Republican presidential nominee says ‘second amendment people’ could stop Democrat choosing undesirable supreme court justices if she is elected
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| Donald Trump speaks to at University of North Carolina in Wilmington on Tuesday. Photograph: Eric Thayer/Reuters |
Donald Trump has hinted at the assassination of Hillary Clinton by supporters of gun rights.
The Republican nominee was speaking at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, about the next president’s power to appoint supreme court justices. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” he said, adding: “Although the second amendment people – maybe there is, I don’t know.”
The second amendment to the constitution protects the right of Americans to bear arms. Trump has accused his Democratic rival of wanting to abolish it, a charge that she denies.
“This is simple – what Trump is saying is dangerous,” said Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. “A person seeking to be the president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way.”
Jason Miller, a communications adviser for the Trump campaign, attempted to explain the candidate’s comments. “It’s called the power of unification,” he said. “Second amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power. And this year, they will be voting in record numbers, and it won’t be for Hillary Clinton, it will be for Donald Trump.”
The supreme court has become a central election issue since the death earlier this year of Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative who has not yet been replaced. Trump claims that liberal judges could threaten the second amendment.
He told supporters on Tuesday: “I guess there’s a scenario in which this president could pick five supreme court justices, and if you pick two that are left, left, left, it’s going to be a disaster for our country.”
The National Rifle Association endorsed him early, he added. “We want to replace with justices very much like Justice Scalia and that’s going to happen, that’s so important. One of the most important elections for a lot of reasons, not just that,” he said.
He also told the rally that Clinton is “dangerous” and could destroy the country from within because of her immigration policies.
Trump was introduced by Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, who brought up the case of Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist executed for spying for the US. Clinton received emails mentioning him on her controversial personal server when she was secretary of state.
Giuliani said: “Remember Hillary told us there was no top secret information on her emails? Remember she told us that. Well, she lied! And I don’t know the connection between that and the death of Mr Amiri, but what I do know is it put a lot more attention on him when they found those emails. It certainly put him at great risk, even if they didn’t find them, and it shows you that when the director of the FBI said she was extremely careless, he was being kind.”
But Giuliani repeatedly waved away chants of “Lock her up!” from the crowd.
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