Trump in trouble? The Secret Service has been in contact with Donald Trump‘s team following his controversial Second Amendment remarks about Hillary Clinton.
“There has been more than one conversation,” a U.S. Secret Service official told CNN in a statement on Wednesday, August 10.
As previously reported, Trump, 70, suggested on Tuesday that gun rights advocates should go after the Democratic presidential nominee, 68. “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment,” he said during a rally at the University of North Carolina on Tuesday. “And if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although, the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know.”
Clinton’s team quickly released a statement after the rally. “This is simple — what Trump is saying is dangerous,” Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said. “A person seeking to be the President of the United States should not suggest violence in any way.”
The Secret Service is aware of the comments made earlier this afternoon.
— U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) August 9, 2016
Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, denied that he meant any harm toward the former secretary of state. “This was a joke … He wasn’t inciting violence,” Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, told CNN.
Rudy Giuliani stood by him, too. “What he intended is very, very simple, that [gun owners] should vote against her,” the former NYC mayor told Good Morning America. “He had no idea that anybody would interpret his words that way. It was so obvious to all of us what he meant.”
Trump even defended himself via Twitter. “When is the media going to talk about Hillary’s policies that have gotten people killed, like Libya, open borders, and maybe her emails?” he wrote. “Media desperate to distract from Clinton’s anti-2A stance. I said pro-2A citizens must organize and get out vote to save our Constitution!”
Nevertheless, the Secret Service is taking the comments seriously. Before speaking with Trump’s team, the official Twitter account for the organization posted about the situation on Tuesday.
“The Secret Service is aware of the comments made earlier this afternoon,” the tweet read.