Barely 24 hours after Donald Trump delivered a speech intended to reset his staggering presidential campaign, his off-the-cuff suggestion that people resort to violence against his opponent has him right back in the ditch.

At a rally in North Carolina on Tuesday, Trump applied his signature sarcasm to a political third rail, stating that “the Second Amendment” may be the only way to stop Clinton from getting to appoint federal judges if she defeats him in November.


“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment,” he said. “By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”

The aside, delivered casually, drew light laughter from Trump’s crowd but a swift, emphatic rebuke from across the political spectrum, with Republicans and Democrats alike broadcasting their shock.

“You aren’t just responsible for what you say; you’re responsible for what people hear,” said former CIA director Michael Hayden during breaking news coverage of Trump’s comments on CNN.

Clinton did not take any questions after her event in Miami on Tuesday, but the main super PAC supporting her, Priorities USA Action, immediately circulated the video clip of Trump making the statement with the subject line, “Donald Trump Just Suggested That Someone Shoot Hillary Clinton.” It offered a four-word statement: “This is not okay.”

Trump’s surrogates, already positioned on television sets, were left without any plausible response as media coverage of the presidential campaign focused on the GOP nominee’s latest misstep. “Mr. Trump was saying exactly what he said,” spokeswoman Katrina Pierson said on CNN. The campaign itself put out a “statement on dishonest media” that did not even attempt to clean up Trump’s comment.

“It’s called the power of unification — 2nd Amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power,” said Jason Miller, a campaign senior communications adviser. “And this year, they will be voting in record numbers, and it won’t be for Hillary Clinton, it will be for Donald Trump.”

But it’s only the latest example of the unscripted candidate’s sense of humor getting him in trouble in the context of a presidential campaign.

Just days ago, Trump stirred controversy at a news conference by encouraging Russia to spy on Clinton and to uncover the 33,000 emails deleted from her private server. After letting the controversy boil for more than a day, Trump and his campaign team attempted to argue that he was joking and not, in fact, nudging a foreign government — described by Trump’s predecessor as GOP nominee as America’s “greatest geopolitical foe” — to spy on his political opponent.

In both cases, the carelessness with words carries broad, serious implications — in the political realm and beyond.

Trump’s “jokes” give his opponents fodder and force fellow Republicans into yet another round of inevitable disavowals and questions about whether they will continue to support their party’s nominee. In the past week, following Trump’s suggestion that the Russians hack Clinton’s server and his ensuing criticism of a Gold Star family whose son was killed in Iraq, mainstream Republicans have been distancing themselves from Trump with increasing velocity. New York Rep. Richard Hanna, former California GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and Maine Sen. Susan Collins have all gone public in recent days to make it clear they won’t be supporting Trump and will instead cast votes for either Clinton or Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.

Indeed, this latest unforced error comes as Trump’s own campaign desperately tries to stop the bleeding, beset by daily polls showing Clinton’s lead growing nationally and in swing states.

But beyond politics, there are the potential real-world consequences of a presidential candidate — one who has spent the past week boldly asserting that the election itself may be “rigged” against him — speaking openly about citizens bearing arms as a response to Clinton presidency, especially in a country that is enduring a prolonged period of mass shootings by troubled, disaffected individuals and domestic terrorists, and rising violence enflamed by urban unrest and a fraying social fabric.

Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., criticized Trump on Twitter. She wrote: “As the daughter of a leader who was assassinated, I find #Trump’s comments distasteful, disturbing, dangerous. His words don’t #LiveUp. #MLK”

Trump has been scolded more than once during his campaign for promoting violence against political opponents. At a rally in Cedar Rapids on the day of the Iowa caucuses, Trump offered to pay the legal fees of supporters who attacked anyone trying to throw fruit at him. “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously,” he said. “Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.” As it turned out, there were no attempts to throw fruit at him at the rally.

Later in February, at a Las Vegas rally on the eve of the Nevada caucuses, Trump said of a protester, “I’d like to punch him in the face.”

“We’re not allowed to punch back any more,” Trump lamented in Las Vegas. “You know what they used to do to a guy like that in a place like this?” he said. “They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”

And last month, Trump said he’d like to “hit” speakers at the Democratic National Convention who spoke ill of him.

“The things that were said about me. You know what, I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard,” Trump said. “I was gonna hit this guy so hard, his head would spin. He wouldn’t know what the hell happened.”

Eight years ago, Clinton got into trouble for referencing the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, which happened in June 1968 in the midst of the presidential campaign, when explaining why she was staying in the Democratic primary despite Barack Obama having taken a commanding lead. Unlike Trump, however, she quickly clarified the comment and apologized to anyone who was offended by it.

Martin Mulholland, a spokesman for the Secret Service, did not directly address the question of whether the agency — which provides protection to both Trump and Clinton — plans to investigate the remark, but he wrote in an email to POLITICO, “The Secret Service is aware of the comment.”

Gabriel Debenedetti and Ben Schreckinger contributed to this report.

