I suspect it would have gone much like St. Louis. A few dozen people would be arrested, a couple people assaulted by Trump supporters, you know, business as usual.
Did this happen?
The quote I saw had Trump claiming he decided to cancel the rally after “consulting law enforcement”. The Chicago police deny telling Trump to shut down the rally (which would have been illegal anyway since it would amount to a heckler’s veto). But he could have just talked to them off the record, out even simply asked his secret service protection what they thought.
A few dozen? One estimate I saw put the number of protesters at 10,000.
Do you think they’d need to arrest them all? That would be excessive, even for Chicago.
He said that he met with the Police and discussed it for half an hour.
Starting around 9:50 in the video linked below Trump states that he made the decision to shut down the rally “in conjunction with law enforcement”. That implies something more than a casual off the record discussion. “In conjunction” implies police involvement in the decision.
But the Chicago police say that they did not talk with Trump, but they did tell his campaign that they had adequate resources for the situation.
No, it implies speaking with “law enforcement” which is not limited to Chicago police. It includes the Secret Service that travels with him wherever he goes now, and many other agencies other than Chicago police.
Yes, but we can’t trust the police to tell the truth regarding our fearless leader!
Remember the Mayor of Chicago who commands the police is a Democrat and even worse, one of them!
When did the Secret Service protection detail become law enforcement?
The Secret Service is law enforcement.
The Secret Service is law enforcement. The protection detail is not.
I don’t understand why you think there should be a distinction.
The Chicago police say that they told Trump that they would be able to handle the protesters. So they consulted with him in that sense. And so he presumably talked with his Secret Service detail after finding out how many there were. This seems very likely. And it seems to be reasonable to conclude that people could get hurt, given the thousands of protesters.
There is a lot more going on here, I am sure of that. I don’t have any proof, but I am also sure that this was a tactical public relations decision.
But the narrative that Trump is pushing, that he canceled the event after consulting with law enforcement, because he thought people could get hurt, is reasonable and believable. None of the stuff calling him out for supposedly lying, based on the statement made by Chicago police, have any teeth.
I have read in this thread that the rally was not disrupted, Drumpf just wimped out and cancelled it. I have also read from people who seem to be anti-Drumpf that the widely shared plan for these thousands of protesters was to overwhelm the stage with more people then the guards could stop, and get on stage. If that’s true, trying to hide behind a claim that his rally was never actually disrupted is disingenuous at best. Pre-empting it from happening at all and then celebrating its cancellation as a victory might just be worse than disrupting it in the middle.
I am sorry Hank but that statement seems absurdly disingenuous.
The vast majority of the general public of all educational levels would assume that if the phrase “law enforcement” refers to the police and that if a candidate was advised by his secret service handlers otherwise then he would have said that. And there is no evidence that they said that or likelihood they would. “The local police say there is no safety concern sir. They state they can guarantee safe entrance and egress sir. You should cancel sir.” Uh huh.
Really how much bullshit will you people rationalize?
Slacker, I agree that any plan that included going into the arena and disrupting the event was crossing a line. But if protestors marching outside, chanting “Trump not welcome here!” resulted in him not coming, that would be completely legit freedom of speech.
Maybe they would have crossed the line and actually physically disrupted the event inside, if he had come. But there is in fact a difference between a plan and intent to do something wrong and actually committing the offense.
The simple reality is that intent and desire is not what actually happened. What happened is that Trump cancelled of his volition, despite being assured by local law enforcement that they had the situation under control.
I agree with your first paragraph. As for police assurances, what else are they going to say? “We can’t control our own city, come back and visit soon”?
“The local police say there is no safety concern sir.” But no one said that, you are just making it up. No one said there were no safety concerns. That would be ludicrous, with thousands of protesters inside the venue.
Trump says that after consulting law enforcement, and in conjunction with law enforcement, that he made the decision to cancel the rally. The local police say that they consulted with him, since they claim that they told him they had enough people: "In fact, I can tell you we did assure the Trump campaign that we had more than adequate resources outside the UIC Pavilion and that we guaranteed them we could provide safe access and exit for Mr. Trump”. That’s what they actually said.
They claim that they had enough people to protect Trump on his entrance and exit, and that they did not tell him to shut down the rally. They did not say that they told Trump there were no safety concerns.
None of this contradicts Trump’s statement that “After speaking with law enforcement, I just thought it would be a wise thing for us to postpone this rally”
More something along the lines of: “The situation on the ground right now is fluid and we are concerned that it might spiral. We will do our to keep both sides under control but are unable to verify that we will be able to completely do so.” But that was NOT the situation so such was not said.
So the police tell his team that can guarantee him safe entrance and exit.
Trump then states “We’ve spoken with and consulted with law enforcement and decided to cancel.”
Yes that statement is literally true … it’s missing the “despite their reassurances” at the end, but it is true.
Oy.
And conservatives had a problem with what the meaning of is is.
There are several different conversations going on, and you’re conflating them.
- The guy who planned with buddies to storm the stage? That was with like a hundred buddies in what I read, and assuming the plan was to prevent speech, it’s deplorable. However, that’s not necessarily the plan. What if they were planning to sit around Trump, holding anti-Trump signs, while he spoke? I don’t know what exactly they planned. Again, if it was to prevent him from speaking, that’s not okay.
- The thousands of protestors did not have any such plan that I read.
- Yes, people cheered when it was cancelled and called it a victory. In my experience, activists will call anything a victory. If they’d been hauled off to jail by the thousands, they would almost certainly have called that a victory. Their calling it a victory is meaningless.
- His rally was not disrupted, possibly because he never gave it a chance to be, possibly because nobody had both the intention and the wherewithal to disrupt it. He cancelled it, making any discussion of disrupting it moot.
- Look, buddy, you really don’t want to go down the “disingenuous” route. Let’s assume each other are speaking honestly here, okay? Just because someone sees a highly complex situation with lots of moving parts differently from how you see it doesn’t automatically mean they’re lying to you.