This does give us a glimpse of what President Donald Trump’s America might be like:
About 30 black students who were standing silently at the top of the bleachers at Donald Trump’s rally here Monday night were escorted out by Secret Service agents who said the presidential candidate had requested their removal before he began speaking.
The sight of the students, who were visibly upset, being led outside by law enforcement officials created a stir at a university that was a whites-only campus until 1963.
“We didn’t plan to do anything,” said a tearful Tahjila Davis, a 19-year-old mass media major, who was among the Valdosta State University students who was removed. “They said, ‘This is Trump’s property; it’s a private event.’ But I paid my tuition to be here.”
This because a big story because it came on the heels of Trump repeatedly refusing to assertively repudiate the endorsement he got from David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who urged his followers to vote for and work for Trump.
So there was the inevitable denial as the story spread on the Internet and cable news:
Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks in an email late Monday night denied that the students were shown the door “at the request of the candidate.”
“There is no truth to this whatsoever,” Hicks said.
So: somehow the Secret Service a)was lying b)made it up c)was confused?
It’s probably as true that Trump had nothing to do with it as Trump saying he never heard of David Duke or seeming not to know what the KKK was.
Conservative blogger Eric Erickson:
The students, about 30 of them, were standing quietly in the back of the event. They intentionally came in quietly. But Trump’s people told the Secret Service to throw them out. Trump’s campaign is in full denial mode now, but the Secret Service is standing by the report that Trump’s campaign ordered the eviction.
This comes a day after Donald Trump was given three opportunities on CNN to denounce David Duke and the KKK and refused to do so.
So Trump can blame it on the staff, or deny it, but remember the old saying:
A fish rots from the head down.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.