Kentucky Gov. Says 'Patriots' May Have To Shed Blood If Hillary Clinton Is Elected

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin came under fire Tuesday for comments he made over the weekend at the Values Voter Summit, where he suggested that "patriots" may have to shed blood if Hillary Clinton is elected president in November.

"Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview, and said, 'Do you think it's possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think it's possible that we'll be able to survive? Would we ever be able to recover as a nation?'" Bevin, a tea party leader, told the annual conservative gathering Saturday in Washington, D.C.

"I will tell you this. I do think it would be possible, but at what price?" he continued.

Then, quoting a Thomas Jefferson poem, Bevin referenced a possible uprising.

"The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood. Of who? The tyrants, to be sure. But who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren," he said.

Bevin hasn't shied away from outlandish or controversial statements since his firebrand campaign and upset win in Kentucky's 2015 election.

In a follow-up statement after his remarks, Bevin said he was talking about military sacrifice.

"Today we have thousands of men and women in uniform fighting for us overseas and they need our full backing,” the statement said, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. “We cannot be complacent about the determination of radical Islamic extremists to destroy our freedoms. Nor can we allow apathy and indifference to allow our culture to crumble from within."

It wasn't the first time Clinton was seemingly threatened with violence on the general election campaign trail. In August, Donald Trump seemed to imply that gun owners could take matters into their own hands if Clinton nominates liberal justices to the Supreme Court.

"If she gets to pick her judges — nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don't know," he said.

Image via Gage Skidmore, Flickr, used under Creative Commons