Donald Trump suggested that a Black Lives Matter protester who got in a fight at his Birmingham campaign rally on Saturday likely deserved to get "roughed up," but conceded he didn't see the incident up close.
"Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing,"
Trump said in a Fox News interview on Sunday.
Trump went on to contrast the removal of the well-known local protester, Mercutio Southall, 31, with the approach Bernie Sanders took when confronted in the same way — which was to hand over the microphone.
"This was not handled the way Bernie Sanders handled his problem, I will tell you, but I have a lot of fans and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy, who was a troublemaker, was looking to make trouble," he said. "But I didn't get to see the event."
According to The Washington Post, Southall has been "repeatedly arrested" while staging protests.
At Trump's rally, he continually interrupted by shouting "Black lives matter," a slogan associated with the deaths of Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner of New York.
"Get him the hell out of here, will you, please?" Trump said from the stage. "Get him out of here. Throw him out."
During his removal, Southall said that a Trump supporter threw a punch, and that he threw one back,
according to The New York Times.
Not long after the incident, video emerged on Twitter of Southall's altercation and removal.
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