MSNBC host says violence at Trump rallies is not an accident, and notes Chicago, St Louis and Cleveland have been sites of unrest over police killings

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A video by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow proved popular this weekend on the web. Much like a recent video by HBO host John Oliver, Maddow’s target is Donald Trump, although she does not attack the Republican frontrunner with humour. Maddow attacks him with barely contained anger.

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Speaking on Friday night, over footage of the violence that broke out around a Trump rally in Chicago when it was infiltrated by protesters and postponed, Maddow says: “This has turned out to be a night that may go down in history as one of the darker moments in American major politics.

“I think we got here by deliberate means,” she says. “I don’t think we got here by accident.”

Maddow notes recent unrest over police killings of African Americans including Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice, pointing to the cities where they happened.

She says: “So the St Louis area, Chicago, Cleveland. Those are not the only American cities that have proven to be real tinderboxes around issues of race and racism and policing and violence.

“But those three happen to be the three most recent stops on the itinerary of Republican presidential contender Donald Trump, whose rallies have featured racially charged incidents of violence for months now.”

Trump spoke in St Louis on Friday, postponed a rally in Chicago on Friday night and then spoke in Cleveland on Saturday.

Speaking to the camera, Maddow accuses Trump of stoking “bloodlust” with “half-serious calls for a tougher America where there are more beatings and anti-Trump protesters should fear for their lives”.

“As he heads into these tinderbox cities,” she continues, “I just want you to watch how that part of candidate Trump’s rhetoric has escalated.”

Maddow then presents a chronological, date-stamped sequence of utterances by Trump which she says represent “a deliberate act which created what happened tonight in Chicago”.

“It really is like nothing we’ve ever seen in mainstream American politics before,” she says, comparing Trump’s rhetoric and the behaviour of crowds at his rallies to “skinhead events” in the 1980s.

The video sequence begins with Trump in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on 1 February, asking fans: “If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you?”

It ends with footage from the Fayetteville, North Carolina, rally this week in which a protester being led out was sucker-punched by a Trump supporter.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump speaks at the Peabody Opera House in St Louis on Friday. Photograph: Michael B Thomas/AFP/Getty Images

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Maddow then shows Trump speaking in St Louis at a rally he was advised by local officials to cancel due to the threat of protests, but did not. Scuffles broke out around the Peabody Opera House, where he spoke, and racial epithets were exchanged.

“There are no consequences to protesting anymore,” Trump says from the podium, as protesters are taken out. “Our country has to toughen up, folks, we have to toughen up. These people are bringing us down … these people are so bad for our country, you have no idea, folks. You have no idea.”

To a raucous reception, he adds: “Go home to mommy. Go home and get a job.”

Maddow, speaking four days before the “Mega Tuesday” primaries which could consolidate Trump’s hold on the Republican nomination, continues: “If you want to know what led up to Chicago today, that was Donald Trump’s display of leadership and calming the waters.”

Over more footage of the violence in Chicago, she adds: “This is the work of an American presidential candidate who deliberately made this happen.

“And the Republican party is going to nominate this man for president.”