Trump supporter punches protester in face at rally
A North Carolina man has been charged with assault after a protester was punched in the face at a Wednesday rally for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.
When Rakeem Jones was being removed from the rally in Fayetteville, N.C., he was punched by a Trump supporter and then pushed to the ground by law enforcement officers, The Washington Post reported.
{mosads}”Boom, he caught me,” Jones told the Post in a telephone interview.
“After I get it, before I could even gain my thoughts, I’m on the ground getting escorted out. Now I’m waking up this morning looking at the news and seeing me getting hit again.”
Jones went to the rally with four friends — including a white woman, a Muslim and a gay man — as a “social experiment.”
“It’s happening at all these rallies now, and they’re letting it ride,” he said. “The police jumped on me like I was the one swinging.”
“My eye still hurts. It’s just shocking. The shock of it all is starting to set in. It’s like this dude really hit me, and they let him get away with it. I was basically in police custody and got hit,” Jones said.
“I couldn’t see if officers took him to the ground, or if he fell to the ground. We haven’t talked to the officers at the top of the steps,” Swain told FoxNews on Thursday.
“As people watch an eight-second video and form their conclusions about what goes on, our mission that night — we have 14,000 people at the Crown — was to keep everybody safe,” Swain said.
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