At a campaign rally Monday in Ohio, a young woman who has yet to be identified was violently assaulted by multiple Trump supporters. Video of the event, which has been viewed millions of times on social media, sparked outrage and calls for the perpetrators to be arrested.

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The woman was wearing a shirt that read: “Release the Epstein files.” The Trump administration has yet to release over 3 million files associated with the late fixer, sex trafficker and friend to Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

Video of the assault shows the woman’s hair being pulled by a bald man in a gray shirt. The man strikes the woman in the face multiple times while at least two other men push and shove her to the ground. Police are then seen grabbing and pulling the woman out of the arena as the crowd chants, “USA! USA! USA!”

Trump, approvingly viewing the assault, claimed without evidence that the person was a “paid protester.” He said, “He’s a paid protester. They are all paid. They get paid by the lefties in order to destroy our country. They are scum, but he is going back home to mom.”

Trump added, “Don’t we love our law enforcement?”

The crowd continued to chant “USA! USA! USA!” as the young protester was manhandled and assaulted by the crowd and police.

Video posted by TMZ shows the protester, despite not breaking any laws, being aggressively marched out of the arena by a sheriff’s deputy and security personnel.

Before police forced her out, they photographed her with a cellphone. She repeatedly asked why they had taken her picture and what it would be used for. The recording ended without police providing an audible answer. It was unclear whether the phone was department-issued or a personal device.

The scenes recall the German American Bund’s Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. When Jewish worker Isadore Greenbaum rushed the stage to protest, Bund stormtroopers beat him as the crowd cheered. Police removed and arrested Greenbaum. The rally combined American flags and a portrait of George Washington with swastikas and denunciations of “Jewish Moscow-directed domination.”

In Youngstown, racist and anti-communist denunciations from the podium likewise accompanied physical attacks on dissenters, wrapped in patriotic chants. These are the political methods the Republican Party and its billionaire backers are cultivating.

Large sections of the Covelli Centre stood empty or were covered with tarps. The Vindicator estimated attendance at 2,500 to 3,000, down from roughly 7,000 at Trump’s 2017 rally at the venue and 5,500 in 2022. Following similarly under-attended rallies, the turnout underscores the unpopularity of the Trump administration and its fascist agenda.

As of this writing, no charges have been filed against the men who assaulted the protester. Danesh, an online investigator known as ThatDaneshGuy, has identified one of the thugs in the assault as Russell Dickert of Browns Mills, New Jersey. A circulating screenshot of a Facebook post bearing Dickert’s name claims that he, a friend named Gary and Gary’s son Clint “subdued her and threw her to the concrete” after the protester called Trump a fascist. The author identifies himself as wearing a green shirt and hat, Gary a black shirt and Clint a camouflage shirt.

A LinkedIn profile under the same name and location, Browns Mills, New Jersey, identifies the assailant as a supervisor at Harsco Metals & Minerals, with an affiliation with the US Navy.

The World Socialist Web Site has not independently verified the identification or authenticated the Facebook post, which was no longer publicly visible when the profile was reviewed.

The assault took place in the course of a racist campaign speech by Trump filled with his usual denunciations and slurs against immigrants, particularly Haitians and Somalis, as well as communists, Democrats, socialists and transgender persons.

On the same day, Trump’s Homeland Security Investigations goons raided the Washington D.C. home of Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. In Ohio, Trump called immigrants “murderers, rapists, drug dealers.” He attacked Minnesota and Somali immigrants. Referring to Representative Omar, Trump said, “She’s a disaster. She comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military. All they do is shoot each other, and she comes into our country and she says, ‘I have a constitutional right.’”

He went on to call Somalia “one of the worst countries anywhere on the planet,” denounce “savage Somali gang members,” and added, “This is not what we want in this country.”

Trump’s grunts prompted the human dust attending the rally to begin chanting, “Deport! Deport! Deport!”

Trump went on to call for a vote for Republican Michele Tafoya in the Minnesota race for the US Senate. Trump said Tafoya would have a hard time winning because “they cheat like hell” in Minnesota, a state he said he “thought I won three times.”

Trump lost the state in all three of his presidential campaigns—to Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024.

Following the assault, Trump went back to attacking immigrants and Muslims. After claiming the Democrats want to turn the “Midwest into Mogadishu,” he denounced the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. “You look at the guy running in Michigan. He’s a jihadist,” he said. The crowd responded with loud boos.

Trump continued: “Somalia bandits ... third-world gangs and jihadist sympathizers do not belong in Ohio, they don’t belong in America. Going to get them the hell out of here.”

This led to another round of chants of “Deport! Deport! Deport!” from the crowd.

Trump then turned to Springfield, Ohio, which has been targeted by the immigration Gestapo following the termination of Temporary Protected Status for some 350,000 Haitian immigrants, of whom roughly 12,000 called Springfield home. The president boasted that the “Haitian population” was “being taken out, and they’re almost going to be gone and we’re giving that town back.”

Trump added that the “things I said in the debate”—referring to his lies in 2024 that Haitians were stealing family pets and eating them—“I was right.”

Another woman protester was then ejected from the arena, prompting more chants of “USA!” Trump claimed the protester had a “Palestinian flag.”

Trump’s visit came as polling averages showed both Republican statewide candidates trailing their Democratic opponents. As of October 13, RealClearPolling’s averages placed Amy Acton four percentage points ahead of Vivek Ramaswamy in the governor’s race, and former Senator Sherrod Brown 3.1 points ahead of Republican Senator Jon Husted.

It addition to the two incidents during Trump’s speech, protesters were shoved out during Republican Senator Jon Husted’s speech.