Donald Trump said Monday “there’s no violence, nobody’s been hurt” at his rallies, which have had a number of high-profile incidents of violence in the past week.
“First of all let’s not even use the word violence, there’s very little disruption generally speaking. It’s a function of the press, the press likes to say what the press likes to say,” Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Monday.
“If one person gets up and starts shouting and the police walks that person out, they try and make it like it’s a violent thing. It’s not violent. It’s a protester that stands up or probably a disruptor, because I think they’re sent there by people on the other side,” he said.
Trump added: “But there’s no violence, nobody’s been hurt.”
The GOP presidential front-runner’s rallies have turned increasingly violent in the past week as supporters have clashed with protesters. Trump was forced to cancel a rally in Chicago over the weekend and was given a scare when a protester rushed the stage Saturday.
Meanwhile Trump has said he is considering paying the legal fees for a supporter charged with assaulting a protester at a North Carolina rally. And a former Breitbart reporter filed an assault charge against Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, alleging he yanked her violently from Trump last Tuesday.
Trump’s rallies have long been raucous, unscripted affairs, with pumped-up audiences often yelling out as he talks, and Trump yelling back at them. And since he launched his campaign, they have been fairly regularly interrupted by protesters.
While most of the violent incidents have been recent, one protester was kicked and beaten by a crowd in Alabama last November. Trump said afterward: “Maybe he should have been roughed up.”
“There’s not much violence. When we have, 20,000 and 15,000 and you know many more than that — in some cases and 35,000 people in Alabama. You know there were no protests,” Trump told Blitzer.
