Why America better prepare for an onslaught of violence at Trump rallies

San Jose was bad. It's going to get worse.

Many Donald Trump rallies have incited violence.
(Image credit: Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)

Violence is now an established feature of Donald Trump's politics. He regularly threatens, valorizes, and incites it. His rhetoric and argument are baldly racist, and his signature policy is an overtly racist border wall. Trump himself admitted the truth of this last week, when he argued that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing various lawsuits against Trump University, has a conflict of interest with Trump due to Curiel's Latino heritage and Trump's infamous wall. This obviously implies that the wall (and by extension Trump's mass deportation proposal) is aimed directly at Latinos.

Unsurprisingly, the targets of Trump's rhetoric have not all reacted with Nelson Mandela-esque grace and equanimity. This was starkly obvious at a Trump rally in San Jose last week, where there were several violent altercations between Trump supporters and protesters. Unlike previous instances, this time it appears that the anti-Trump faction started most of them, which ranged from childish abuse (throwing eggs and water balloons) to a serious sucker punch — though in at least one other instance, protesters protected a Trump supporter from an angry crowd.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.