Trump Advisor Shares Beautiful Dream Of Having Hillary Clinton Shot By Death Squads

Al Baldasaro -- a former New Hampshire state rep and retired Marine Sergeant whose job it is to advise Donald Trump on veteran's affairs -- shared some thoughts Tuesday on the Jeff Kuhner Show, the best of local rightwing gab broadcast live from the RNC. Murderous thoughts, actually! You know, like normal people have, all the time, and then say out loud on a radio show.

“This whole thing disgusts me," he said, referring to his belief that Hillary Clinton is responsible for the deaths of four soldiers in Benghazi, "Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.”

HUH! Well... um... Yeah, he said that. That is a thing that he said! He later called her a piece of garbage! What a gentleman! Gee, does that mean that the Trump Presidency will be bringing back death squads? That'll be fun!

He also compared her to Jane Fonda, who was opposed to the Vietnam War, in which he served. That's pretty interesting, actually. Because I would say that people had a pretty good reason for opposing the Vietnam War! And they were proved to be right about that many years later when it turned out that the Gulf of Tonkin Bay incident was a big ol' lie! And you know how many American soldiers died in Vietnam? 58,209! That's a lot of soldiers! Probably some he knew personally!

The Boston Globe got in touch with him later, and as it turns out this was not a momentary lapse of judgement on his part, but a thing he 100% stands by:

When you take classified information on a server that deals with where our State Department, Special Forces, CIA, whatever in other countries, that’s a death sentence for those people if that information gets in the hands of other countries or the terrorists,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s information for the enemy. In the military, shot, firing squad. So I stand by what I said.”

In the Constitution, treason is defined as “levying war against [the United States], or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

Baldasaro added, “Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing. I spoke my mind about how I feel. She’s not above the law. Any other State Department employee or veteran did the same thing, they’d be in jail.”

Except the FBI never came even remotely close to investigating Clinton for treason, because they actually know what laws might have been in play: at most, misdemeanors with maximum penalties of one or three years -- which would have been enough to end a political campaign, but never involve a firing squad. You might recall Clinton was cleared even of those potential charges. Really, you could look this up. And no, former Marine sergeants don't make charging decisions.

As ThinkProgress notes, he's not the first member of the Trump team to call for Clinton's death. In 2014, Roger Stone said the same thing:

The Trump campaign has since responded in a very classy manner:

Oh yes, they are grateful for his support. Very grateful. But they don't agree with his remarks about killing Hillary Clinton. They're not ready to go that far. YET. After all, the convention crowds are only chanting "Lock her up! Lock her up!" not "Off with her head!" (That's Night 4.) But also Donald Trump hires the best people and surrounds himself with the best people, which is why it is totally cool that he has no idea what he's doing or any intention of doing anything whatsoever. Because he will be delegating to other people. Who are the best.

[ Boston Globe / New York / ThinkProgress ]