Media Isn't Reporting On Trump Inciting Violence At Rallies!

Violence is starting to happen at Trump rallies on a semi-regular basis but there is no more than a token amount of news coverage about most incidents, which are treated as isolated. However there is good reason to believe that Trump's rhetoric is attracting racist people and encouraging them to participate in violence and cult-like activity.

(Edit: since this was posted there were additional violent responses to protests in Miami and Alabama among other places, some of which were added at the end of this article.)

On at least a couple of times even his security guards have been involved in it, yet there is little or no consideration of possible charges against them, and in one case they even claimed they were considering charges against one of their victims after he tried to retrieve a sign stolen by a security guard.

The most recent incident that I know of is when protesters interrupted a rally last week in Virginia:

Trump rally gives way to shoving, yelling amid Latino protests 10/15/2015

Richmond (United States) (AFP) - A presidential campaign rally for Republican frontrunner Donald Trump gave way to pushing and shoving as the billionaire's supporters clashed with a group of Latino student protesters.

Around a dozen students tried to interrupt Trump, who had just began his speech at a Richmond, Virginia rally, shouting "We're here to stay," and "Dump Trump."

Members of the crowd snatched their signs and began shoving, in an episode that lasted several minutes.

"Go back where you came from!" one supporter shouted.

At another point, a rally attendee spit in a protester's face Complete article

This was covered live on CNN and several other stations when it happened; however the details didn't come out until the next day. The live coverage didn't include any of the protests, instead it almost appeared as if there was an unexplained rant rooting for Donald Trump.

People that haven't been paying attention for a while might not know but this has been common practice when protesters speak out at a rally for a candidate. Someone who has probably been advised to watch for these protests starts a chant to drown out the protest then all the supporters of the candidate join in making it seem like there is a spontaneous chant supporting him. This enables them to prevent protesters from getting any attention or being heard and the security guards can come in and haul the protesters away. Then they can resume with loyal support.

Mitt Romney used this tactic often in 2012 and so have other candidates. This works very well in a crowd full of blind supporters who often have many characteristics of a cult.

There is rarely if ever any attempt to prosecute the supporters when they steal signs shove protesters and even spit on them.

Nor is it even widely reported. The vast majority of these incidents don't seem to get much if any coverage from the traditional media; and when they do report one of them they treat it like an isolated incident and quickly forget it. Think Progress is one of the alternative media outlets that does a much better job compiling information some of which is listed in an article citing this incident and providing a list of quite a few more with additional links in Trump Rally Turns Violent As His Supporters Push And Spit On Immigrant Advocates. 10/15/2015 The total number of incidents they list is probably over a dozen and since they don't have the resources to track them all there are probably many more that they haven't reported.

The traditional media has much more resources but they don't seem to even want to cover it. Instead they're providing a massive subsidy for the Trump campaign by giving him such an enormous amount of coverage for free. This clearly indicates that despite all the claims that he is an "anti-establishment" candidate he has enormous support from the establishment and that also means they're indirectly responsible for his incitement of violence.



One of the few incidents that they did cover, at least for a little while was when Trump's security guard stole a sign from a protester and even punched him when he tried to retrieve his own property at the beginning of September, but they didn't even consider the possibility that the guard should be charged with a crime.

Donald Trump's Bodyguard Hit a Protester in the Face After Taking His Hilarious "Make America Racist Again" Banner 10/1/2015

Like so many others in this country who are afflicted with the political handicap of intelligence, protester Efrain Galicia simply couldn't stand to see Donald Trump's oft-repeated slogan "Make America Great Again" again without making one small edit. Joining fellow protesters in New York near Trump Tower earlier this week, Galicia debuted his slogan remix via a handmade blue sign reading "Trump: Make America Racist Again."

However, Trump's bodyguards didn't share the same enthusiasm for Galicia's slogan suggestion. Keith Schiller, Trump's longtime bodyguard and security director, reportedly snatched Galicia's banner in disgust before being chased down by Galicia. While attempting to retrieve the banner, Galicia is violently hit in the face by Schiller before another guard joins the scuffle and reportedly places Galicia in a brief stranglehold. Complete article

I don't know whether the security guards or traditional media are aware but the first amendment is supposed to protect free speech in this country, not just for the wealthy, traditional media and political establishment but for everyone.

Many people may think that this kind of disruption might be annoying or rude but if they had equal opportunity to get their point across they would almost certainly be much less common. Over ninety if not ninety-five percent of the traditional media is now controlled by six conglomerates that don't allow many views to get any coverage at all; and the traditional political establishment also ignores the same views so it isn't surprising that those that want to raise important issues resort to disrupting events, which they wouldn't have to if they had other ways of getting their views across.

In most cases the protesters are less violent than the racists that Trump is inciting or his own security guards, who do more to disrupt security when they punch people trying to retrieve their own sign after security steals it, which they should be prosecuted for.

When Donald Trump failed to correct man who calls Obama Muslim (09/17/2015) the media made a big deal out of it, which is justified; but when something even more disruptive like shoving spitting stealing signs and racial slurs happen, sometimes by his own guards, they remain silent, most of the time.

However one of the exceptions was when Trump had Jorge Ramos thrown out of his news conference, and even then most of the media misrepresented it. One of the rare reports that did a better job covering it was the following:

At Donald Trump Event, Jorge Ramos of Univision Is Snubbed, Ejected and Debated 08/25/2015

DUBUQUE, Iowa – A journalist for the Spanish-language network Univision who asked Donald J. Trump about immigration was mocked by the candidate, then escorted out of a news conference here on Tuesday evening.

Jorge Ramos, an anchor for Univision news shows based in Miami, stood and began asking a question just as Mr. Trump recognized another reporter. “Excuse me, sit down. You weren’t called,” Mr. Trump told him. “Sit down. Sit down.”

Mr. Ramos asked Mr. Trump about his call to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country and build a wall the length of the Mexican border.

“You haven’t been called, go back to Univision,” Mr. Trump said.

As security officers approached Mr. Ramos, a Mexican-American, he said: “I am a reporter. Don’t touch me. I have a right to ask the question.”

Mr. Trump was silent as Mr. Ramos, an Emmy-winning journalist who was on the cover of Time magazine’s World’s Most Influential People issue, was removed from the room. Several other journalists asked Mr. Trump why he refused to take questions from Mr. Ramos. The billionaire real estate investor, who is leading in Republican polls for the presidential nomination, said it was because he had asked a question without being called on. Complete article

The vast majority of the coverage never mentioned that Trump only allowed him to return after other reporters started asking why he wouldn't take his questions. Instead many of them implied he allowed him back to be a good sport or something like that, not that he did so only reluctantly.

Another major problem that wasn't even discussed is that Donald Trump is essentially a job applicant asking the American people for a job as the leader of their country.

Why should this job applicant have authoritarian control over who gets to attend the press conference and ask questions? If any other job applicant, from a dishwasher to high paid computer programmer or doctor acted that way would they be seriously considered for the job?

This outrageous behavior from a job applicant and those working for him shouldn't be accepted under any circumstances especially the most important job in the country yet only political jobs where the public are expected to vote on who is hired accepts this.

In a Democracy this might not be quite as simple since millions of people vote for the person who gets the job but the next best thing would be if the media or some other institution accountable to the public controls the interview process. That's not the situation we have now the consolidated media isn't accountable to the public and they do an awful job. When a reporter actually does better than most then he is treated like this.

Unfortunately many Americans were raised from birth, as I explained previously in Dobson’s Indoctrination Machine to blindly follow their leaders in a cult-like manner and this also leads to escalating violence as also indicated in the following article:

The Cult of Donald Trump 09/16/2015

Poke even gently at a supporter of Donald Trump’s and he will scoff at you as if you were a moron. “You just don’t get it, do you,” he will sneer. “You don’t understand. We are just sending a message. The GOP Establishment has let us down. This is a revolt.”

As it happens, Trump’s critics do grasp the appeal. What they do not do, however, is act upon it in this manner. The temptation to deliver a bloody nose to one’s ideological enemies is a human and comprehensible one, by no means limited in its allure to the disgruntled part of the Republican primary electorate. But temptation and reasonable conduct are two separate things entirely, and they should always be treated as such. Can one understand the instinct that is on display? Sure. Can one look beneath the surface and do anything other than despair? I’m afraid not. Such as they are, the explanations provided by Trump’s discordant choir are entirely risible and easily dismantled. Great, you’re annoyed! But then what? Complete article

This article does a fairly good job describing the characteristics of Donald Trump's cult-like supporters but it does little to explain how they became that way. I attempted to explain that more in the previous post about James Dobson and in Cause and Effect of Hatred where I attempted to explain that adult behavior is established in early childhood and if nothing is done to correct early abuse then it could lead to indoctrination bigotry and violence instead of developing critical thinking skills that enable them to tell the difference between those that are raising legitimate issues and incredibly obvious con artists.

Donald Trump is the most obvious con artist the media has ever provided this much coverage for in a presidential election; this seems far more like a satire or reality TV show than a serious campaign, as even Jeb Bush points out. However this isn't new, George W. Bush's campaign and many others in recent history also seem like incredibly obvious satires.

Jeb Bush, or should I say John Ellis Bush, which is his real name, is probably more upset that he's losing to an even greater satire than his own family than he is he is concerned about the campaign turning into a reality TV show, which he approves when it benefits his family.

The more appropriate use of the JEB acronym should almost certainly be Just Elect Bernie, this year but that is besides the point.

The Think Progress article cited previously points out some similarity between the activities at Trump rallies and when "xenophobic rhetoric" was present "when right-wing extremism emerged in eastern Germany," or for that matter when Hitler was rising to power, although Donald Trump is no Adolf Hitler and it is virtually out of the question that it would escalate to that level. However Donald Trump is adopting many of the characteristics that enabled Hitler's rise. Fortunately, as I explained in previous posts, a major part of the cause of escalating violence is child abuse and corporal punishment leading to escalating violence and support for authoritarian tyrants like Hitler; and since changes in child rearing often associated with Benjamin Spock or other child rearing experts violence has dropped dramatically and the percentage of the public likely to fall for this rhetoric has also dropped.

The media has reported little or none of the psychology behind this; and it may be because they're providing an enormous amount of propaganda to manipulate the public themselves. Whether they understand it or not by providing an enormous amount of coverage making it seem like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the inevitable front runners they set the stage so that Hillary Clinton could be the new lesser of two evils and more rational people might not dare to allow a fanatic like Donald Trump to get elected enabling the media to rig another election, regardless of how much damage this does to society when they do this every four years and economic, environmental and social destruction continues to escalate for all but the wealthy who appear out of touch with reality.

Edit: the following incidents happened since this was first posted.

Yet Another Person of Color Violently Ejected From Donald Trump Rally in Alabama 11/22/2015

Trump on Alabama rally protester: ‘Maybe he should have been roughed up’ 11/22/2015

Trump rallies get rough: Protesters and supporters increasingly mix it up in the most combustible atmosphere on the campaign trail. 11/24/2015

Rival campaign, protesters gear up as Trump hits Ohio 11/23/2015

Video Shows Immigration Protester Dragged Across The Ground And Kicked At Trump Rally 11/2/2015

Donald Trump delivers classic Donald Trump speech in Worcester Mass. faces protesters 11/18/2015

These are almost certainly only a fraction of the problems at Trump rallies, since the people with the most resources to report them most effectively don't seem to want to do a good job and those that do don't have the resources. Also at least a couple of the ones I reported were more extensive then these articles indicate. Both the incidents in Ohio and Massachusetts were also reported on TV and showed more vigorous protests and attempts to throw them out. They weren't as violent as some of the others but in the case of Ohio they showed some very angry older men shouting that looked like they might on the verge of striking out violently.

It is hard to imagine why these people would be so angry at people protesting his obviously racist comments or why they feel they can trust a man who has a long history of participating in gambling scams among many other scams. Fortunately there is no chance that he can win without extreme cheating sicne this support doesn't go beyond the Republican party and it is highly unlikely that he can get much more than 20% of minority voters or reach 50% of women voters in the general election since he is doing so much to alienate them.