Trump Claims Obama Scolded Protester, Video Shows Otherwise
Donald Trump, during a campaign rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on Friday night, gave a startlingly different account of how President Barack Obama handled a protester earlier in the day.
Obama was in Fayetteville, North Carolina, rallying voters for Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. At one point, a protester held up a Trump sign from among the crowd, and the crowd lost it, yelling and booing at the man.
The incident generated headlines not because of what the protester did, but because of how Obama reined in the crowd:
“First of all, we live in a country that respects free speech, second of all it looks like he may have served in our military, and we’ve got to respect that. Third of all, he was elderly, and we’ve got to respect our elders.”
Here’s how Trump framed the incident to his own audience hours later:
“He was talking to the protester, screaming at him, really screaming at him. By the way, if I spoke the way Obama spoke to that protester, they would say, ‘He became unhinged!’ … And he spent so much time screaming at this protester and frankly, it was a disgrace.”
During Obama’s event in North Carolina, he struggled to refocus the crowd, but ultimately implored them with a familiar call to action: “Don’t boo, vote.”
The Clinton campaign has deployed the president to Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania — key battleground states for the Democratic presidential nominee — hoping Obama’s high popularity would boost voter turnout.
(h/t Business Insider)