This chaotic video now has Rep. GOP nominee Blake Masters facing some heat as he campaigns for Arizona Senate. Remember, he claimed Black people are to blame for gun violence. Now, there’s a video circulating of him attacking a protestor at a GOP mixer.
The 73-year-old man, Peter Jackson, came to the event wearing a “Black Lives Matter” shirt and captured the assault on video.
According to Newsweek, Jackson arrived at the event Saturday with his BLM tee shirt, a “Jail Trump” hat and an N-95 Mask. The event was a meet-and-greet with GOP candidates at the Continental Shopping Plaza in Arizona. Jackson wore a GoPro camera capturing the incident.
The video begins with a woman recording Jackson on her phone and then punching him with her fist. However, Masters alleges Jackson hit the woman first.
More from Newsweek:
Quickly after, Jackson’s jostling camera showed Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters lunging toward the activist and grabbing him with both hands. The older man fell to his knees. A group of men threw him out of the building and left him on the ground outside.
A man standing over Jackson said, “You can’t hit a woman, what the hell is wrong with you?”
The clip did not appear to show Jackson hitting anyone, nor did a longer 9-minute cut from his GoPro shared on YouTube. Nonetheless, Masters doubled down on that version of the story, saying in his own video that “me and a couple guys intervened” after Jackson “hit a woman.”
If you look at the footage, Jackson received nasty glares as soon as he walked into the room and was quickly surrounded by a group of unhappy-looking GOP supporters. The words “Black lives matter” do seem to spark a sort of inherent rage from the right.
Masters’ campaign manager told Newsweek “plenty of people” believe Jackson hit the woman recording him and Masters stepped in to save the day. In another video of Masters following the incident, he recalls the attack to a group of supporters applauding his version of the story.
“Now he’s being wheeled out on a stretcher, so you know what the New York Times headline is going to be. ‘U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters punches a peaceful elderly protestor,’” he said.