Trump: Violence ‘Must Be Ended’

Seizing on the latest turmoil in America’s cities, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Thursday told a Pennsylvania rally that he would move swiftly to crack down on violent protests.

Appearing at Sun City Studios in Chester Township in the Philadelphia suburbs, Trump pointed to days of violence in Charlotte sparked by the fatal shooting of a black man at an apartment complex.

“The riots in our streets are a threat to all peaceful citizens, and it must be ended and ended now.”

“The riots in our streets are a threat to all peaceful citizens, and it must be ended and ended now,” he said. “The main victims of these violent demonstrations are law-abiding African-Americans who live in these communities and only want to raise their children in safety and peace … and we’re going to give that to them.”

Trump promised to be the voice of the marginalized. He cited Chicago, a violence-plagued city where 65 people have been shot since last Friday. He said it is possible to reduce violence in the Windy City and other urban areas — but only by supporting police, not fighting against them.

“The problem is not that they’re too many police,” said Trump, who has the backing of the Fraternal Order of Police. “The problem is that they’re not enough.”

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Trump continued his assault against Democrat Hillary Clinton’s infamous characterization of many of his supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” He said the job of a leader is to empathize with people with different beliefs, not insult them.

“I will be a president of all Americans,” he said. “And I will campaign for every last vote in every last community. I will extend my hand to every police chief in this country who wants to be a partner in making their cities safer for their citizens.”

For Trump, Pennsylvania could be the state that determines whether he is president or returns to his real estate empire after Nov. 8. If he wins all of the states he is expected to carry easily, plus the ones where he leads or is close, he would still fall short.

Pennsylvania would put him over the top, but it has been an elusive target for the GOP. The party has not won the state in a presidential election since 1988.

Trump thinks he can reverse that trend by focusing on the economy, and he made several overt appeals Thursday to the Keystone State. He said he would slap a 35-percent tariff on any U.S. company that moves jobs outside the country and wants to sell its products in America.

He also repeated his vow to renegotiate the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). All of those moves will help create employment opportunities, Trump said.

“They’ll all be returning to Pennsylvania is a very big way,” he said. “And pretty quickly, too. Pretty quickly. You’ll be amazed.”

After that, Trump told his audience, it’s up to them.

“Now, they may leave Pennsylvania and go to another state,” he said. “But you gotta fight for yourselves there, right? But we’re not losing to other countries, that I can tell you.”

Trump said he would build a first-class public school system and give low-income Americans education choice through vouchers and charter schools. He called home schooling “a right, not a privilege.”

Trump said Americans would not have to wait long to see a turn-around.  “The changes will start immediately,” he said.

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On Day 1, Trump said, he would use his executive authority to lift job-stifling regulations. Also on his first day in office, he said, he would ask Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. He vowed to unleash America’s energy sector, which he said would create 500,000 new jobs a year.

“Our plan includes one of the biggest tax reforms in American history,” he said. “It’s going to include a 15-percent tax rate for all businesses, small and large, making our country a magnet for new jobs.”

All of it would add up to create an economic boom — “the biggest since Ronald Reagan and maybe bigger than Ronald Reagan,” Trump said.

Trump raised an issue that was a favorite cause of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries — the cost of college education. But whereas Sanders and other liberals focus on increasing federal funding to reduce or eliminate the cost of education for students, Trump set his sights on the other side of the equation — how colleges allocate their own resources.

Many universities, Trump said, have massive endowments but spend little of it on students. He said he would work with Congress to use federal funds as a tool to push colleges to reform their spending practices.

“We have to break this cycle,” he said. “We have to deal with these universities.”

Trump used humor to illustrate how important it is for his Pennsylvania supporters to get to the polls — regardless of what is going on in their lives that day. He offered a hypothetical case of a man getting a terminal illness diagnosis from his doctor.

“He says, ‘Jim, you’re not going to make it.’ I don’t care,” Trump said. “Get up and vote, right? Get out and vote. You have 46 days to change the world.”