At least two men attending President Donald Trump’s rally in Ohio attacked a female protester in a “senseless” confrontation decried by the mayor of Youngstown on Tuesday.
A pair of males, one in an adjustable baseball cap and a bald man in a dark t-shirt, put hands on a woman Monday during the GOP event inside Covelli Centre in Youngstown, multiple videos of the incident showed.
The man in a blue baseball cap pawed at the woman, wearing a shirt reading “Release the Epstein Files,” and pushed her down before the balding man jumped on her.
He appeared to throw multiple punches at the woman’s face, pull her hair and put the victim in a headlock before uniformed law enforcement arrived to take the protester away.
“It must be emphatically stated that senseless (political) violence has absolutely NO place in our community or in our democratic process,” Youngstown Mayor Derrick McDowell said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.
“Regardless of someone’s political affiliation or their point of view, every person attending a public event has the right to do so without fear of being assaulted or threatened,” he wrote. “I condemn this senseless conduct unequivocally.”
Youngstown police were not at this event, as security was provided by the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office and the United States Secret Service, according to the mayor.
It wasn’t immediately clear if anyone was arrested or charged in connection to the incident. Representatives for the sheriff and the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office could not be immediately reached for comment by NBC News on Tuesday.
The violence briefly delayed Trump’s speech as he watched the assault unfold.
He mocked the protester’s weight and said, without evidence, that the woman must have been paid to be there.
“You know they’re paid protesters,” Trump said. “That’s a very low class protester.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The president as in Ohio seeking to boost GOP hopes in what has been a reliably red state. Sen. Jon Husted has been trailing in polls against Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown and one-time Trump rival Vivek Ramaswamy is also locked in a close battle for the governor’s office against Democrat Amy Acton.