This article contains news and liberal commentary.
A Trump supporter attacked a journalist outside Trump’s Duluth rally on Wednesday, September 30, 2020, news media reported.
Trump and Biden supporters had lined up on opposite sides of a street near the airport and Dymanh Chhoun, 34, a photojournalist working for a Duluth TV station (photo, left), was covering the event when an older man from the Trump crowd (photo, below) walked up to him and threw a punch, knocking Chhoun’s phone out of his hands.
Duluth police say they know who the assailant is, but haven’t released his name. Before the assault, he said, “You guys want to be peaceful? Be peaceful! You want to be violent? Come to me!” Chhoun had identified himself as media multiple times, but Trump supporters don’t make fine distinctions between, say, protesters and journalists, and don’t like the media anyway.
Racism could have been a motivating factor, as Chhoun is Asian. He was born in a Thai refugee camp to parents fleeing the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia and came to the U.S. with his family in 1993.
“He understands the world I don’t,” another journalist said. “I’m an old white guy. He knows a world of immigrants, a world of color and a world of different cultures. He walks absolutely perfectly between them.”
Read about the incident and watch video of the assault here, and read Chhoun’s story here.