[UPDATE: The story just gets uglier. The Trump campaign is calling the allegedly assaulted reporter a liar; meanwhile, the guy caught on video punching a protester has now threatened to kill him. See updates at end of post.]
The latest video of violence at a Trump rally may be the most chilling one yet. In the video from last night (you can find it at the end of this post), a black protester gets punched in the face by a white Trump supporter as he’s being escorted off the premises.
So which of the two men gets wrestled to the ground and handcuffed by security? The protester. Trump’s “security” guards seem to provide about as much real security as did the Hells Angels at Altamont. (Happily, the actual puncher has been charged with assault.)
It’s easy enough to see why these incidents keep happening, and it’s not just because Trump rallies are filled with angry racist shitheads.
It’s also because Trump has indicated, again and again, that he approves of his supporters roughing up, and tossing out, protesters; indeed, on one recent occasion Trump himself said of a protester being tossed out of a rally that “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
Now assorted media outlets are reporting that a top Trump aide has assaulted a female reporter.
According to the reporter in question, Breitbart’s Michelle Fields, Trump was wandering around talking to reporters after a press conference. She asked him a question about affirmative action.
Trump acknowledged the question, but before he could answer I was jolted backwards. Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down. I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance. Nonetheless, I was shaken.
One witness told the Daily Beast that Field’s assailant, reportedly Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, had “yank[ed] her down toward the ground like a ragdoll,”
Wait, you may be wondering, did you just tell me that Trump’s campaign manager (allegedly) assaulted a reporter from Breitbart?
Breitbart? The agenda-driven right-wing pseudo-journalistic entity that’s pretty much completely on board the Trump train? The “news” site that once published an article with the breathless, braggy title “Donald Trump Praises Breitbart’s Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle: ‘Very Good Reporter.'”
Well, yeah. Apparently Lewandowski mistook her for a real journalist from a real publication. As the Daily Beast notes,
Lewandowski’s explanation to [Breitbart’s Matthew] Boyle, said these sources, was that he and Fields had never met before and that he didn’t recognize her as a Breitbart reporter, instead mistaking her for an adversarial member of the mainstream media.
Oh, ok then, no harm no foul!
So far, at least according to the most recent news reports I’ve seen, Breitbart has released only a very tepid statement on the alleged attack, noting that “someone” had assaulted their reporter, and that if that someone was Corey Lewandowski, “Corey owes Michelle an immediate apology.”
It seems pretty clear that Breitbart is more interested in its friendly relationship with Trump than it is in the safety of its reporters.
And Trump doesn’t seem to care at all that his freaking campaign manager, according to multiple witnesses, physically assaulted a female reporter whose only crime was asking The Donald a question he evidently didn’t want to answer.
Racist violence is now a regular feature of Trump rallies. Will actual physical assaults on members of the media by Trump staffers become a thing too?
UPDATE: This story just gets uglier by the minute. The Trump campaign is flatly denying that the assault on Fields happened, saying the accusations are “entirely false.” Lewandowski, meanwhile, has accused Fields of being “an attention seeker.” Salon has a useful post with more details.
Fields, for her part, Tweeted a photo of the bruises she says are a result of the assault, and Washington Post reporter Ben Terris has provided more details of the assault, which he says he witnessed.
Breitbart, whose response to the alleged assault was at first rather tepid, now says (through a spokesperson) that “Breitbart continues to stand 100% with Michelle Fields and believes that Corey Lewandowski must accept responsibility for his actions and apologize.” The “news” site has also suspended a reporter who posted a bunch of Tweets seeming to imply that Fields was making up the assault.
Meanwhile, the guy who sucker-punched the protester told Inside Edition that he had no regrets, saying that he liked “knocking the hell out of that big mouth,” adding that the protester “deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to kill him.”
Slate has more details and a transcript of the interview.
What the hell.
Here’s the video of the protester getting putnched at a Trump rally yesterday:
I do resist the efforts to compare Drumpf to Hitler, because I don’t think comparison maps as well as one that’s far more on-target: Mussolini. Still a fascist, but not even possessing the competence of Hitler in terms of politics. He’s a thug and a wannabe tyrant, and would be a nightmare of a national leader. He lacks the specific targeting of a group that Hitler had; instead, he prefers a general xenophobia.
Also, it’s pretty easy for me to picture Dr. Seuss mocking him in editorial cartoons.
OT, but I was poking around on Vox Day’s PUA blogspot (as opposed to his White Nationalism blogspot) and I saw a big long comment thread about how women who own cats want surrogate children, and women who own dogs want surrogate men, with explicit references to the purported “sexual tension” between women and un-neutered male dogs and that RoK article about the dying zoophile hottie. Was this idea about rampant beastiality among women current in the ‘sphere before the past month, or is the fact that most women are secretly serial dog-rapists just now breaking into the public consciousness?
OoglyBoggles
I cannot disagree with this and I hate that I cannot find a way to do so. 🙁
I might say that was the most chilling video yet had I not just watched the brief interview with the assailant in which he says something along the lines of “Next time we see [the victim] we might have to kill him”.
Link to the story here
Damy:
Many of them would welcome fascism.
https://twitter.com/ncroal/status/708035433431629824
Runsinbackground,
Did they have theories about why so many men form bonds with pets too? Or is this one of the many times a behavior is just fine in men, but in women evidence of inferiority?
I also have to disagree that cats are more like children than dogs. Cats are low maintenance and independent. Dogs are time consuming and dependent. Much more like little kids IMO. That’s why I’m more of a cat person. I love both cats and dogs, but dogs are too much work.
@Damy:
Well, the whole “are there really that many people who support Drumpf?” question is unfortunately up in the air. Personally, I continue to have faith that the majority of Americans can see through his rampant bullshit, but only the election results next November will be able to provide a definitive answer.
On the positive side, we don’t see anything comparable on the Democratic side of the political aisle, so I can base my faith on the fact that Drumpf’s supporters appear to be Republican authoritarians, who are a distinct minority of the general population.
Even so, this whole primary has been deeply depressing. My dad has a fondness for the old adage “no one ever went broke overestimating human stupidity,” but I sure as hell didn’t need such a bleak reminder of how true that really is.
I wonder if Drumphy will be paying McAsshole’s legal fees, he has been saying he would and as far as I’m concerned it sort of makes him liable for this. He’s been inciting violence for AGES.
Hopefully, Drumpf will look bad whether or not he pays the legal fees. Because if he doesn’t, some of his fans might be mad he’s not supporting their behavior. And if he doesn’t, most fence sitters will be appalled he’s not just encouraging but funding hateful aggression. Of course, my thinking is set in a world where people do things that make sense and that’s not the one I live in.
@WeirwoodTreeHugger
There were some commenters arguing for the theory that you propose, that cats are more alpha aloof and self-centered, while dogs are beta emotional and other-centered, reversing their roles in the lives of ugly childless carouseleers. Some also pointed out that they know confirmed alpha badasses who owned cats because they’re low-maintenance, leaving the maximum amount of time free for pursuing suitably alpha self-improvement activities/plate-spinning. The consensus seemed to be, however, that a dog is a manly pet because it requires mastery, and women aren’t capable of being masters (because their proper role is that of a servant themselves) and tend to end up being “owned by their dogs” rather than the other way around. And that is, of course, the point: these women are supposedly too “corrupted” to convince a real man to own them, so they make do with a dog.
Not quite – there are the “BernieBros for Trump,” as they call themselves – but they’re a minority of a minority and I’m just picking over technicalities while my morning coffee kicks in, so. =P
Ooglyboggles
I wouldn’t describe it as an undercurrent, no. A significant portion of the US electorate are fascists and always have been. They avoid the name forthe most part, but practically every plank of the Republican platform for 30+years could have been cribbed from Goebbels.
Already happening, I think.
@Johanna:
It’ll be interesting to see whether he does, or whether it turns into just another case of right-wing people dissociating themselves from those who actually practise what the leaders preach.
Conservative pundits praise Trump for his machismo, his lack of “political correctness”, his nasty attitude, his attacks (verbal AND physical) on the “mainstream media”. As a Soviet child of the Cold War who grew up on images from the “America” magazine and listened, surreptitiously, to Freedom Radio, I am profoundly saddened to be living in an age when a candidate for US Presidency can credibly run on a promise of pure, undiluted assholery alone. Trump doesn’t even need a platform at this point. Inciting hatred against racial minorities and promising to send all journalists to a gulag is all he needs to garner overwhelming conservative support.
@ amused
You know about this sort of thing so I’d be interested if you have any thoughts on the comparison between Trump’s campaign and the popularity of Putin. Obviously Putin, unlike Trump, has some actual political nouse, but it seems to me there are some similarities. The appeal to the broader base dissatisfied with a perceived political elite, promises to make their country “great again”, general disdain for what the rest of the world thinks and foreign policy based solely on domestic interests etc.
Any thoughts, or am I barking entirely up the wrong tree?
Oh, isn’t that precious. I’m living with a dog for the first time in my life. My experience with them was previously limited to petting other peoples dogs. Somehow, I managed to teach her a new trick in a single day.
They’re so desperate to believe that they’re alpha, they make training a dog out to be a much more complicated and difficult affair than it is.
Speaking of evil scumbags, Huffpo has an interesting article on Bernie Sanders. This is about his contempt for animal welfare (rather than his views on mental illness).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-shooster/bernie-sanders-animal-agr_b_9402158.html
@bluecat
I guess the American (and English) education really does differ a lot from the German one respecting fascism, at least that’s what I’d suspect seeing different reactions to people like Trump. We still learn a lot about it at school, but apparently it’s not enough – we also have our problems with racism, xenophobia and such (especially now that there are more and more refugees arriving in Germany). I think it’s because we’ve learned a lot about the historical facts but not much about how to spot a misanthropic ideology and how to deal with it.
@dogs
Meanwhile, in Reality Land, the actual reason why dogs are seen as “Manly” is that ALPHA MANLY MEN are insecure by design and see vicious, unsocialised, untrained large dogs the way they see guns, sports cars and basically everything else: As toxic-masculinity-bolstering accessories used to show off to other men. Poor dogs…
There’s a heart warming story here that demonstrates how stupid it is for arsehole men to accessorise with supposedly “vicious” dogs.
https://www.thedodo.com/michael-vick-dogs-the-champions-1652308280.html
@Alan:
http://imagesmtv-a.akamaihd.net/uri/mgid:file:http:shared:mtv.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/vma-crying-1.gif
@ Paradoxy
Being a blokey bloke I never cry obviously; however by some weird coincidence, every time I see this video a piece of grit manages to get in both my eyes.
http://youtu.be/ExEjXLMd4VA
I think I may have posted this already, but it’s worth seeing again:
http://youtu.be/I0tE6T-ecmg
Oh, man, this thing is getting uglier. Will update the post.