WarSclerotic

Did he seriously believe that the effort to shut down the rally was occasioned by anything but Trump’s political positions? Where was he in 1968 when the far left pulled the same kind of thug action in the same city? Did he not notice Soros’ funding of Move On and Black Lives Matter or his funding of opposition to Trump and mobilization of Latinos opposed to Trump’s immigration stance in this election?

The organizers’ own words belie that claim that Trump bears responsibility for this mayhem: They were well organized and were there to shut down Trump  whose political views they oppose.

Here’s People for Bernie:

People For Bernie

‏‪@People4Bernie

Remember the ‪#TrumpRally wasn’t just luck. It took organizers from dozens of organizations and thousands of people to pull off. Great work.

Newsbusters picked up from an AP story the role of a Black Lives Matters

When’s the last time if even, that a group of right-wing protesters in the U.S. specifically set out to completely shut down a left-wing speaker’s address? There’s no doubt that the attempt to protest Trump was organized, and that its primary intent was to prevent him from speaking:

[snip]

“Trump represents everything America is not and everything Chicago is not,” said Kamran Siddiqui, 20, a student at the school who was among those celebrating. “We came in here and we wanted to shut this down. Because this is a great city and we don’t want to let that person in here.”

[snip]

“Our country is not going to make it being divided by the views of Donald Trump,” said Jermaine Hodge, a 37-year-old lifelong Chicago resident who owns a trucking company. “Our country is divided enough. Donald Trump, he’s preaching hate. He’s preaching division.”

[snip]

Chicago community activist Quo Vadis said hundreds of protesters had positioned themselves in groups around the arena, and they intended to demonstrate right after Trump took the stage.

Their goal, he said, was “for Donald to take the stage and to completely interrupt him. The plan is to shut Donald Trump all the way down.”

A directory assistance lookup indicates that there is no listed “Quo Vadis” (which means “Where are you going?” in Latin) in Illinois.

It seems quite likely that the person who was quoted is really Quovadis Green, a Chicago activist who was involved in Black Lives Matter protests in Chicago’s Michigan Avenue shopping district during last year’s Black Friday Christmas shopping weekend.

Bernie Sanders, whose people, as I have noted, took pride in shutting down the Trump rally, held a rally of his own in suburban Chicago. There he bragged that he was bringing people together, not dividing them like Trump. One can only imagine what he’d have said in the unlikely chance that rabid Trump supporters had shut down his rally. I say unlikely chance because these tactics are those of the left side of the spectrum. For sure, the press wouldn’t have called such action a “protest”. We’d have been treated to Nazi comparisons and the rally wreckers called Trump’s storm troopers.

The president, who has stirred up so much racial division by, among other things, supporting the Black Lives Matter supporters and megaphoning their lies about Trayvon Martin and Ferguson, Missouri, was equally mendacious.

“What’s happening in this primary is just a distillation of what’s been happening in their party for more than a decade,” Obama said, according to a report filed by the Texas Tribune.

Given the forces of the left arrayed against his party, Cruz’ take was more than spineless, it was self-defeating. If they succeed in shutting down Trump’s rallies, he’ll be next in their crosshairs. It’s the way they work. In any event, this show of rent-a-mob force may well encourage more voters, sick of this behavior, into the Trump camp.

Cruz’ offering up a justification for this behavior also played into the press game of targeting Republicans while spackling the records of their opponents. Of particular amusement is this piece in the Washington Post (whose editors must be on permanent leave):

Trump is known for his massive, raucous rallies — part campaign events, part media spectacles, part populist exaltations for his most loyal supporters. But the events have also become suffused with the kind of hostility and even violence that are unknown to modern presidential campaigns. The candidate himself often seems to wink at, or even encourage, rough treatment of protesters.

What is conveniently ignored is that these demonstrations are set up by Trump’s opponents specifically to provoke tensions and fights which the press then propagandizes. By this means they hope to set him up as what he is not — a racist — to scare off supporters and drive Blacks and Hispanics to the polls to vote for his Democratic opponent.

It’s of a piece with the rapidly disintegrating claim of a Breitbart reporter, Michelle Fields, days before that she was roughed up by Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s brilliant campaign manager.

The Daily Beast picked up her claim and further suggested (on the basis of a dubious third-hand account) that Lewandowski had admitted manhandling Fields, but as pictures and videos emerged which made her claim virtually impossible to sustain. It shows Trump and Lewandowski emerging from the presser with a Secret Service agent between Lewandowski and Fields. The Daily Beast walked that back step by step:

Update 2:15 p.m. ET: The Trump campaign has evidently leaked an email from Breitbart News Washington political editor Matthew Boyle. In the email Boyle rejects as “false” Daily Beast editor-at-large Lloyd Grove’s claim that Lewandowski “acknowledged to Breitbart’s Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle, that he did manhandle Fields.”

Breitbart, itself over the day, seemed to be backpeddling its reporter’s claim and noted

A Vine video has emerged, purporting to show a new angle of the incident. The footage appears inconclusive, but visible in the background is Ken Kurson, editor-in-chief of the New York Observer, who appears to have had a close-up view of the action.

Breitbart News reached out to Kurson, who responded via e-mail:

I was five feet away from the alleged incident and didn’t see anything. I was literally looking right at Corey when it supposedly happened. Someone sent me a Vine of it (I look bald as hell, goddammit — and what’s with that backpack?!?!!?) and if this happened, I think I would have seen it. I have a lot of experience as both a journalist and operative in these kind of press scrums and I didn’t see anything at all out of the norm.

Still, you can be sure this week’s lefty trope that Trump and his people are violent and encourage more violence will be played out, And if Cruz were the front runner drawing tens of thousands to his rallies he, too, would be tarred just the same.

Stay alert. This is going to be the dirtiest election in a long time.