President Barack Obama has warned White House contenders to avoid raising tensions.
Outgoing US President Barack Obama has warned White House contenders to avoid raising tensions, telling them not to resort to insults and “certainly not violence against other Americans,” BBC reported. He insisted that, "What the folks who are running for office should be focused on is how we can make it even better - not insults and schoolyard taunts and manufacturing facts, not divisiveness along the lines of race and faith."
Mr Obama’s call came after Republican primaries elections are becoming more and more violent. Indeed, Donald Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidential election of November 8, 2016, called off his Chicago rally last Friday after fighting broke out between his supporters and protesters. His rivals and others have accused him of using inflammatory rhetoric. Mr Trump's rivals for the Republican nomination, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, have both called the incident "sad".
Mr Cruz accused Donald Trump of creating "an environment that only encourages this sort of nasty discourse". Mr Rubio and another Republican challenger, John Kasich, suggested they might not rally behind Mr Trump if he wins the nomination. Rubio said it was "getting harder every day" to keep his promise to unite behind the eventual Republican nominee.
Donald Trump while denying that he is fostering division, reportedly told Fox News after the clashes in Chicago that, “I represent a large group of people that have a lot of anger. There is tremendous anger out there on both sides." He has taken a strong anti-immigrant stance, promising to build a "great wall" at the border with Mexico. He is also reported as saying with regard to relations between Muslims and America that, : "Islam hates us."
Tension in the Republican nomination race has continued to the extent that on March 12, during campaigns on Ohio, Donald Trump was briefly surrounded by Secret Service agents on stage after a man tried the security cordon.
