Joe.My.God. LGBT News
CNN reports:
Several attendees at the rally punched and kicked a protester who tried to disrupt Trump’s speech. At least a half-dozen attendees shoved and tackled the protester, a black man, to the ground as he refused to leave the event. At least one man punched the protester and a woman kicked him while he was on the ground. All of the attendees who were involved in the physical altercation with the protester were white. The protester appeared to be shouting “black lives matter” and later removed his sweatshirt to reveal a shirt with those words. At least one attendee shouted “all lives matter” as the protester was eventually led out by police officers on the scene. Birmingham Police Lt. Sean Edwards told CNN that three people were asked to leave the event following the scuffle. No arrests were made, and the protester did not require medical attention. Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN that “the campaign does not condone this behavior.”
More from AL.com:
The Black Lives Matter protester attacked during Donald’s Trump’s Birmingham rally said he was punched, kicked and called “n****r” while a group of eight or nine people were on top of him. Mercutio Southall Jr., a well-known activist who said he has been tased at least 30 times and just recently marched heavily –armed through a Birmingham neighborhood to teach people about gun rights, said he is sore after today’s pummeling but doesn’t think he was seriously injured. “I’m alive,” Southall told AL.com in his first interview since he was escorted out of the Birmingham- Jefferson Convention Complex. Southall said he attended today’s rally because of Trump’s disparaging remarks about minorities – blacks, Latinos and most recently Muslims. “Birmingham is 75 percent black, so why did he choose to come here,” Southall said. “He could have gone to Mountain Brook or Hoover, I know they have the venues that can handle his rhetoric.”
And from Think Progress:
Trump was asked to weigh in on his supporters’ actions on Fox & Friends Sunday morning. “Maybe he should have been roughed up,” he said. “It was disgusting what he was doing.” The Republican frontrunner compared what happened at his rally to a Black Lives Matter protest at a Bernie Sanders event, which prompted the Democratic candidate to release a detailed racial justice plan. “This is not the way Bernie Sanders handled his problem, I will tell you, but I have a lot of fans and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy, a troublemaker, looking to make trouble,” Trump said. He gave a similarly winking response when his supporters have turned violent in the past. Two men in Boston said they ambushed and brutally beat a homeless Latino man because they were “inspired” by Trump, who later explained his supporters “are very passionate” and “love this country.”