The mood turned ugly at a Donald Trump rally on Monday night as protesters repeatedly interrupted the Republican presidential frontrunner.
As one protester was forcibly removed from the Trump rally at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort, members of the crowd reportedly yelled racial epithets and Nazi slogans. One member of the crowd reportedly yelled “light the motherfucker on fire,” reports BuzzFeed News
Others yelled “Shoot him!” and “Kick his ass!” according to MSNBC. A man reportedly yelled “Seig heil!,” a salute from Nazi Germany, while another repeatedly said “He’s a Muslim,” in reference to the ejected protester.
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WATCH: Protesters removed from Donald Trump's Las Vegas rally, one day before #GOPDebate – @charli pic.twitter.com/0TVdUGQegc
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The tense scene follows a week of controversy surrounding Trump, who on Dec. 7 called for the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” in response to recent deadly terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.
The protesters were reportedly objecting to Trump’s stances on Muslims. They were heard chanting “black lives matter,” and “Muslim lives matter,” before security guards removed them from the rally.
Ender Austin, the protester seen in the video, told BuzzFeed News that he and the other protesters came to the rally to “make sure that issues that matter to us were heard.”
“What concerns me is that people were yelling racial epithets and hateful things,” Austin said. “I heard the N-word a couple of times.”
In the week since Trump announced his proposed plans to limit travel for Muslims attempting to enter the U.S., the businessman’s support has risen to 38 percent among registered Republicans, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll. Trump’s average national lead has also risen, according to Real Clear Politics poll averages, putting him at 16.9 points ahead of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who commands 16.1 percent support.
The Washington Post/ABC News poll also found that, while 60 percent of voters in both parties oppose Trump’s ban on Muslim travel into the U.S., more than half of Republican voters (59 percent) support the idea.
H/T BuzzFeed | Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)