Citing Misleading OANN Story, Trump Claims Injured Buffalo Protester Could Be ‘ANTIFA Provocateur’ – By Robby Soave (Reason) / June 9 2020
There’s no evidence to support the claim that 75-year-old Martin Gugino is part of antifa.
Is Martin Gugino, the 75-year-old activist who suffered a head injury after cops in Buffalo, New York, pushed him down, an “antifa provocateur” intent on setting up the cops? President Donald Trump raised this possibility in a tweet Tuesday morning, citing a report by the unfailingly pro-Trump One America News Network (OANN).
He really shouldn’t have. Regardless of what Gugino intended, there’s no excuse for how the police officers handled him. It was wrong of them to shove an elderly man who posed no threat to them.
In any case, there’s no reason to think Gugino was “an antifa provocateur,” and it was deeply irresponsible of Trump to raise this unlikely possibility.
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?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2020
The OANN report was based on an anonymously written blog post at a website called The Conservative Treehouse and occasionally The Last Refuge. It claims that Gugino is a “professional agitator and Antifa provocateur” and theorizes that he may have used his phone to scan the officers’ communications just before they pushed him. There are kernels of semi-truth here: Gugino may have been scanning police communications, and a couple of pieces of information on social media suggest he is something of a professional protester. Gugino was affiliated with the Catholic Worker movement—a nonviolent activist group—and several other organizations, according to interviews with his friends:
Continue to article: https://reason.com/2020/06/09/antifa-protester-trump-martin-gugino-buffalo-oann/
