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In the aftermath of the mass murder in Las Vegas, a UNLV history professor told her class this week that she had predicted “people will die” when Donald Trump was elected president.
Assistant professor Tessa Winkelmann made comments to her History 407 class Thursday afternoon that put some of the blame for Sunday’s shooting on Trump. Just four days earlier, a gunman killed 58 people and wounded 489 at a country music festival on the Strip.
“Right when he got elected, I told my classes, three semesters ago, that some of us won’t be affected by this presidency, but others are going to die,” Winkelmann says in the video obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Other people will die because of this.”
A student in the class was “dumbfounded” by Winkelmann’s comments and found them “appalling.” The student wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.
“He’s threatened to declare violence against North Korea and other places,” Winkelmann says in the video. “And words, especially if they’re coming from someone who is the president, have consequences. … I don’t know that these events would have inevitably happened whether or not he got elected, but he has rhetorical powers every president has to encourage or to discourage (violence). So far all he’s done is to encourage violence.”