MARK HALPERIN (HOST): They make an announcement before their rallies saying don't engage in violence and there sometimes these incidences occur that they really don't know about, obviously. But these don't happen at other candidates' events and Donald Trump has said things at the podium about people leaving on stretchers.
JOHN HEILEMANN (HOST): Yes.
HALPERIN: And so my view is, while they are not fully responsible for stopping them or the incidents that happen in every case, they are responsible now for aggressively trying to tamp this down and a PA announcement in the beginning saying don't hit people is not enough.
HEILEMANN: Which has a sort of almost mocking tone in it -- that PA announcement - there's a little bit of a almost jokey quality about it. Trump himself whips people up and the comments you talked about where he said he wanted to punch someone in the mouth and then said, back in the old days, people would be taken out on a stretcher. He constantly kind of foments -- not that he directly foments violence - he doesn't tell people to go hit other people or tell people to beat them protesters, but the mood in these crowds is something that I have not seen doing this for the past 25 years. I don't think you've ever seen it at a presidential campaign rally, and it happens at almost every Trump event. It's disturbing. It's weird.
HALPERIN: His attitude and the campaign's attitude is way too cavalier about it. And I'll say it again, I don't know that he will get asked about this tonight, he might at the debate, but I will say that this is another meme feeding into the anti-Trump forces ability to say there is something off about this.
HEILEMANN: Yes.
HALPERIN: And rally other people in the party against him.
HEILEMANN: And if they don't do something about it soon, something much worse is going to happen at one of these rallies and it's going to be a huge problem.
