Trump campaign teeters on the brink

Donald Trump did it again. He kicked up yet another controversy. This time over his reckless comments interpreted by some as a threat of
violence against presidential campaign rival Hillary Clinton.
Trump comment at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, about ‘Second Amendment people’ stopping a President Hillary Clinton from appointing judges has been blasted.
He accused Hillary Clinton of trying to undermine Second Amendment. Trump said “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what. That will be a horrible day.”
It kicked up a storm of condemnation, including from the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., a US congresswoman who retired after surviving an assassination attempt, and a former director of Central Intelligence Agency. It exposed Trump and his temperament. And it corroborates Obama’s take on Trump that he is not fit for the president post. A Bloomberg Politics survey found that just 31 percent of Americans likely to vote in November say he is better than Clinton on having the “right temperament to be president,” while 56 percent said Clinton was better on temperament.
This is Trump’s latest slip-ups and may be the gravest till date—including his clash with the parents of a Muslim American soldier killed in action—that have proved Achilles heel for his campaign since he officially won the presidential nomination last month, prompting several Republicans to renounce his candidacy.
Clinton’s campaign decried Trump’s ‘dangerous’ language and demanded in a statement that presidential hopefuls ‘not suggest violence in any way.’
But Trump team argues the 70-year-old Manhattan billionaire simply meant that gun rights advocates were a powerful voting force.
“Second Amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power,” senior Trump communications advisor Jason Miller said.
The National Rifle Association, America’s largest pro-gun lobby, put forth that Trump was correct in saying it would be hard to protect the Second Amendment if Clinton appoints new justices.
And this is not a one-off comment. There has been a string of such incidents. Trump always tried to work up crowds. Many Trump rallies have erupted in physical violence, with protesters being sucker-punched, minorities being taunted, and crowds regularly chanting “Lock her up!” at the mere mention of Clinton’s name. Trump himself has embraced violent language as well, at one point in February saying that he’d like to punch a heckler in the face.
Political rhetoric has always been full of metaphorical violence. People can afford him benefit of doubt. In all likelihood, he may be joking. And chances are the crowd takes such language very literally. But Trump should know that Americans are choosing a president for the rule of law. And not a rabble rouser.
The 70-year-old billionaire acts like a senior guy running the Students’ Union elections where you speak to elicits cheers and jeers from sophomores. When you are the presidential candidate of the United States you can’t do that only. The things you say can send armies marching and markets tumbling. And Trump seems to be grossly incapable of correcting himself. This is at the core of worries about him.