Trump says 75-year-old pushed by Buffalo cops could be an 'Antifa provocateur’, wonders if incident was a setup
US President Donald Trump has said that the 75-year-old man who was shoved by Buffalo police officers “could be an Antifa provocateur”. The elderly man’s video recently went viral after it showed him being pushed by two police officers on the sidewalk, in Buffalo, New York. The man has been identified as Martin Gugino.
The president also indicated on Tuesday, June 8, that the incident could be a “set up” by far-left militants. “Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an Antifa provocateur. 75-year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to blackout the equipment. I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a setup?” he said on Twitter.
The viral video of Gugino, who is an activist and a member of the Western New York Peace Center, showed him being pushed by two officers to the ground, where he lay heavily bleeding on the pavement before being taken to a hospital. The footage was reportedly taken by a reporter from local radio station WBFO that showed the old man approaching a line of officers in riot gear outside of Buffalo City Hall on Thursday, June 4. When Gugino started to speak to the officers, they immediately began shouting at him to move along while one officer pushed him with a baton, and a second cop shoved him with his hand.
Earlier, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown called Gugino an "agitator" and said he won't be sacking the cops responsible for injuring him. “What we were informed of is that that individual was an agitator. He was trying to spark up the crowd of people. Those people were there into the darkness. Our concern is when it gets dark, there is a potential for violence,” Brown said. “There has been vandalism, there have been fires set, there have been stores broken into and looted. According to what was reported to me, that individual was a key major instigator of people engaging in those activities,”
Trump’s recent comment over the incident left many people on Twitter fuming as one tweeted: “He approached the police calmly. They assaulted him, pushing him until he fell and as he lay in the street bleeding from the base of his skull they walked away. He was hospitalized for exercising his 1st Amendment rights. That may be Trump’s America. It’s not ours.”
“Really bad take, Spanky, even for you. That was the shove seen around the world, and you're attacking the 75-year-old man who was bleeding all over the ground? Keep it up...I see your pathetic poll numbers dropping even further,” wrote another one.
Greta Thunberg also recently condemned the police brutality and shared the viral video of Gugino on Twitter. “Still waiting for the EU and individual democratic nations to officially condemn the police brutality and attacks on the free press escalating the USA. For how long are we going to stand by, watch and say nothing?” Thunberg wrote on Twitter. Meanwhile, another report has claimed that the officers, Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski, who were involved in the alleged shoving incident have pleaded not guilty to second-degree assault. They were released on personal recognizance. The Erie County district attorney, John J. Flynn, told media after the arraignment, "We had two of our police officers who crossed the line. My job is to prosecute those who have violated the law, plain and simple. And I believe, and I’m alleging, that these two officers violated the law."
Flynn added: “You don’t take a baton and shove him. That’s what you don’t do. You properly arrest him if he was committing a crime.”