Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Violent Thuggery Continues at Trump Rallies, As Media Hare After Rumors About Hillary Clinton's Health


As many of you will perhaps have read, an arrest warrant has been issued for a man, Richard Lamar Campbell, who allegedly slugged a 69-year-old woman with COPD in the face at Trump's rally in Asheville, North Carolina, this week. Campbell knocked Shirley Teter to the ground, according to her testimony and that of eyewitnesses.


Also arrested for hitting and pulling the hair of protesters at the same rally was Thomas Anthony Vellanti, Jr., who turned himself in yesterday. It's easy to discover by googling that Vellanti has a record of being previously arrested in Miami on charges of — you guessed it — assault and battery with intent to cause great bodily harm. The arrest record and his mugshot are here.

To repeat a point many of us have made over and over during this campaign cycle: Donald Trump has brought outright thugs and criminals out of their hiding places in American society, has emboldened them and legitimized them, and if this trend continues — if Trump is placed in the White House — the consequences of this mainstreaming of violent racist, white supremacist, misogynistic thuggery will be quite serious for the United States and the whole world.

If you doubt my identification of the man just arrested in North Carolina with the man arrested last year on assault and battery charges in Miami, please review his voter record in North Carolina, showing him as a registered GOP voter with the same name as the man arrested in Miami. As the website of Keller Williams Realty Company in Hendersonville, North Carolina, for whom it appears Vellanti works, indicates, he moved to Hendersonville from south Florida.

Thugs. Criminals. A sane society keeps people like this at arms' length. A sane society does not legitimize them and the violence and bigotry they portend. A sane society does not allow a man like Donald Trump to come anywhere near its highest governing office — not if it expects to have a sane and healthy future.

(Please see this footnote to the preceding posting noting the previous conviction of Richard Lamar Campbell for domestic violence.)

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