On October 10, Donald Trump came to downtown Minneapolis, the center of a liberal city that overwhelmingly voted against him in 2016, for his first campaign rally since House Democrats initiated impeachment proceedings. Inside the Target Center, the president disparaged the city’s sizable Somali population and called US Rep. Ilhan Omar “a disgrace to our country.”
Outside the rally, protestors gathered in droves, chanting in front of a giant baby Trump balloon atop famed rock club First Avenue and waving signs. “So bad even introverts are here,” one of them read. It was mostly a peaceful scene, due in part to a fence that separated protestors from the lines of people filing into the arena. Later in the evening, as the rally neared a close, some attendees crossed the line to find their cars and ran into protestors. Along with my colleagues from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, I saw a few punches thrown, some MAGA hats burnt, and one Trump supporter wave a gun inside his car. It was dark and raining, which rendered my notebook useless, so I documented the clashes with my phone. That night, I published three videos to my Twitter account via Periscope; the footage totaled about 40 minutes.
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