The Republican presidential candidate began his campaign in California on Thursday night, bringing a crowd to The Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa.
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Protesters against Republican frontrunner Donald Trump clashed with his supporters outside the state Republican convention in Burlingame Friday. He was forced to exit his motorcade and walk through a field, climbing an embankment with Secret Service agents helping him, to avoid angry demonstrators on the street.
The protesters were met with police in riot gear and others mounted on horseback.
“It felt like I was crossing the border”, Trump said later inside the convention.
Donald Trump has blasted the protesters who swarmed the outside of the state Republican Party’s annual convention in San Francisco where he was due to give a speech. “If you don’t like Trump, just stay home”, Republican Nick St. Royal said.
Orange County Sheriff’s Department said there were almost 200 officers and deputies at the site of the protest. “While people surely should take advantage of the history and tradition in this country of engaging in political protest, to do so with some respect for the system and the country and the government and to ensure that protest isn’t a source of violence, doesn’t incite violence”, he said.
“I’m not against anybody, but I will be voting for Ted Cruz in the upcoming Republican primary”, Pence said on an in radio show.
The Republican front-runner was in California ahead of its June 7 primary, when the most convention delegates of the Republican nominating cycle will be at stake. The billionaire’s speech proved short on specifics and issues important to California but he delivered a simple message on immigration the California Republicans wanted to hear.
One of the groups that set up a Facebook event, BlackOUT Collective, posted that, “because there is a large mass of folks ready to hit the streets (on this page and on other pages) we do not approach this mass protest with the idea that one group will lead the direction or tone”.
A dozen protesters linked arms Friday to block the road in front of the hotel but no one is using the street because police had already closed it to traffic. One Trump supporter was visibly bloodied after being punched in the face.
Within moments, he says someone knocked off his Trump hat, hurled slurs at him and then slugged him.
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In the chaotic crowd, demonstrators smashed the windows on a cop auto, popped the tires of a police SUV, and even tried to flip one of the authorities’ vehicles. It takes 1,237 to clinch the nomination. While he will likely spend much of the next month in the state, he’s unlikely to be back during the general election, when California would return to its reliably Democratic status. “I know what’s going on”, he told the crowd. Many hundreds more were turned away.
