Another journalist was booted out of Trump’s rally but this hasn’t stopped the followership of the intending American President. Micheal Mayo is a columnist for Sun Sentinel and despite having ticket for the rally he was told to “leave or go to jail”.
Read the full story below:
Like thousands of others, I attended the Donald Trump rally in West Boca on Sunday night. Like many others, I procured a general admission ticket after registering online. Like many others, I used my smartphone to take photos, videos and post on social media during the event, held at a county park.
Unlike nearly all the others, I was confronted with a stark choice by a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy at 8:40 p.m., while Trump was still speaking: Leaving immediately or “going to jail.”
I left.
“Tell him we’re trespassing him,” a Trump campaign official told the deputy.
The campaign official told me his name was Justin. He would not give me his full name or tell me his position, even though I identified myself and gave him my business card.
“Just Justin,” he told me a minute earlier, when he approached me and objected to me taking video of people leaving the rally early, while Trump was still on stage.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Justin told me.
He told me to walk with him to talk to a law enforcement officer. Sgt. John Sluth explained I’d have to leave.
“But this is a public park,” I said.
“This is not a public park,” Sgt. Sluth said. “Tonight [this amphitheater] is rented by the Donald Trump campaign and they are the ones who say who can come or go … It’s just like if you go to the BB&T Center and a representative from the Florida Panthers comes up and tells you that you have to leave, you have to leave.”
As an Eagle Scout and Brooklyn-born U.S. citizen, I was angered, dismayed and saddened by what happened.
I violated no laws, rules or guidelines. I was not being disruptive.
I was exercising my First Amendment rights.
But as it turns out, I might have walked into a legal gray zone. Some legal experts said this isn’t a cut-and-dried case of being denied freedom of assembly or speech because Donald Trump’s campaign isn’t the government. It can still exclude and eject people from events for almost any reason, except race.
“It’s not a constitutional legal issue yet,” said Bob Jarvis, a professor of constitutional law at Nova Southeastern University. “It’s a do-you-understand-how-dangerous-this-seems issue. Where is this heading? They say they want everyone at their rallies, but they really don’t want everyone at their rallies.”
I reached out to the Trump campaign for comment by email, but didn’t get a response.
The Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office said four people were ejected from the event, and “many” were turned away at the gate.
I got inside but was treated differently, singled out and targeted for ejection, simply because I had a “Sun Sentinel” ID badge dangling from my neck. And, I assume, because I declined to go into a specially-barricaded “media pen” that credentialed media for the event were restricted to.
I did not try to get a media credential for the event. In my mind, there was no need to. I wasn’t writing on deadline, I didn’t have my computer, and I didn’t require any special access. I hadn’t agreed to any special ground rules or conditions, and I was simply doing the same thing that hundreds, if not thousands, of other attendees were doing.
I just wanted to be an Average Joe, free to mingle with my fellow South Floridians and experience this event like 6,000 others. As a columnist I often do things that way. It’s the exact same way I covered a Marco Rubio campaign rally on Super Tuesday (March 1) at Tropical
I had no hassles or issues there.
But with Trump, as many people are finding out, things are different.
If other attendees had been instructed not to shoot photos, videos or use social media in the “general admission” area, then I would have done the same. But in fact, attendees were encouraged to use social media at the event, with one warmup speaker telling the crowd to use a certain hashtag.
“The Trump campaign official trespassed you and requested you to leave,” a Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman wrote by email Monday morning. “Sgt. Sluth was only enforcing their request.”
The Sheriff’s Office wouldn’t give a breakdown of how many uniformed deputies at the event were on duty or hired by the Trump campaign as private detail officers.
I arrived at about 5:30, spent some time talking to people in the designated protest zone at Burt Aaronson South County Regional Park. Then I passed through the metal detectors and went into the Sunset Cove Amphitheater. I had a general admission ticket but nobody asked to see it. When I went through the gates, I emptied my pockets of three pens, a reporter’s notebook, my company ID badge, my wallet and my smartphone.
Then I went inside, and for the next few hours, spoke to other attendees and posted numerous photos and pictures on my Twitter and Facebook feeds. The vibe was pretty mellow, not as charged as the heated atmosphere in Chicago and other Trump events recently.
“This is Boca, not Miami – they said it would be family-friendly,” said Linda Espinosa, a mother from West Boca, who came with her husband Edmar, a Nicaraguan immigrant, and their three children, ages 7, 9 and 16. “We’re really here to see what it’s all about, to expose kids to the [political] process. It’s more like a teaching tool. We want them to see why they live in America.”
I posted video of Trump’s theatrical, dramatic whoosh-whoosh-whoosh helicopter landing at the amphitheater. I listened to Trump do his usual campaign spiel.
And then, about 8:40 p.m., with Trump still speaking, I noticed a typical South Florida phenomenon at big events. Many people were streaming for the exits early in order to beat the traffic.
I thought it would make for a cute tweet, but wanted to post video proof to go along with it, otherwise Trump would say that the lying media was making something up (Trump gets awfully touchy about the size of his crowds and the rapt attention he commands).
So I went to the exit and started filming. That’s when the man in a suit jacket with special lapel pin — Justin — noticed me and my ID badge and started questioning me.
He said something about needing to go to the media pen and I declined. He said I couldn’t film. I chuckled, saying of course I could, seeing as how hundreds if not thousands of other attendees were doing the same thing. He said I’d have to leave, and that we’d need to see law enforcement.
I said, sure. But I just had to do one more thing. I hit the “Tweet” button on my phone and posted the video.
When we met with Sgt. Sluth, I hurriedly turned on my smartphone video.
It turns out I shot the encounter topsy-turvy. The American flag patch on Sluth’s uniform is captured upside down. As I know from the Boy Scouts, an upside-down flag is a sign of distress.
After my night at a Trump rally, I’m more distressed than ever.
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