The first meeting of Portland State University’s Students for Trump group was loudly interrupted and shut down by anti-Trump protesters, who barged into the group’s meeting on Thursday evening.
Although the conversation was initially civil, it eventually progressed into name-calling and shouting. An Anti-Trump protester threatened a student that was filming the scene: “Point that f**king camera at me… Wait ’til that camera is not there…do you want to get f**ked up by a f**king faggot?”
After a protester took to standing on top of a table to address the crowd, a pro-Trump student suggested that starting a “Students Against Trump” group would have been a more productive way to combat pro-Trump students at PSU.
“The only way to combat this shit is to join an organization that has an anti-racist, anti-capitalist stance,” another protester claimed. “You need to get out of the fucking way and let people of color…let these people organize themselves.”
Despite the meeting being a closed event for the club, the protesters demanded the right to speak. When a few pro-Trump students tried to calm down a protester yelling from atop a table, another protester yelled, “If you don’t let her talk, I will f**k shit up.”
Although the disruption primarily led to shouting and name-calling, there were some productive discussions that happened amongst the chaos. One pro-Trump student explained that his own parents had gone through a lot to immigrate legally: “My family are immigrants, they paid thousands and thousands of dollars, they waited years. I don’t see why it’s fair to let anyone – we don’t know who they are, they could be criminals, they could anything – just waltz through the country with no repercussions.”
Although most listened respectfully as the student explained his support of Trump, one student responded that he was disappointed that a minority could support Trump: “People of color Trump supporters make me so sad.”
After it was clear that the protesters wouldn’t relent, the Students for Trump members disbanded the meeting and began to leave the venue. As they left, one of the leaders of the protest group declared victory and issued a warning to the pro-Trump students: “I just want everybody here to know that you have just participated in a successful Trump shutdown! If they try it again, the same shit is gonna happen, I promise you.”
Tom Ciccotta writes about Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity for Breitbart. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or on Facebook. You can email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com