It’s not much of a brawl, but it’s a bit more than the slapfight you’d imagine. At a Bernie Sanders rally on Sunday in Colorado — a Super Tuesday primary state — two men got into a wrestling match near the media riser covering Sanders’ speech. The local CBS affiliate caught the action, but didn’t capture what started the fight.
Yesterday, the mystery cleared up … somewhat. Both men came forward to claim that they were the victim and accused the other of starting the fight, but they did agree on one thing. The brawl began because one of the men wore a “Black Guns Matter” T-shirt to the rally, which prompted an argument over its “racist” message. The man who wore the T-shirt told CBS that he himself is African-American:
A fight broke out in the middle of the Bernie Sanders rally on Sunday evening at the Colorado Convention Center. The Democratic presidential candidate rallied thousands of supporters in Denver in a campaign stop before the March 3 Colorado primary. …
It wasn’t immediately clear to CBS4’s crew what the two men were fighting about, but someone contacted CBS4 on Monday by phone and said he is a Sanders supporter and one of the people involved. He said his name is Tyler and that a person with a T-shirt on that read “Black Guns Matter” was with two other men and they were booing during the speech. When Tyler tried to capture video of the booing on his phone’s camera, the man shoved him through the barrier. Tyler then retaliated. It was that action which was captured by CBS4’s camera.
Another video provided to CBS4 by an anonymous viewer shows the moments leading up to the brawl. It allegedly shows Tyler, in a jeans jackets, and another man arguing about the man’s shirt. That man with the “Black Guns Matter” shirt also contacted CBS4, although anonymously. He called Tyler the aggressor and said he is African American.
“He had a problem with the shirt I was wearing,” this man said. “I was recording the event, he walks up and calls me a racist. But I thought, ‘What’s he know about black lives, about discrimination, or, for that matter, the representation of the shirt.’”
Throughout American history, the man continued, “Black people and their ability to own firearms has historically been very restricted. The shirt I got from a conceal-carry class.”
The CBS affiliate has an additional video which makes the conflict more clear, taken by a close bystander with a cell phone. Unfortunately it’s not embeddable; someone else has uploaded it to YouTube but not terribly well, thanks to the way they converted it from portrait to landscape mode. The embed below has the audio, but check the video out on the CBS page to get a clearer look:
This video tends to corroborate that “Tyler” instigated the fight rather than the anonymous wearer of the T-shirt, who insists that he wasn’t a provocateur. He supports Sanders for president but disagrees with him on gun control. The T-shirt looks like those promoted by NRA gun-rights advocate Maj Toure, examples of which can be seen (and purchased) here. Another or Maj Toure’s t-shirt models sports the message “All Gun Control is Racist,” which might make “Tyler’s” head explode.
For those hoping to see the violence inherent in the BernieBro system, it’s not all that satisfying. For those expecting to see the foolishness exhibited by the extremes and the lack of self-control therein, though, this is *chef’s kiss* perfection.
