Don ‘mean’ & ‘crude’
Gov rips Trump for blaming peace activist injured by cops
Leave it to President Trump to tweet about a man when he’s down.
Trump launched an unprovoked, unhinged broadside Tuesday against the Buffalo protester injured by cops in a viral video, outraging the 75year-old activist’s friends and Gov. Cuomo. The presidential smear came shortly after the longtime peace activist, Martin Gugino, was transferred out of the intensive care unit due to his head injury.
“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 black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?” Trump tweeted.
Gugino’s friends said Trump’s outrageous, unfounded allegation could not be further from the truth. Gugino, they said, was a committed peace activist passionate about racial justice, nuclear disarmament, Guantanamo Bay, Latin America and other issues.
“He’s trying to make political mileage off my friend’s injured body as a result of policies the White House pushes,” said Terrence Bisson, a math professor who has known Gugino for 10 years.
He called Trump’s tweet “terrible.”
“That’s like someone who is so angry they kick someone when they’ve already fallen,” Bisson said.
Cuomo was also disgusted. “How reckless, how irresponsible, how mean, how crude,” Cuomo said, calling on Trump to apologize.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) unloaded on his Republican colleagues for refusing to denounce Trump’s bizarre attack.
“That’s a disgrace [that] they can’t even speak out,” Schumer said.
Gugino’s friend John Washington, 35, saw the tweet as a calculated attempt by Trump to take control of the news cycle after two weeks dominated by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis cops.
“I think Donald Trump is trying to deflect our attention from the lifeless black bodies in the street. The rebellion and uprising going on. He’s trying to focus attention on an older white man,” Washington
said.
“Martin was just a white man who got a taste of what black men and women face around the country on a daily basis.”
Gugino was protesting Floyd’s killing in Niagara Square when a group of baton-wielding cops cleared the area. Two officers pushed Gugino, who fell to the ground. The elderly activist cracked his head on the sidewalk and began bleeding. The two officers have pleaded not guilty to assault charges.
Trump took the cheap shot after apparently watching a story about Gugino on the far right-wing One America News Network. The report examined a bogus conspiracy theory that the activist used a device to interfere with police communications.
Trump and his Republican allies have sought to justify harsh police tactics by tying peaceful demonstrators to members of the Antifa protest movement.
“No comment except that black lives matter,” Gugino, who is still in the hospital, wrote in a text to NBC News.