Man staring down press removed from Trump rally

PHOENIX, ARIZ. — Security guards removed a man staring menacingly at the press from a Donald Trump campaign rally on Saturday.

A television reporter notified a security guard that the rally attendee was holding an object in his hand and described him as a “very dangerous man” after noticing the man facing away from Trump and staring at length directly at members of the press. Minutes later, security guards removed the man from the Phoenix Convention Center.

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The incident comes as Trump’s attacks on the press have grown more extreme in recent weeks, with the Republican nominee accusing journalists and bankers of colluding with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to destroy him as part of a vast globalist conspiracy.

Earlier this month, in response to that rhetoric, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, warned, "Whether Intentionally or not, Donald Trump is evoking classic anti-Semitic themes that have historically been used against Jews and still reverberate today."

It was not the only press-related incident at Saturday's rally. Minutes before the man was removed, two other men began shouting at the press pen. One of them, wearing a hat with a mushroom cloud and the words “bombislam.com” as well as a shirt with former President Bill Clinton’s face and the word “rape” began shouting, “Bill Clinton’s a rapist.” His companion, wearing a “Hillary for Prison” shirt, shouted at the press, “You are rapists” and “you need to pay for Bill Clinton’s rape,” adding, “You are responsible.”

That same man, when the crowd broke into a chant of “U-S-A” stood at the metal barrier separating the press from the crowd and shouted at members of the press, “Jew-S-A.”

Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said: "The campaign strongly condemns this kind of rhetoric and behavior. It is not acceptable at our rallies or elsewhere."

According to Trump campaign aide Stephanie Grisham, the man was not staring at the press and instead had turned his back on Trump because he did not like Trump's talking points about voter suppression.

Towards the end of Trump’s speech, as the travelling press filed out of the pen to wait by Trump’s motorcade backstage, the Republican nominee called reporters “terrible people” and said that the media won’t tell the public that the national murder rate is at a 45-year high, a false claim that Trump regularly repeats at his rallies.