Hillary Clinton responded Wednesday to Donald Trump’s suggestion the day before about gun rights activists potentially stopping her from making Supreme Court picks if she’s elected, by saying “words matter.”
“Words matter my friends, and if you are running to be president or you are president of the United States, words can have tremendous consequences,” Clinton said at an Iowa rally. “Yesterday we witnessed the latest in a long line of casual comments from Donald Trump that cross the line.”
She added: “His casual cruelty to a gold star family, his casual suggestion that more countries should have nuclear weapons and now his casual inciting of violence. Every single one of these instances shows us that Donald Trump simply does not have the temperament to be president and commander in chief of the United States.”
Trump suggested on Tuesday in North Carolina that should Clinton win the election and be able to pick judges, it would be up to “Second Amendment people” to do something about it.
“Hillary wants to abolish — essentially abolish the Second Amendment,” Trump said. “By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Trump’s ambiguous comments drew instant rebukes from Democrats and raised eyebrows among Republicans.
Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said Trump’s comments were “dangerous.”
“A person seeking to the be president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way,” Mook said.
Trump defended the comments on Tuesday night in an interview with Fox News, arguing that he was just urging people concerned about their Second Amendment rights to to stop Clinton from being elected.
But the United States Secret Service did not take it that way. A spokeswoman for the group said they were aware of the comments on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, a Secret Service official told CNN that they have talked with the Trump campaign about his comment.
“There has been more than one conversation” on the topic, the official told CNN.
The Trump campaign declined to comment on what the Secret Service official told CNN.