Donald
Trump Jr walks out of Triggered book launch after heckling – from supporters
Event at
University of California is cut short amid anger at his refusal to take
questions from the audience
Andrew
Gumbel in Los Angeles
Mon 11 Nov
2019 03.29 GMTLast modified on Mon 11 Nov 2019 03.40 GMT
A pro-Trump
supporter protests at the UCLA campus in Westwood, California on Sunday. Some
were unhappy that Trump Jr refused to take questions.
Donald
Trump Jr ventured on to the University of California’s overwhelmingly liberal
Los Angeles campus on Sunday, hoping to prove what he had just argued in his
book – that a hate-filled American left was hell-bent on silencing him and
anyone else who supported the Trump presidency.
But the
appearance backfired when his own supporters, diehard Make America Great Again
conservatives, raised their voices most loudly in protest and ended up drowning
him out barely 20 minutes into an event scheduled to last two hours.
The
audience was angry that Trump Jr and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, would
not take questions. The loud shouts of “USA! USA!” that greeted Trump when he
first appeared on the stage of a university lecture hall to promote his book
Triggered: How The Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us quickly morphed
into even louder, openly hostile chants of “Q and A! Q and A!”
The
450-strong audience had just been told they would not be allowed to ask
questions, “due to time constraints”.
At first,
Trump and Guilfoyle tried to ignore the discontent, which originated with a
fringe group of America Firsters who believe the Trump administration has been
taken captive by a cabal of internationalists, free-traders, and apologists for
mass immigration.
When the shouting
would not subside, Trump Jr tried – and failed – to argue that taking questions
from the floor risked creating soundbites that leftwing social media posters
would abuse and distort. Nobody was buying that.
In minutes,
the entire argument put forward by the president’s son – that he was willing to
engage in dialogue but that it was the left that refused to tolerate free
speech – crumbled.
“I’m willing to listen…” Trump began.
“Q and A! Q
and A!” the audience yelled back.
“We’ll go
into the lion’s den and talk …” Trump tried again.
“Then open
the Q and A!” came the immediate response.
Guilfoyle,
forced to shout to make herself heard, , told students in the crowd: “You’re
not making your parents proud by being rude and disruptive.”
She and
Trump Jr. left the stage moments later.
The fiasco
pointed to a factional rift on the Trump-supporting conservative right that has
been growing rapidly in recent weeks, particularly among “zoomers” –
student-age activists. On one side are one of the sponsors of Trump Jr’s book
tour, Turning Point USA, a campus conservative group with a track record of
bringing provocative rightwing speakers to liberal universities.
On the
other side are far-right activists – often referred to as white supremacists
and neo-Nazis, although many of them reject such labels – who believe in
slamming the door on all immigrants, not just those who cross the border
without documents, and who want an end to America’s military and diplomatic
engagement with the wider world.
A number of
the loudest voices at Sunday’s event were supporters of Nick Fuentes, a
21-year-old activist with a podcast called America First that has taken
particular aim at Turning Point USA and its 25-year-old founder, Charlie Kirk.
In a number of his own recent campus appearances, Kirk has faced questions
accusing him of being more interested in supporting Israel than in putting
America first. He has responded by calling his detractors conspiracists and
racists.
On Sunday,
Kirk appeared alongside Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle but said nothing.
Two Fuentes
supporters, delighted with the outcome of Trump Jr’s appearance, later told the
Guardian the pro-Trump movement was being infected with “fake conservatism” and
that the president himself was at the mercy of a cabal of deep state operatives
who wouldn’t let him do many of the things he campaigned on.
The pair,
who called themselves Joe and Orion Miles, said: “It was an absolute disaster
for them. We wanted to ask questions about immigration and about Christianity,
but they didn’t want to face those questions.”
Also, if
Trump Jr was expecting “triggered” leftwingers to clamour for his silence, he
did not get it. No more than 35 protesters showed up and, despite making a lot
of noise with drums and whistles and shouts of “Trump-Pence Out Now!”, resisted
taunts and insults from provocateurs in Make America Great Again hats from
across a line of metal barriers.
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