{"id":33902,"date":"2016-03-20T16:04:11","date_gmt":"2016-03-20T20:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=33902"},"modified":"2016-03-20T16:04:51","modified_gmt":"2016-03-20T20:04:51","slug":"meet-the-professional-agitator-who-was-beaten-at-yesterdays-trump-rally-i-was-protesting-trumps-fascism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=33902","title":{"rendered":"Meet The &#8220;Professional Agitator&#8221; Who Was Beaten At Yesterday&#8217;s Trump Rally: &#8220;I Was Protesting Trump\u2019s Fascism&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more-->ZeroHedge.com<\/p>\n<p>As reported <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2016-03-19\/kkk-dressed-nazi-saluting-protester-beaten-black-trump-supporter-arizona-rally\">last night<\/a>, something surreal happened at Trump&#8217;s Saturday rally in Arizona: a man who, as part of a group that had donned KKK attire and was occasionally giving out Nazi salutes in attempts to mock and provoke Trump supporters, did just that when he was punched and kicked by none other than a black man while being escorted out of the building. The moment was captured on the photo below which will surely become part of the 2016 presidential race archive.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/user5\/imageroot\/2016\/03\/04\/Trump%20rally%20punch.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/user5\/imageroot\/2016\/03\/04\/Trump%20rally%20punch_0.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"350\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Who is the protester?<\/p>\n<p>According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/tucson.com\/news\/local\/govt-and-politics\/tucson-police-man-arrested-in-connection-with-punch-at-donald\/article_d614bc6e-ee2d-11e5-9486-835bb82d934f.html\">profile by the Arizona Daily Star<\/a>, his name is Bryan Sanders who describes himself as an indepedent &#8220;I&#8217;m not a republican, I&#8217;m not a democrat&#8221;, and in a video interview after he left the rally he said the crowd was like an angry mob. What he ignored to note is that it was him and his fellow protesters who were doing everything all they could to rile up this &#8220;angry mob&#8221; and provoke them, ostensibly in hope of being attacked &#8211; which is precisely what happened. In other words, this group of Trump protesters which seem to follow him from state to state may be nothing more than a group of provocateurs, who do their best to get beaten up in order to stem up anti-Trump sentiment, something Sanders implicitly admits.<\/p>\n<p>This is what he said:<strong> &#8220;I was protesting Trump\u2019s facism, his racism, his lies, his women-hating,&#8221;<\/strong> Bryan Sanders said in an interview with the Arizona Daily Star.\u00a0 Sanders said he was holding a sign that said &#8220;Trump is bad for America.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A guy grabbed the sign out of my hand as I was being escorted out of the building and sucker punched me,&#8221; he said.\u00a0 Sanders, who as noted above identified himself as an independent, <strong>said he also attended a Bernie Sanders rally the night before.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2018We&#8217;re gonna stop this; this is not going to continue,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If it takes somebody getting punched in the face, that&#8217;s what it takes, no problem.&#8221; <\/strong>And Sanders will make sure it is\u00a0 no problem by continuing to provoke the &#8220;angry mob&#8221; at Trump rallies with everything he&#8217;s got.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YBHoyzysWIk\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Trump himself said earlier today that protesters who\u2019ve dogged his recent presidential campaign appearances should bear some responsibility for violence committed against them by his supporters.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<strong>These are professional agitators,\u201d <\/strong>the Republican front-runner said Sunday on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week With George Stephanopoulos.\u201d \u201c<strong>There should be blame there, too.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/politics\/articles\/2016-03-20\/trump-protesters-dog-campaign-from-city-to-city-in-arizona\">Bloomberg reports<\/a>, &#8220;violence flared again on Saturday when a protester wearing a Confederate flag imprinted with the candidate\u2019s face was struck by a black Trump supporter at a rally in Tucson, Arizona. <strong>The Trump partisan was angered by another demonstrator wearing a white sheet over her head in an imitation of a Ku Klux Klan hood. As local authorities attempted to remove the protesters, the supporter kicked the man with the sign three times and punched him once.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At the time, Trump termed the protester wearing the hood \u201creally disgusting,\u201d saying that agitators at his events were \u201ctaking away our First Amendment rights.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re going to get a little television so their mom can say, \u2018Hello,\u201d\u2019 Trump said at the rally. He criticized the demonstrators outside the event \u201cmaking it so it\u2019s a very narrow passageway\u201d for people to enter. \u201cWhat\u2019s the purpose?\u201d he said. \u201cI apologize for the people that are coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The incidents have flared ahead of the March 22 winner-takes-all Arizona Republican primary, which polls show Trump is leading by by more than 10 percentage points over Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Utah also holds its Republican nominating contest that day.<\/p>\n<p>In Sunday\u2019s interview, Trump said he doesn\u2019t \u201ccondone violence\u201d but also didn\u2019t condemn the man who kicked and punched the protester. Trump also praised his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who appeared &#8212; in a video of a separate incident on Saturday &#8212; to have yanked a protester to the ground.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cI give him credit for having spirit<\/strong>,\u201d Trump said of Lewandowski. \u201cHe wanted them to take down those horrible profanity-laced signs.\u201d Video of the incident showed the man in the incident was not holding a sign.<\/p>\n<p>Expect increasingly more comparable provocations, either by paid &#8220;professional agitators&#8221; or otherwise, at Trump rallies, until one day someone gets seriously hurt or dies.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, this is what Trump himself tweeted moments ago:<\/p>\n<p><iframe id=\"twitter-widget-0\" class=\"twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered\" title=\"Twitter Tweet\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-tweet-id=\"711586556688146434\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He does have a valid point.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2016-03-20\/meet-professional-agitator-who-was-beaten-yesterdays-trump-rally-i-was-protesting-tr\">http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2016-03-20\/meet-professional-agitator-who-was-beaten-yesterdays-trump-rally-i-was-protesting-tr<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}