President Donald Trump urged evangelical leaders this week to get out the vote ahead of the upcoming midterm elections and warned of "violence" by opponents if they fail.
Trump made the dire warning at a White House dinner Monday evening attended by dozens of conservative Christian pastors, ministers and supporters of his administration.
Trump was stressing the stakes in November when he warned that, if Democrats win, they "will overturn everything that we've done and they'll do it quickly and violently," according to attendees and audio of his closed-door remarks obtained by media outlets, including The New York Times.
He specifically mentioned self-described antifa, or anti-fascist groups, describing them as "violent people."
Asked yesterday what he meant, Trump told reporters, "I just hope there won't be violence."
"Because if they don't it's Nov 6 if they don't vote we're going to have a miserable two years and we're going to have, frankly, a very hard period of time because then it just gets to be one election you're one election away from losing everything you've got."
"It wasn't any kind of dire warning," Scott said, "... except the things that we've been working on as a body of voters will be reversed and overturned."
"What he was saying," Scott continued, is that "there are some violent people ... but it wasn't that we've got to worry about murder on the streets and chaos and anarchy ... just that the things we've worked for will be overturned."
While Trump did make a reference to antifa, Perkins told CNN, "I don't think anybody in the room suggested that there was going to be violence across the nation."