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William M. Daley, a scion of the storied Daley political clan of Illinois, said he was not surprised that protests against Donald J. Trump before his Chicago rally got so out of hand that Mr. Trump canceled it before even taking the stage.

And Mr. Daley wondered why the venue was selected in the first place.

Mr. Daley, a former chief of staff to President Obama and a son of the late Richard J. Daley, the longtime mayor of Chicago, pointed out in an interview on Saturday that the University of Illinois at Chicago, where the rally was to be held, has one of the most diverse student bodies of any university in the country.

It has 17,000 undergraduate students, many of whom come from low-income families. Roughly a quarter are Hispanic, 8 percent are black and 25 percent are Asian. Mr. Daley’s father, who was mayor during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago that was marred by violence, had championed the creation of the campus.

Mr. Daley wondered aloud whether the Trump campaign had picked the site to provoke a reaction. “Whoever picked that location knew what they were doing as far as poking that sleeping dog there,” Mr. Daley said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump did not respond to questions about Mr. Daley’s thoughts on the location. It was not the first school that Mr. Trump has chosen for a rally; he has held others at colleges and universities over many months.

But Chicago has a history of racial clashes and protests, Mr. Daley pointed out. There has been deep distrust between black residents and the police after a video released last year showed Laquan McDonald, a black teenager, being shot 16 times by a police officer.

If anything, Mr. Daley said, it should have occurred to Mr. Trump’s campaign that the venue could be a crucible for problems.

Mr. Trump abruptly canceled his rally on Friday night, citing concerns of the Chicago Police Department. Officials with the Police Department denied having given such advice, saying the campaign chose to do it. But for days, it had been reported in the news media and on social media that thousands of people were signing petitions against Mr. Trump’s appearance and planning major disruptions of his speech.

Mr. Trump’s allies suggest he has been treated unfairly by protesters who have gone to his rallies with the intention of stopping him from speaking and creating scenarios in which there could be violent clashes.

Mr. Daley’s view is different. He argued that many people are contributing to what is taking place, chief among them Mr. Trump.

“I don’t think he’s trying to fuel the people that don’t agree with him; he’s trying to fuel the people that agree with him,” Mr. Daley said. “You can’t do that in a vacuum.”