Donald Trump Claims There Are “Race Riots On Our Streets On A Monthly Basis”

While Donald Trump devoted a large portion of Monday’s Colorado rally speech to the allegations he gamed the system to avoid paying federal income taxes for 18 years by claiming a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax return, he still gave his adoring masses what they came for — racist fearmongering.

Switching over to the portion of his stump speech where he talks about making Mexico build a wall, Trump then riffed on protests that have occurred over the past two years in response to police shootings of black men. Or, as the Republican standard-bearer calls them — “race riots.”

Trump: “We’re a divided nation & each week it seems we’re getting more and more divided with race riots on our streets on a monthly basis.” pic.twitter.com/O1QVcxQWUl

— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) October 3, 2016

Now, the Trump team sent out the GOP nominee’s prepared remarks, and his discussion of race riots wasn’t included, nor were much of the comments surrounding that reference. It appears Trump was riffing at this point.

And you can tell he knew he went completely off script when he stated that someone “told him not to call them race riots, but that’s what they are.” You also gotta love him mentioning that he owns property in Charlotte. Nice touch.

So, apparently, we as a country are witnessing “race riots” every single month that are apparently not leading to the widespread death and destruction that typified actual race riots in the last century. Or we’re seeing largely peaceful, sometimes violent protests by diverse crowds in response to police brutality and racial disparity with the hopes of changing institutional and systemic racism during a time of near record low levels of violent crime.