to people who have ever been in any position of feeling somewhat fearful, somewhat worried,” she continued.
The Democratic frontrunner said that Trump was encouraging his supporters to act out by promising to pay their legal fees if they get arrested for attacking the protesters who often disrupt his events.
Last week, a black protester was sucker-punched by a white Trump supporter at an event in North Carolina. Inside Edition later released a video of the supporter, who was charged with assault, saying, “The next time we see him, we might have to kill him.”
Matthews also asked Clinton why she thought blacks have “turned” on the billionaire businessman.
Clinton brought up Trump’s history as a vocal “birther” who questioned the authenticity of President Obama’s birth certificate as a reason why black voters may be turned off by him—and white voters may be flocking to his side.
“Trump led the campaign to try to de-legitimize president Obama from the very beginning,” she said. “He used this phony issue about where he was born. There was definite proof we knew where he was born. It didn’t matter. Trump kept beating that drum and kept trying to, again, incite people to be hostile toward the president. Who happened to be the first African-American president. That sent a lot of signals. Not just to African-Americans, but to all Americans.”
