Monday 22 May 2017

Man in Trump hat kicked off a flight as a crowd chanted: ‘Lock him up!’


Like some bizarre parody of a Trump rally, a belligerent man in a “Make America Great Again” hat was booted off a plane in Shanghai Sunday — defiantly waving as a crowd of passengers jeered in the terminal: “Lock him up! Lock him up!”
It’s unclear whether Chinese police did jail the man or who he was. As others on the United Airlines flight described it, he started arguing before he stepped onto the plane.
“Obviously, the hat provoked some of the stuff,” said Alexis Zimmerman, who was flying back to Newark from a business trip.
The man took an aisle seat three rows in front of her. She said he refused to let anyone sit beside him.
“He wanted to sit in the whole row by himself,” Zimmerman said.
Her video shows him leaning back in his seat — hands folded behind his red hat, feet propped on someone else’s arm rest — while a woman in crutches and many others stand in the aisle, snap photos and glare.
Watch the video after the cut



“This young lady’s not going to make it to her classes tomorrow and her tests she has to take, thanks to you,” a woman told the man. “Are you proud of yourself?”
“Guess what,” he replied. “In 45 minutes I’m going to collapse for not drinking my soda.”
The man said he was a diabetic, Zimmerman said. But at one point, passengers said, he also dared the flight crew to cuff him and drag him off the plane — reminding other passengers of last month’s infamous deplaning, amid a barrage of in-plane horror stories that have plagued United and the rest of the airline industry in recent years. But the United crew in Shanghai remained polite and patient throughout Sunday’s ordeal, said Clark Gredoña, another passenger.
“He was trying to explain to the crew and captain … because he had points, he felt he deserved an upgrade,” he said. “So this was his way of getting it.”
But he got no upgrade. And before long, as seen in video, the man was waving his arms and shouting: “I have a seat here! … Shut up! … Moron!”
This went on for the better part of an hour, passengers Gredoña and Zimmerman said. And somehow in all of it, U.S. politics came up.
“I know people don’t like my hat,” Zimmerman heard the man say.
“He berated a female passenger,” Gredoña said. “I think he called her Hillary. Then he called her a lesbian. I think he called a stewardess ‘sweetheart.’ ”
The man became “increasingly disruptive when asked to deplane,” a United spokesman said in a brief statement. “Local law enforcement was called to assist.”
Police had no more luck persuading him than anyone else. So Zimmerman, Gredoña and every other passenger had to return to the terminal and wait for the officers to remove him from the plane. That’s when the whole incident took on a very electoral vibe. Cellphone video shows the man, still in his Trump hat, ascending an escalator — waving what appears to be a seat cushion at dozens of angry onlookers.
Gredoña thinks the chanting started after the man taunted the crowd: “So I succeeded in making you guys waste three-and-a-half hours.”
People then shouted words unprintable.
And one shouted: “Lock him up!”
Then another, and another. “Lock him up, lock him up” — until a Chinese airport terminal sounded much like a latter-day Trump rally, when he and his crowds threatened his presidential campaign opponent, Hillary Clinton, with prison.

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