Donald Trump said the protester “fell harder than he was pushed”. (File)
Washington:
President Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday that an old man bleeding from the head after being pushed to the ground by U.S. riot police was a far-left agitator simulating the shocking incident.
“I looked, it fell harder than what was pushed. Aimed at the scanner. Could it be installed?” Trump asked on his massively followed Twitter account.
Two police officers in Buffalo, New York, were charged with assault after the incident last week in which protester Martin Gugino, 75, was pushed and fell straight back after approached a line of police officers advancing in helmets and body armor.
The video showed an accumulation of blood under the back of Gugino’s head while he was stationary. He is still in the hospital.
It was unclear what Trump meant by writing “aiming scanner” and that Gugino “appeared to scan police communications in order to blacken the equipment.”
The president’s tweet was apparently based on a report on OANN, a right-wing conspiracy theory television network that has become a White House favorite.
In this clip, OANN promoted the idea of a “false flag provocation by the far left group Antifa”. He said that “a recently released video” showed Gugino “trying to scan police communication” on his phone.
The video shows him only holding his phone in his right hand. Police scanner apps, which simply allow you to listen to radio traffic on police frequencies, are completely legal and common in the United States.
The video further fueled anger across the country in large protests against police brutality.
Trump, who is behind the polls five months before his battle for re-election in November, is campaigning on a “law and order” slogan.
His Democratic opponent Joe Biden tweeted in response to the president saying that his father “used to say that there is no greater sin than the abuse of power. Whether it was a bloodied officer or a protester peaceful or a president defending him with a conspiracy theory he saw on TV. “
Trump has long been a fan of bizarre conspiracy theories, including his wide promotion of the fiction that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore should not have been president.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
