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While he otherwise exhibits many of the traits of a stand-up comedian,
laying into his rivals like an insult comic at a roast, Donald Trump's inability to tolerate heckling, or even silent protest, has made the spectacle of critics being forcibly removed from his rallies a routine feature of his campaign.
On Monday, though, the preemptive removal of about two dozen black college students from a crowd waiting for the candidate at Valdosta State University in Georgia raised an obvious question:
Why, exactly, did a local police force apparently obey orders from the Trump campaign to help screen his audience by removing dissenters?
The ejection of the students,
who had tickets to the event, and their subsequent argument with officers from the city of Valdosta's police department, who led them outside and directed them to a "designated protest zone" about a five-minute walk from the college gym, was extensively documented on video by participants and reporters.
While there was some confusion about who ordered the ejection — the Trump campaign
initially denied responsibility, and several of the participants were under the impression the Secret Service was in charge —
video recorded by one witness, Darian Harris, clearly shows a police officer telling the students the request came from the candidate's staff. "All I know is, the Trump staff has asked — they're the ones that rented the building today ... and they've asked that you be removed from the property," he said. When a young woman then asked the same officer why she and the others had been picked out, he replied, "I don't know, the staff called us."
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