Supporters increasingly mix it up

Trump rallies get rough

Protesters and supporters increasingly mix it up in the most combustible atmosphere on the campaign trail.

By Ben Schreckinger

Last month, protesters interrupted a Donald Trump rally in Virginia with chants of “Dump Trump” and clashed with his supporters, one of whom was caught on camera spitting in a protester’s face. Another video caught a protester chanting “black power” and a Trump supporter responding with “white power” as a police officer stood between the two.

Multiple groups of Hispanic protesters interrupted the mogul at a rally in Miami, where video showed a Trump supporter dragging a protester to the ground and kicking him. In September, outside a Trump rally in Dallas, dozens of police officers, some on horseback, pushed back hundreds of shouting protesters after breaking up a tense standoff with the real-estate tycoon’s supporters.

On Wednesday, a protester who was once convicted of bringing a bomb to a military facility was arrested at a rally in Massachusetts, and on Saturday video showed supporters punching and kicking a protester who interrupted a rally in Alabama, while Trump himself later suggested that the man had it coming.

Welcome to the most combustible presidential campaign in recent memory.

The candidate’s angry rhetoric — on subjects like undocumented Mexican immigrants, political correctness and “thugs” in Baltimore — has made his run a magnet for disaffected supporters and for identity politics protesters determined to steal the spotlight and disrupt his events. Trump's relish for confrontation, where other politicians would seek to minimize it, has only fueled the fire.

“Isn't a Trump rally much more exciting than these other ones?” Trump said on Wednesday as police escorted a protester yelling, “Trump’s a racist” from a rally in Worcester, Massachusetts. “That kind of stuff only adds to the excitement,” he added.

Indeed, many observers say that Trump’s rallies seem to be more turbulent than those of any presidential candidate since the 1960s, with a clash of opposing cultural factions reminiscent of those outside abortion clinics or the Supreme Court on the day a divisive decision is announced.

“Trump brings something that we haven’t really seen on this scale before,” said Erik Bergling, CEO of EPG Security, which protects the Republican National Convention and other political events. “In the American political environment, we’re not used to a candidate being so vocal.”

Benjamin Ness, a former Secret Service agent who has protected several presidential candidates and a co-founder of a private security firm, Fidelis Protection Group, that works political events, said Trump’s high profile makes him an attractive target for protesters. “Protesters know they’re going to get more attention at a Trump rally than at a Kasich rally,” said Ness.

While Black Lives Matter protesters have interrupted several events for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — Democratic candidates who claim to be more sympathetic to their cause — Trump is the only Republican candidate they have regularly targeted to date.

A request for comment to the Trump campaign was not returned, but a campaign official not authorized to speak on the record said Trump had become a victim of his own success. Since he attracts a lot of media, activist groups are quick to steal his spotlight for their own purposes.

“Black Lives Matter just wants attention,” said the person, referring to Saturday’s incident. “Everyone gets more attention around Trump.”

The large size of the rallies contributes to their electric atmosphere: Crowds range from a few hundred to well over 10,000 attendees, while demonstrations can range in size from a handful of stray provocateurs inside the hall to more than 1,000 protesters, such as those who gathered outside the campaign stop in Dallas. In Virginia, about two dozen protesters clashed with a crowd of nearly 5,000 supporters, while in Massachusetts, several protesters inside a hockey arena and dozens outside it clashed with a crowd of more than 10,000.

Whatever the protesters’ numbers, the sense of being invaded by outside groups clearly rankles many Trump supporters. Heated shouting matches between Trump’s partisans and his detractors have become a cmmon sight at his campaign events, as has the removal of disruptive protesters by police and security guards.

Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson insists that Trump’s rhetoric is responsible for both stoking the anger of his supporters and prompting a furious response from his critics. He cited Trump’s recent retweet of a chart citing made-up statistics — traced to a neo-Nazi creator — on murder rates that grossly overstated the percentage of white homicide victims killed by blacks, as one recent example of Trump raising incendiary issues.

“This language of bigotry has impact and has consequences, and what we saw is that impact manifest as physical violence, and we saw Trump double down in supporting that,” McKesson said, referring to the altercation in Alabama on Saturday.

On Sunday, after video showed several white supporters punching and kicking a Black Lives Matter protester at that rally, Trump told Fox News, “Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.” On Monday, at a rally in Ohio, he added that the protester had been “behaving badly” and said, “It wasn’t my people if they treated him rough.”

Meanwhile, the Trump Organization remains embroiled in a lawsuit over a September altercation in which video allegedly shows a Trump Organization security guard hitting a protester in the face after a tussle over the protester's sign on the sidewalk outside Trump Tower in New York. A lawyer for the Trump Organization described the lawsuit, which has resulted in a preliminary injunction against Trump's side barring it from interfering with peaceful protests, as “frivolous.”

Bergling said much of the combustibility derives from Trump's own off-the-cuff style, which sometimes appears to encourage supporters to clamp down on protesters.

“The actual Trump supporters have sort of taken matters into their own hands,” he said. “And this dynamic introduces something that we haven’t seen in recent years. Who’s the actual issue? Is it the supporter or is it the protester?”

Trump himself will often comment on protesters and direct their handling from the podium. After a string of protesters interrupted an October rally at his Trump National Doral resort in Miami, the mogul said he would respond forcefully to the next interruption.

“See, the first group, I was nice. ‘Oh, take your time,’” he said. “The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I'll be a little more violent. And the fourth group, I'll say, ‘Get the hell out of here!’”

“In the American political environment we’re not used to a candidate being so vocal,” said Bergling.

Ness said he was unware of any other political figure who reacts the way Trump does to protesters.

“He is unique,” said the former Secret Service agent. “Typically you will see the politician attempt to be the peacemaker. ... He doesn’t seem to be too concerned about making friends or pleasing everybody.”

But Ness added that he doesn't believe that Trump or his supporters are primarily responsible for the atmosphere at his rallies: The protesters are the interlopers and increasingly aggressive tactics by protest groups only invite a like-minded response.

"Because some movements have started to become more radical than ever before, they’ve started to garner more radical of a reaction," he said.