Less than 24 hours before a supporter of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders fired at Republican members of Congress at a baseball practice, seriously injuring House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and four others before U.S. Capitol Police took down the assailant, talk-radio host and author Michael Savage warned of violence by “marginal” people who are set to explode and “kill somebody.”
Savage, the host of the nationally syndicated “The Savage Nation,” was commenting on recent developments that have escalated the anti-Trump “resistance,” such as comedian Kathy Griffin’s ISIS-style photo shoot of the decapitated likeness of Trump and the “Julius Caesar” play in Central Park featuring the assassination of a Trump-like figure.
“I don’t know how much more of this the country can take,” Savage said.
“We are at a boiling point. There’s going to be a civil war,” he told his listeners Tuesday.
The suspect in the shooting Wednesday, James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, campaigned for Sanders and belonged to a number of anti-Republican groups, including one called “Terminate the Republican Party.”
In comments prepared for his afternoon show Wednesday, Savage criticized President Trump’s reaction to the shooting, contending he lost an opportunity to “take control” of the narrative. And he pinned blame for the attack on Sanders, contending the Vermont senator “stoked hate against Republicans and the rich.”
The day before the attack, Savage told his listeners: “If they keep this up, I’m telling you there’s going to be an explosion in this country.”
He noted that nothing had been done to stop the Central Park play, “when it’s clearly illegal to assassinate a president, even in a mock way.”
“Do you understand that there are people out there who are marginal, who are going to go off like a rocket and kill somebody?” Savage asked.
“Do you understand what this left-wing is becoming in this country?”
Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh also predicted on his show yesterday that “at some point,” the extreme Trump resisters “are gonna crack, and they’re not gonna just start cutting heads off of dolls, and they’re not gonna just start using fake knives to stab people at Central Park.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who was on the field practicing with his colleagues early Wednesday morning, commented that without the Capitol Police officers assigned to Scalise, “it would have been a massacre.”
‘It’s going to get worse’
In the opening monologue prepared for his show at 3 p.m. Eastern Time Wednesday, Savage said many people “think predicting things like I did yesterday is just talk; well it’s not.”
“I know what’s coming, and it’s going to get worse,” he said, pointing to his 2014 book, “Stop the Coming Civil War.”
Savage said that in the book’s first chapter, he shows how former first lady Michelle Obama, former Attorney General Eric Holder and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were “inciting the division of classes at commencement speeches.”
He writes, on pages 4 and 5 of the book: “Why would these people put forth the message of class and racial division to graduating college seniors on the same weekend, with Pelosi further telling her audience to go out and become disruptors? Why do they do it? I’m telling you they’re setting the stage for more confrontations between citizens of the United States and their government.”
On page 252 of the book, he writes: “Not since the run-up to the Civil War has the nation been more divided. The battle lines have been drawn: The haves against the have-nots. The illegal aliens against hard working middle-class families. Liberals who hate the second amendment versus lawful gun owners. Climate activists whose policies cause forest fires and exacerbate drought against those who understand that the effect on human activity is negligible. Anti-Christian Communist educators against God fearing families. Republicrats against Patriots.”
Savage said in his monologue Wednesday that all the rhetoric about Trump is about keeping the president “from accomplishing an agenda that is dismantling everything Obama put in place.”
“What do the Dems do right away? Jump on gun control,” he said, referring to Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s remarks at the scene of the attack Wednesday.
“It’s almost Pavlovian. Someone gets shot and they want to grab guns. This is more than that. This blood is on their hands,” Savage said.
Trump lost opportunity to ‘seize the moment’
Savage said President Trump “took too long to act” in response to the attack Wednesday.
“While he’s waiting for someone to compose some pathetic thing for him to read, the Dems take control of the situation,” Savage said. “And then when Trump finally acted, he said nothing. He gave a bland high school principal’s speech instead of a presidential speech.”
Savage said Trump “could have taken control of the nation with this.”
“He could have seized the moment,” Savage said.
“Where was the bold Trump we elected? We saw a milquetoast speech prepared for him by the RNC. They muted him again. He should have been up there screaming at MSNBC and CNN in particular for putting out fake news day after day and calling for violence in not so subtle terms.”
Noting the suspect was a big Sanders supporter, according to his Facebook page, Savage accused Sanders of inciting violence by stirring up “venom and hate against millionaires and billionaires.”
“He stoked hate against Republicans and the rich,” Savage said of the senator.
“This blood is on Bernie’s hands, and he should be put in jail for this. He incited violence,” Savage declared.
On the Senate floor Wednesday, Sanders condemned the suspect, whom the independent senator said “apparently volunteered” for his presidential campaign, CNN reported.
“I have just been informed that the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign,” Sanders said. “I am sickened by this despicable act. Let me be as clear as I can be: Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values.”
Savage said there’s a limit to free speech.
“I practice my limits. There are things I’d like to say on the radio but I practice responsibility. But people say whatever they want on Twitter and Facebook with no filters,” said Savage.
“Like I said yesterday, there are marginal people out there and soon one of them will act. Well, one of them has. When will the next one take action?”
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Gun control? How about Democrat zealot control? by Joseph Farah
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