Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke on Monday defended his decision to post a tweet Friday calling for people to rise up with "pitchforks and torches" against government institutions and the media, saying he's suggesting the same action the nation's Founding Fathers did.

It's incredible that our institutions of gov, WH, Congress, DOJ, and big media are corrupt & all we do is bitch. Pitchforks and torches time pic.twitter.com/8G5G0daGVN — David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) October 15, 2016



"I'm suggesting the same thing the Founding Fathers did in the 1770s, when they drew up the Declaration of Independence," Clarke, who supports GOP nominee Donald Trump, told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program.

Clarke came under fire for the tweet and called the media "weepy" in a Patheos blog, also on Monday, for saying he was inciting violence with his tweet and its photo of a screaming, torch-bearing mob.

However, Talking Points Memo points out, the comments and tweet came during a series of violent events. On Friday, three militia members were arrested after plotting to bomb an apartment complex housing Somali immigrants, and on Sunday, a North Carolina Republican Party office was firebombed.

"If a voter registration drive set up by the NAACP, an office was set up and fire bombed, you know darn well that the rhetoric would come out that it was Donald Trump involvement. He's responsible, Republicans are responsible, with no foundation, so for that to happen on the other side I think is legitimate," said Clarke. "I think it's a legitimate argument."

Meanwhile, he said his own call for action is justified.

"Go back and read your Declaration of Independence," Clarke told Fox News about his tweet. "It's right there. Were they inciting violence? No, what they wanted was self-rule, they wanted a government controlled by the people and not the bureaucrats in Washington."

Clarke repeated the initial tweet on Monday, with a photo of himself on a horse superimposed on the original photograph, to harangue the "leftist big media" for its criticism:

Leftist Big Media trying to intimidate and harass me into stopping the use of this phrase by me. Can you tell I am not being swayed? pic.twitter.com/FLVEXUBuGx — David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) October 17, 2016



Clarke said he also meant the same thing that abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, when he called the institution of slavery an "institute of brute force" and said it must be fought with the same weapons.

He also complained that all summer, then-Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders talked about the need for a revolution in the United States, but the "leftist media" never complained.

"All of a sudden, when I talk about the corruption and a growing number of Americans are fed up with this government, they feel that it no longer belongs to them," said Clarke. "They no longer have any control over it. We're not a constitutional republic. We've become an administrative state. The Constitution is being shredded [and] the rule of law doesn't matter for certain people in Washington, D.C., and people have had it."

Also on Monday, Clarke said he agreed with FBI Director James Comey, who The Wall Street Journal reported had told a conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in San Diego that data does not back up theories connecting police-involved shootings with race.

"There's no data or research to suggest that our American law enforcement officers use a disproportionate amount of force toward criminal suspects and that's what we see first," said Clarke. "We see crime, criminals. We don't see color."

However, he called Comey "damaged" with his "pathetic involvement" in the Hillary Clinton email situation, so his speech on the matter now "doesn't help us."

He also spoke out about Trump's claims of a "rigged" election system, but said the nominee will be able to beat media bias if he can get people to the polls.

"There's a simmering undercurrent of people who can't be captured in the polls," said Clarke. "They have had it with this crap too. We will see it on November 8, if we get large numbers of people, either blacks stay home because they are disappointed with what's going on, maybe with both parties, if you can get a number of black voters to the polls to vote for him as well I think he can win this thing. They don't call him the comeback kid for nothing."