Republican presidential front- runner Donald Trump today refused to condone violence and asserted that he is not responsible for actions by his supporters in the rallies.
"I don't condone violence," Trump told CBS' "Face the Nation" and took a similar stand on other Sunday talk shows.
"It is a shame that it happened. And I feel badly for everybody concerned. And we don't condone violence," he told Fox News Sunday in another interview.
Trump insisted that there is provocation from the protesters in his rallies.
"The one guy was a bad dude, he was swinging, he was hitting people, he was a very bad guy, and the police came in and they really were very effective. And frankly some of the audience members had no choice but to be effective and I didn't mind that at all. Or they would have been hurt, frankly," he told CBS news.
During his interview to CNN, Trump insisted that he tries to bring down the temper in his rallies and refuted strongly that he tries to incite violence.
The 69-year-old real estate tycoon's Chicago rally on Friday was cancelled amid chaos as rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio blamed Trump's political discourse for creating an atmosphere of hatred and animosity. Yesterday, a protester tried to storm the stage while Trump was speaking at a rally in the US state of Ohio.
"I think, in many cases, I do lower the temperature. I tell the police, please take it easy when people are punching the police and trying to hurt people. When I say things like "I would like to punch him," frankly, this was a person that was absolutely violent and was like a crazed individual.
"I don't even call them protesters. I call them disrupters. A lot of them come from Bernie Sanders, whether he wants to say it or not. If he says no, then he's lying. Bernie Sanders, they have Sanders signs all over the place. And they're made by the same people that make the regular Bernie Sanders signs. They're professionally made," he said.
