Man in MAGA Hat Attacks BBC Cameraman at Trump Rally

A Trump supporter attacked a BBC cameraman who was covering President Donald Trump’s rally Monday night in El Paso.

Footage from the event shows the unidentified man in a Make America Great Again Hat being restrained as he curses at the assembled media and the nearby crowd appears to start chanting “Let him go!”

Trump, having spent part of the rally getting the crowd riled up against the media, asked if everyone was okay, gave a thumbs-up, and went right back to his interminable rant about whatever he was ranting about.

Compared to his usual denunciations of the media, Trump’s rhetoric in El Paso was relatively mild. But almost four years after he first declared his candidacy for the president, he still shows zero awareness that his constant painting of the media as a malevolent force constantly lying and attacking in an effort to destroy him and his supporters might have real-world consequences. Even though he has been warned about it by newspaper publishers, such as A.G. Sulzberger of the New York Times, whose respect and admiration he so cravenly desires.

Trump’s battles with the media seem to exist in his mind partly as a plot device on a TV show. Every drama needs a villain, and in Trump’s hero narrative, the media is but one of the enemies besieging him. That others, particularly members of the media and the supporters he riles up at his rallies and through his Twitter attacks, do not share his view that this is all showmanship never seems to break through. This despite ample evidence of his supporters’ increasing rage directed at the media at past rallies.

The BBC cameraman was thankfully unhurt. How long that streak of media members escaping injury from riled-up Trumpists can run is anybody’s guess.