News broke Saturday night that Donald Trump had been rushed off the stage at a Reno, Nevada rally by his security detail amidst cries of “he’s got gun”. It quickly came to light that there had been no firearms on the premises and that the whole incident was sparked, inadvertently, by Trump protester holding up a sign reading “Republicans against Trump.”
In an interview with The Guardian, that protester, 33-year-old Austyn Crites, said he was holding the sign and the next thing he knew he was being wrestled to the ground by Trump supporters.
Crites told The Guardian he was, “kicked, punched, and choked, and feared for his life.”
Crites, an inventor in the field of high-altitude balloons, cited statements Trump has made about Muslims, Mexicans, and women as his reason for protesting his party’s candidate.
It’s unclear exactly how the situation escalated so quickly, as Crites was caught completely off guard. PerThe Guardian:
“Initially, there was the expected reaction of people around him booing, he said. ‘And then all of a sudden people next to me are starting to get violent; they’re grabbing at my arm, trying to rip the sign out of my hand,’ he said.
He said he could not be sure but ‘it looked like” Trump was pointing at him, and may have been “instigating something’. Either way, the crowd piled on him, he said, kicking, punching, holding him on the ground and grabbing his testicles.”
A witness toldThe Guardian they thought maybe Crites’s sign had been misidentified as a weapon.
To add insult to injury, Kellyanne Conway went on Fox Sunday morning to say that Crites was “probably a plant” and a “democrat”, and effectively blamed him for getting himself beat up
