DAYTON, Ohio An unidentified man charged at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday during a campaign event in Dayton, one day after increased security concerns forced his campaign to cancel an event in Chicago.
Advertisement
Hours earlier, Trump supporters and opponents stood calmly in a line together waiting to get inside. “They want me to tell my people, be nice, please be nice-my people are nice”.
Many protesters were chanting “Dump Trump” and “Black Lives Matter”. Police officers and barricades in the street separated the rally participants from about 200 protesters on the other side.
What they shared was a loathing for the rest of the candidates – several of the attendees were middle-aged, first-time voters who had felt no one had represented them before Trump – and an intense, often conspiratorial feeling of betrayal. But, actually 1)they infringed on the free speech rights of Trump and his followers who should have an chance to meet and express their views, just as the demonstrators’ seemingly favorite candidate Democratic Vermont Sen.
His event in Kansas City, Missouri, was repeatedly disrupted by demonstrations throughout the night.
In a statement, Republican candidate, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, called the incident “sad” and said the protesters should have let the rally happen.
Another jumped the security fence and made for Trump directly as the crowd went wild with boos and Trump mocked the protesters over a swell of crowd noise.
“I don’t think our supporters are inciting”.
It has also brought a reckoning from his three remaining rivals for the Republican nomination, who are shedding their fear of provoking Trump and of alienating the raging slice of their party’s base that has claimed him as its leader.
Trump taunted the protesters as the were shown the door, saying, “Hey look it’s a Bernie person”, referring to US Senator Bernie Sanders, one of his Democratic rivals.
Towards the end of the rally, supporters put their hands in the air to swear that they’d go to the polls Tuesday and vote for Trump.
Matt Miller, a Trump supporter who owns a body shop in Dayton, said he was standing near the podium when the agents took to the stage to protect Trump.
This week, an older white Trump supporter was caught on video punching a younger African-American protester as police led the protester out of a rally in North Carolina. He stressed that some of them were “swinging” at other people.
“I hope these guys get thrown into a jail – they’ll never do it again”, Trump said.
However, Possidente – and every Trump supporter ThinkProgress spoke with – said that Trump shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of protesters or his supporters.
Aaron Heckman of Springfield said the war on terror is his big selling point on Trump.
But Chicago police said they had sufficient manpower on scene to handle the situation and did not recommended Trump cancel the rally.
Mr Trump later said that the Dayton event was the “largest in airport history”.
“What caused the violence at Trump’s rally is a campaign whose words and actions have encouraged it on the part of his supporters”, Sanders added.
I’ve long contended that those insisting Trump didn’t couldn’t be elected were underestimating him.
But he also criticized the political left and said that in “Chicago, protesters are an industry”.
Advertisement
“We can not create in this country a toxic environment where images of people slugging it out at a campaign rally, think about it, are transmitted all over the globe”, he said.
