David Brooks on Violent Protests: "Trump Generates Sort Of Excitement That Gives Them A Pretext"

Real Clear Politics ^ | June 4, 2016 | Ian Schwartz

[2ndDivisionVet]

PBS: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the week in politics, including the continued violence at Donald Trump’s rallies, how the Obama administration could have approached the recession differently, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s conflicted presidential endorsement and Hillary Clinton’s new line of attack against Trump.

Brooks said the violence at the anti-Trump protests will "solidify his support," and for people who are pre-convinced to support Trump it "vindicates their world view." Brooks also commented if Trump loses, it would be nice if the Republican party would distance itself from him.

DAVID BROOKS, NEW YORK TIMES: I agree that the victims were the Trump supporters. That’s clear from the videos that we have seen. Whether — who it helps and hurts, I suspect it won’t have a big effect either way, but you can argue it both ways.

For Trump supporters, for people who are pre-convinced to support Donald Trump, it vindicates a lot of their world view. And so it will solidify his support.

But the only time I can really think of political violence really having a political effect was 1968 in Chicago...

And in that case, it was sort of intra-left, but it certainly hurt the Democrats, because there was an aura of disarray.

And so one can see among independent voters and who are just nervous about Trump as a phenomenon, the fact that there is all this violence and all this drama surrounding the whole Trump phenomenon could be nervous-making and it could drive some people. I doubt, either way, it will have a massive effect.

But it’s just a bunch of young thugs who like to punch somebody...

[jimfree]

Pretext is the correct word. Solidify is another.