The media have been blandly paraphrasing Donald Trump’s hint about the use of firearms without close reading of the text, and obediently quoting utterly disingenuous spin from supporters as if it were fit to be taken seriously. Four linguistic points are crucially relevant. Three were touched on in a recent Language Log post. Let me review all four somewhat more carefully.
What Trump said in his speech at the rally in Wilmington, N.C., was this (the line breaks roughly correspond with his oddly stertorous phrasing):
Hillary wants to abolish
— essentially abolish —
the Second Amendment and by the way,
if she gets to pick — [shrugs while the audience jeers]
if she gets to pick her judges... [pause]
Nothing you can do, folks. [pause; turns head rightward]
Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.
https://cdn.theguardian.tv/mainwebsite/2016/08/10/160810TrumpUpdate_desk.mp4
Trump’s constitutional illiteracy is plangent (the president has no role at all in proposing or repealing amendments to the constitution, and needs the consent of the Senate to appoint a judge), but it’s not relevant here. I’m concerned solely with the four pieces of linguistic evidence that he did indeed hint at assassination.
1. The conditional adjunct If she gets to pick her judges is a present-tense conditional adjunct. It’s not a counterfactual like if Hillary were president, which locates us in an alternative universe; it’s like if Hillary wins: It speaks of a condition possibly met in a future state of this world. As Wolf Blitzer recently pointed out in a TV interview with Rep. Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, it clearly references a time after January 20, 2017, when she has won the presidency and is selecting judiciary candidates. Once the world is in a state where the condition “she gets to pick her judges” is satisfied, questions of voting are beside the point.
2. The phrase “Second Amendment people” Who does the phrase “the Second Amendment people” refer to? Gun owners? Or just voters who believe in defending our constitutional freedoms? Well, unarmed defenders of constitutional freedoms will be as powerless as anyone else to stop a future President Clinton proposing judges once she has been elected. NRA membership, bumper stickers, signs on lawns ... all irrelevant. Senators could filibuster to stop a Supreme Court nomination coming to a vote, of course; but Trump didn’t say “Senators,” he said “Second Amendment people.” He means people with guns. Other interpretations just don’t fit.
3. The modal adjunct “maybe” The adverb maybe functions as a modal qualification of clause meaning: It signals that its clause expresses merely a possible truth, not an actual one. So he’s saying it’s only a possibility that something could be done, not a certainty. But that tells us, again, that he cannot possibly be talking about campaigning or voting against Mrs. Clinton. He knows people could do that. He’s talking about people using their firearms, a much more uncertain proposition (because of the armed secret service).
4. The “I don’t know” tag Trump trails off with a rhetorical “I don’t know,” thereby giving us a third indication that he’s not talking about voting. He knows they could vote. He’s attempting to create deniability about his adumbration concerning what “the Second Amendment people” might do with their guns. Just putting it out there for them to think about. Planting the seeds of action by others, like King Henry II railing against Archbishop Becket (nothing I can do about that troublesome priest, folks; although some of you knights, maybe there is, I don’t know). Or, as Thomas Friedman reminds us, like the right-wingers who created the prelude to Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination (if this traitor gets to sell us out by talking with Palestinians ... nothing you can do, folks; although some of you loyal Israelis, maybe there is, I don’t know).
The linguistic evidence tells us, much more unambiguously than the newspapers reveal, that Trump couldn’t have been talking about campaigning or voting or the political strength of the NRA and the other unified pro-gun lobbying forces. He was directly suggesting that free citizens, while they still have their weapons, could do something about the threat that the future President Clinton might appoint judges who would weaken the Second Amendment. They could shoot her.
Behind Trump as he spoke, to the right of his image on the video, a white-haired man can clearly be seen reacting with disbelief at what Trump just said. I think he says “Ouch!"; he turns to look at his wife, who is laughing. But it doesn’t matter whether Trump intended his remark as a laugh line or not. Joking about what happened to Jack Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and came within inches of happening to Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, is worse than unacceptable. It’s truly appalling. It’s adequate grounds for deciding that Trump is not a fit and proper person to be considered for any powerful executive role.
