For much of the spring, several students at Portland State University who oppose Donald Trump have had to endure outrageous and borderline criminal harassment from an outfit called “Portland State Students for Trump.”
On April 7, Students for Trump held its first formal meeting at the PSU student union. They were greeted by about 100 protesters. The meeting got rather heated, with a number of protesters crossing the line into threats.
ThinkProgress discovered that Richard Patrick Burke, the Oregon field director for the Trump campaign, got in touch with the PSU group’s leader, Volodymyr Kolychev, to offer some encouragement after the meeting.
They were also applauded as heroes by numerous wingnut elements. For instance, Infowars–Alex Jones’ outfit–aired a fawning profile and interview with several group members on April 9. Watch here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2xqoqLE3ic
They were also heavily promoted by Breitbart News Network.
What neither Burke, Jones and Breitbart apparently knew is that when one of the protest organizers, Alyssa Pagan, checked her phone the next morning, she found herself bombarded with ugly tweets and Facebook messages. Several other protesters got similar greetings.
It turned out that Pagan and her compatriots were the latest victims of the alt-right–an element that has a habit of engaging in ugly harassment and trolling of anyone who dares to speak out against the Donald. Several alt-right thugs bombarded the protesters with racist, anti-Semitic, and transphobic harassment. Some of the messages contained rape and death threats. These thugs also plastered the protesters’ addresses and workplaces on 4chan and 8chan. Several members of the PSU group actively encouraged, and even took part in, this harassment.
Unless I’m very wrong, Burke has not made any effort to condemn this thuggery since ThinkProgress broke this story on Thursday night. While it comes as no shock that Breitbart or Jones have kept quiet on this issue, it’s another thing altogether for a campaign official to keep quiet about such blatantly un-American and potentially criminal behavior. Even if it was done in response to a few knuckleheads crossing the line on April 7, this sort of behavior is never acceptable. Period.
We’ve already seen the Donald himself wink and nod when his supporters engage in behavior that can only be described as un-American and un-Democratic. But if this doesn’t cross the line, what does? If Burke has anything in him, he will condemn this behavior being perpetrated in his candidate’s name.
