Video from a Donald Trump rally in Birmingham, Alabama appears to show a Black Lives Matter activist being pushed and kicked by supporters as Trump urges him to be taken out of the convention center. Even though Trump’s own campaign said that it doesn’t advocate that behavior, Trump later suggested that the man “should have been roughed up.”
CNN’s Jeremy Diamond captured video of the incident. It shows activist Mercutio Southall Jr., who tried to interrupt Trump’s speech by yelling, “Black lives matter!” Diamond’s video appears to show white men kicking and punching Southall. A Washington Post reporter claims to have seen a man put his hands about Southall’s neck. Security officers eventually got to Southall and lead him out of the venue.
“Get him the hell out of here, will you please?” Trump said. “Get him out of here. Throw him out.”
Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN that “the campaign does not condone this behavior.”
But on Sunday morning, Trump told Fox News, “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”
“I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it,” Trump continued. “And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a trouble-maker who was looking to make trouble.”
During the campaign stop, Trump continued to say that he wants surveillance of “certain mosques” and that he doesn’t want people from Syria coming into the U.S.