Barely a week after coup-attempting former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated at a rally in Pennsylvania, a speaker at an Ohio rally for his running mate on Monday called for “civil war” if Trump does not win back the White House.
“I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country,” said George Lang, a state senator from the Cincinnati area, shortly before Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance took the stage at his first solo rally in Middletown, his hometown.
Trump campaign officials did not respond to HuffPost queries about Lang’s remarks, but about half an hour later, Lang apologized for them in a social media post.
“I regret the divisive remarks I made in the excitement of the moment on stage. Especially in light of the assassination attempt on President Trump last week, we should all be mindful of what is said at political events, myself included,” he wrote.
The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee amid Joe Biden dropping out of this year’s presidential race, was quick to note that calls for violence are not new at Trump events.
“Donald Trump and JD Vance are running a campaign openly sowing hatred and promising revenge against their political opponents,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “It’s a feature, not a bug, of their campaign and message to the American people. That’s why a Republican official was empowered to predict a civil war while introducing these candidates.”
Indeed, Trump has aggressively stoked violence since the time he ran for office in 2015. Trump routinely encouraged rallygoers to beat up protesters who came to his events.
As president, he wanted law enforcement officers and the military to shoot protesters and people crossing the border illegally. In his pre-insurrection rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, he wanted the Secret Service to allow people who were carrying guns into the security perimeter, calling the people in town that day “my” people who would not hurt him.
Then, when his mob attacked the Capitol and assaulted hundreds of police officers, Trump watched it all unfold and did not try to stop it until it became clear that police and the National Guard had regained control and his attempt to coerce Congress into giving him a second term failed.
In the early evening of July 13, Trump came within a fraction of an inch of taking a bullet in the head after a 20-year-old shot at him with an AR-15-style rifle from a roof some 160 yards away from where he was speaking during his Pennsylvania rally. The FBI and an independent commission are both investigating how the Secret Service failed to prevent someone armed with a high-powered rifle from taking a position with a clear line of sight to Trump.
Trump’s campaign claimed that the near-death experience had made him almost spiritual and promised a “new tone” from him in his Republican National Convention acceptance speech last week.
While Trump did start with a somber tone as he recounted the shooting, it quickly devolved into his normal, hour-and-a-half rally speeches, filled with lies about his own record, personal attacks on his critics and demands that the criminal prosecutions against him all be dropped.
