If you’ve followed soccer, or lived in Europe, you’re familiar with the so-called soccer/football hooligans who bedevil that sport. They don’t attend the games to cheer on their team, the travel, specifically, to fight and riot. For instance:

The cancellation of a Trump rally in Chicago last evening was a mixture of a couple of things. As the campaign made the decision to cancel, not the Chicago PD, who say they had more than enough officers on scene to control any confrontations, or the Secret Service, one suspects that Trump is trying to play the victim here. He is already on Twitter belly aching about Free Speech:

The organized group of people, many of them thugs, who shut down our First Amendment rights in Chicago, have totally energized America!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2016

The second part of the equation is the emotional climate Donald Trump has created, on purpose or by accident, that encourages his supporters to act as enforcers and street brawlers. Let’s review the record (h/t to Mashable for the video clips):

Donald Trump calls supporters’ violence against protesters “appropriate,” says “that’s what we need more of.”https://t.co/N28Wj5l3Ji — Mashable News (@MashableNews) March 11, 2016

Here Trump talks about an incident that I’ve been unable to find where a single protester waded into several thousand Trump supporters and started punching them. This may have happened, I don’t know. It seems like a damned poor evolutionary strategy, at the least. Trump says the audience “swung back” and “that is something we need more of.”

Trump in NC on Weds: “In the good old days this doesn’t happen because they used to treat them very, very rough.” pic.twitter.com/vccazscgjT

— Mashable News (@MashableNews) March 11, 2016

“In the good old days this doesn’t happen because they used to treat them very, very rough. When they protested once they wouldn’t do it again”

Indeed  

“Try not to hurt him. If you do, I’ll defend you in court, don’t worry about it.”

  In this one you get a glimpse of something we’ve talked about concerning Trump. Back when he refused to disavow David Duke and the KKK (presumably because, like Planned Parenthood, they had “done some good things”) I said

I don’t think Trump is any more racist than any other rich guy from Manhattan but there is no doubt he is absolutely craven in his dealings with racist and white power groups, almost as though he actually believes all those years of liberal indoctrination and thinks they are the mainstream of the GOP.

Not the bored, dismissive way he starts a “USA, USA” chant as his opponents, who are part of said USA, are manhandled from the venue.

“I’d like to punch him in the face… We’re not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. Do you know what they used to do guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher.”

Note here that Trump claims that the protester was punching though there is not mention of that happening.

Trump: If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, ‘knock the crap out of them’ pic.twitter.com/100AA2Bjww

— POLITICO Video (@POLITICOvideo) February 1, 2016

“If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously.”

This is a longish clip that I can’t edit. The part I’m focusing on starts at 11:34.

The man that was, you say, “roughed up”, he was so obnoxious and so loud, he was screaming. I had ten thousand people in the room yesterday, ten thousand people, and this guy started screaming by himself, I don’t know, roughed up? May he should have been roughed up.”

This clip is probably the best summary of how Trump views the idea of disagreement. Here is Trump from a campaign stop in Michigan back in August, well before violence and Trump rallies became sort of synonymous. He is asked to respond to Bernie Sanders letting two #BlackLivesMatter operatives take over his microphone at a rally:

QUESTION: Would you give up your microphone to a protester, like Bernie Sanders…

TRUMP: I would never give up my microphone. I thought that was disgusting. That showed such weakness. The way he was taken away by two young women. The microphone. They just took the whole place over. And the audience, which liked him, I mean, they were him. They’re saying “what’s going on, how can this happen?” That will never happen with me. I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself or if other people will. But that was a disgrace. The way they… I felt badly for him. But it showed that he’s weak. You know what? He’s getting the biggest crowds and I’m getting the biggest crowds. We’re the two getting the crowds. But believe me that is not going to happen to Trump.

The central problem, as I have written before, is that Trump is a bad man

At his core, Trump is a very bad man. Not “bad man” in terms of being a criminal, but a bad man, a man devoid of manly virtues. And he is a corrupter who has learned to use his wealth to corrupt anyone who opposes him.

His stunted manhood is the direct result of his privileged life. He’s never been held to account for anything. His Daddy gave him his grubstake. His Daddy bailed him out when he was in a jam. He’s had flunkies and lackies to clean up his messes his entire life. He actually thinks inciting mob violence makes him and his supporters look strong in only the way that someone who has never been in a fight can hold that belief.. Now he has essentially created a politcal movement that is based on hooliganism, both physical and on-line. He’s attracting people who want conflict because they are losers who want to bask in the reflected glory of their Caudillo and the way to do that is to respond to any hint that violence is appropriate with violence. The sad thing is that this could all have been avoided if Donald Trump had had his ass kicked in middle school… for if he’d been born with bigger hands.