Donald Trump on Saturday denounced the protests that led him to cancel a scheduled rally the previous night in Chicago, calling them “a planned attack” that was “professionally done.”
Clashes broke out Friday night between protesters and Trump supporters after the campaign announced the rally would be canceled more than 30 minutes after it was scheduled to start. Hundreds of protesters had packed into the University of Illinois at Chicago venue for the rally, prompting the campaign to call off the event.
The protests and fights between Trump supporters and protesters in Chicago were just the latest in a string of increasingly heated and at-times violent confrontations breaking out at rallies for the frontrunner in the Republican presidential race. And they come as Trump has repeatedly suggested protesters should face more violent repercussions for disrupting his rallies.
“We’re all together and we want to get along with everybody, but when they have organized, professionally staged wise guys we’ve got to fight back, we’ve got to fight back,” Trump said Saturday in Dayton, Ohio, during his first rally since the canceled Chicago event.
As he did the previous night in a round of phoned in TV interviews, Trump didn’t walk back any of his rhetoric Saturday. He again claimed that neither the tone of his campaign nor his supporters were to blame for any violence at his rallies.
“They want me to tell my people please be nice be nice. My people are nice,” Trump said Saturday.
“They were taunted, they were harassed by these other people.”