The Anti-Trump Protesters’ Real Target

The mob that “protested” outside of a Donald Trump rally in San Jose, California, Thursday night ostensibly was demonstrating against the Republican presumptive nominee. But a strong case can be made that the mob’s target was far broader than that — America.

As about 300 people demonstrated, some yelled slurs, threw objects at people leaving the San Jose Convention Center, and pounded on cars. A large group surrounded one woman and pelted her with eggs and watermelon, according to accounts in local media. Other people followed Trump supporters right to their cars.

“It was unbelievable,” Trump supporter Steve Tong told NBC4 of Los Angeles, adding that he saw protesters surround and taunt an elderly couple. “I’ve never seen anything like that in America before.”

Many of the protesters were Hispanic, and some waved Mexican flags and snatched and burned “Make America Great Again” hats from Trump supporters.

“They are not buying into the American assimilation,” LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham said on “The Laura Ingraham Program” Friday.

This is nothing new, of course. Angry, sometimes violent protesters have dogged Trump at rallies across the country, including at recent appearances in San Diego, California, and in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Some observers questioned the seemingly slow police response to the mob. When officers finally did move it, they made a few arrests and one cop was assaulted.

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That prompted anger from San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo — not at the demonstrators who assaulted one of his officers and intimidated his constituents, but at Trump.

“At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,” he told local reporters.

In the eyes of Liccardo, a Hillary Clinton supporter, it is Trump’s fault if his critics feel compelled to violence. Demonstrators punched and knocked a dozen or more people to the ground, The Associated Press reported. The woman in the Trump jersey who was hit with eggs responded by smiling and pointing at the crowd before escaping through a nearby door.

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“Like a pack of wild dogs, and I’m someone who’s actually has seen wild dogs in Africa surround their prey,” Ingraham said. “It’s an ugly sight.”

She described the “wild-eyed fury and the maniacal … bloodthirsty faces of these thugs.”

Ingraham said the media narrative likely would be far different if demonstrators surrounded a woman trying to walk into a Planned Parenthood clinic or protested against people at an event that promoted gay, lesbian, and transgender rights.

Ingraham said some of the protesters were likely illegal immigrants who should have been apprehended and deported.

“We not only don’t deport people, we allow them to stay in our country and then assault innocent Americans, sometimes kill innocent Americans, sometimes rape innocent Americans, sometimes maraud and surround innocent Americans,” she said.

On the same day demonstrators tried to disrupt Trump, Hillary Clinton gave a speech billed as a foreign policy address that disputed Trump’s fitness for office on a most basic level. She called his ideas “dangerously incoherent” and said he was “temperamentally unfit” for the job. She accused him of cozying up to tyrants and suggested he might start a war over an insult.

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“We cannot put the safety of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump’s hands. We cannot let him roll the dice with America,” she said. “Do we want his finger anywhere near the button?”

By telling people that Trump threatens their loved ones with nuclear annihilation, could Clinton be inciting people to violence? Plenty of her supporters apply the same logic to Trump’s rhetoric.

“They made a big deal about Donald Trump supposedly encouraging someone to punch a protester in the face,” Ingraham said. “Remember that? They didn’t let that go for weeks and weeks … Meanwhile, we have people assaulted, including police officers and women. Where are the feminists?”

As for Clinton’s condemnation of the violence against Trump’s supporters, Ingraham noted that it amounted to “one measly tweet” from campaign chairman John Podesta: “Violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election.”