> It can reasonably be interpreted as: "once people are willing to break the law and start looting, it's not long before there are also people shooting"

That's definitely not it.

Walter Headley, Chief of Miami Police during the 1968 Republican National Convention. On the eve of the convention, he gave a press conference where he said this exact phrase. It wasn't an observation that crime begets more crime. It was a threat.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/08/07...

Who are you to try to infer alternative ways a direct statement from the POTUS should be parsed.

Surely, you're trolling. HN isn't the place for that.

IMHO even HN is being astroturfed already...

In the general case: yes, absolutely. But in the specific, to make that claim for an individual account requires a high burden of proof. Some people are just stupid or trolls, not necessarily part of an astroturfing operation.

> It doesn't unequivocally say that at all. It can reasonably be interpreted as: "once people are willing to break the law and start looting, it's not long before there are also people shooting"

This is not a reasonable interpretation of the president's words. The previous tweet said that the military is standing by. There can be no mistake: Trump is saying that he will order the US military to kill Americans.

> an ambiguous sentence

That's not an ambiguous sentence.

The thing about Trump supporters that baffles me is, they have the common sense to understand when some his claims are false or hurtful, because they make up excuses for them: they're ambiguous, he was just checking if we were paying attention, etc. even when he refuses to back down and absolutely denies the excuses. But they still enjoy having their prejudices, fears and hates validated whenever Trump's tweets align with their view.