Speaker at Trump-Vance rally calls for “civil war” if Trump does not win in November

Less than a week after former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated at a rally in Pennsylvania following an attempted coup, a speaker at a rally for his vice presidential candidate in Ohio on Monday called for a “civil war” if Trump fails to retake the White House.

“I fear that if we lose this election, it will take a civil war to save the country,” said George Lang, a senator from the Cincinnati area, shortly before Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance took the stage at his first solo rally in his hometown of Middletown.

Representatives of Trump’s campaign did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment on Lang’s comments, but about half an hour later, Lang apologized in a social media post.

“I regret the polarizing remarks I made on stage in the heat of the moment. Especially in light of the assassination attempt on President Trump last week, we should all be careful about what is said at political events, myself included,” he said. wrote.

The campaign team of Vice President Kamala Harris – the likely Democratic nominee after Joe Biden dropped out of this year’s presidential race – was quick to note that calls for violence at Trump events are nothing new.

“Donald Trump and JD Vance are running a campaign that openly sows hatred and promises revenge on their political opponents,” Harris’ campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “This is a feature, not a bug, of their campaign and their message to the American people. That is why a Republican official was given the authority to predict civil war when introducing these candidates.”

In fact, Trump has aggressively incited violence since his 2015 election campaign. Trump regularly encouraged demonstrators to beat up protesters who came to his events.

As president, he wanted police officers and the military to shoot protesters and people crossing the border illegally. At his rally before the insurrection near the White House on January 6, 2021, he wanted the Secret Service to allow armed people into the security perimeter, calling the people who were in town that day “my” people who would not harm him.

Then, when his mob stormed the Capitol and attacked hundreds of police officers, Trump stood by and did not try to stop it until it became clear that the police and National Guard had regained control and his attempt to force Congress to give him a second term failed.

In the early evening of July 13, Trump narrowly escaped a bullet to the head when a 20-year-old man with an AR-15 rifle shot him from a rooftop about 150 yards from where he spoke during his rally in Pennsylvania. Both the FBI and an independent commission are investigating why the Secret Service failed to stop someone with a high-powered rifle from taking up a position with a clear line of sight to Trump.

Trump’s campaign team claimed the near-death experience had made him almost spiritual and promised a “new tone” from him in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last week.

While Trump initially struck a somber tone as he described the shooting, he quickly descended into his usual hour-and-a-half-long rally speeches, peppered with lies about his own past, personal attacks on critics and demands that all criminal proceedings against him be dropped.