Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he doesnt’ know much about the Black Lives Matter movement when asked about it by GQ.
“I don’t make anything of it,” he said in the interview. “I saw them steal the microphone from Bernie Sanders and he just yielded, which surprised me. But no, I don’t know anything about. … You know, when you say it’s a big movement, I don’t think it’s a big movement.”
When pressed, he also said that to him, “all lives matter.”
Trump had a close run-in with Black Lives Matter on Saturday, during a campaign rally of his in Birmingham, Ala. There, 31-year-old Black Lives Matter activist Mercutio Southall said attendees of the rally physically attacked him, and also called him and two fellow protestors “monkeys” and the N-word.
Southall told CNN he and the other activists were “swarmed” after they began changing “Dump the Trump” and “black lives matter” during the Trump’s speech.
“I got punched in the face, I got punched in the neck. I got kicked in the chest. Kicked in the stomach. Somebody stepped on my hand,” Southall said told CNN in a phone call late Saturday.
Afterwards, Trump’s campaign said it “does not condone” physical altercations. But on “Fox News Sunday,” Trump himself said: “Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”
In a RealClearPolitics average of polls, Trump leads the way with 27.5 percent. He ranks fourth in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings.
