A campaign rally for Donald Trump turned ugly Monday evening when hecklers were greeted with violent threats and physical pushback by the Republican presidential front-runner’s supporters. It was the fifth time since late October that Trump has attracted such commotion.
Shortly after the self-funded billionaire invited a supporter on stage Monday to describe the killing of his son by an illegal immigrant, a heckler began shouting about gun control and was removed by security. Within minutes, another group of protesters interrupted Trump by chanting “Black lives matter.”
The crowd, far less forgiving this time, immediately pushed back. Several reporters in attendance claimed various crowd-members urged members of security to beat, shoot and set fire to a male protester as they removed him from the venue.
According to other reports, one person present yelled “sieg heil,” a Nazi salute, while the protester was being carried away. Others reportedly accused another male heckler, who was removed later on in the night, of being a Muslim.
“This will not be like an evening in paradise for me,” Trump conceded about halfway through the rally, and after several interruptions.
Last Saturday, while participating in a town hall in Aiken, S.C., the leading GOP candidate encountered a similar back-to-back interruptions. Each time Trump’s security detail, which includes a handful of Secret Service agents, acted swiftly to remove the groups of protesters before the situation turned violent.
Days before that, during a rally in Raleigh, N.C. on Dec. 4, Trump was reportedly heckled 10 different times by various demonstrators planted throughout the crowd.
“Isn’t it a shame, look at this, thousands of people are pouring in, and we have to get rid of one person who’s wasting our time,” Trump said, following one of the interruptions. “With all of the people here, we have to waste time on one or two people. It’s really ridiculous.”
The outspoken businessman also made headlines in late-November after a prominent black activist in Alabama was allegedly hit, kicked and trampled by members of the crowd after repeatedly shouting “black lives matter!”
Trump’s reaction? “Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”
One month before that, Ariel Rojas, a Hispanic student at Florida International University, was dragged by the collar out of a Trump rally in Miami after he and seven other students held up signs that spelled the word “Equality.” The campaign later said Rojas had been removed not by security, but by a general attendee.
Asked whether former GOP nominee Mitt Romney encountered such frequent protests on the campaign trail, a Secret Service source said, “I don’t remember anything like that.”
The best he could come up with, in comparison, was an event where Romney was glitter bombed by a gay-rights activist. Off the top of his head, the Secret Service staffer said he couldn’t think of any instances where things had turned violent.
“I don’t know if this is more frequent this time. It could be a function of everything that’s going on in the world right now,” he said, declining to get more specific.
Trump, who’s second in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings, chose to ignore the repeated disruptions after his rally Monday night. Instead, he posted a positive message on Facebook with no mention of the hecklers or the treatment they received.
“What an evening in Las Vegas, Nevada!” he wrote. “There is something special happening out there, and the silent majority — is silent no more.”
