Secret
Service agents rushed Donald Trump offstage on Saturday evening during a
rally in Reno, Nevada after they determined a protester in the audience
posed a threat to the Republican presidential candidate.
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'Go!
Go!' agents shouted as they whisked him away and a combination of local
police and private security wrestled a man at the front of the crowd to
the ground.
A sea of bodies scattered, screams rang out and authorities dragged the man away as he kicked and strained.
A
Trump campaign source who spoke with DailyMail.com said someone in the
audience had shouted 'gun' kicking off the ensuing chaos.
While
there has been confusion as to whether the man had a weapon,
authorities have not recovered one and police do not think the man was
armed, the source said.
Just
before the fracas, Trump could be seen shielding his eyes from the
lights in order to peer into the crowd as a struggle broke out. Three
agents then stormed the stage and hustled the Republican candidate
off.
The man taken away by police was belligerent before Trump supporters jumped him, Trump campaign source told DailyMail.com.
A
witness watching the scuffle yelled 'He's got a gun' before Secret
Service acted and removed Trump from the stage, according to the source.
Two
audience members told DailyMail.com they had seen the man holding a
firearm, however that has not been confirmed by law enforcement.
As police and good Samaritans took the man down, the crowd surged backward and strained against the press section.
'CNN sucks!' one man yelled. 'You people caused this!'
Television
footage showed a white male suspect pinioned on the ground by officers
and searched, before he was led away from the convention center.
Federal
agents and tactical officers with rifles from Reno Police removed the
man and placed him in a bathroom near a secure entrance where Trump's
motorcade and the press vehicles were staged.
Trump
returned a short while later and addressed the audience as he continued
his rally speech, appearing unrattled by the scuffle and spoke with his
usual self-confidence.
'Nobody said it was going to be easy for us,' Trump declared. 'But we will never be stopped. Never, never be stopped.'
'I
want to thank the Secret Service. These guys are fantastic. They don't
get enough credit. They don't get enough credit. They're amazing
people.'
Trump said
he had spotted the protester and claimed he was a Hillary Clinton
supporter before asking security to 'take him out.'
Trump's
Secret Service detail were able to remove the Republican presidential
candidate from the Reno-Sparks Convention Center without incident.
As he returned to his speech, he thanked a group of fans near the stage who had stepped in to subdue his would-be attacker.
'You were amazing, fellas,' he said.
'I saw what you were doing. That's a tough group of people right there... Nobody messes with our people, right?'
He
and his staff later made it aboard his custom Boeing 757, dubbed Trump
Force One, in advance of a flight to Denver for the day's fourth rally
in as many stages.
Trump issued a brief statement before the plane took off, but shed no new light on what had happened.
'I
would like to thank the United States Secret Service and the law
enforcement resources in Reno and the state of Nevada for their fast and
professional response,' Trump said.
'I
also want to thank the many thousands of people present for their
unwavering and unbelievable support. Nothing will stop us – we will make
America great again.'
Trump
and his traveling press corps had flown five hours from coastal North
Carolina to western Nevada on Saturday to appeal to rock-ribbed
conservatives in the key battleground state.
His 11th-hour punches left a mark on the U.S. Senate's most senior Democrat, just three days before Tuesday's election.
'Don't
let crazy, broken Harry Reid and his corrupt political machine decide
this election,' Trump said, painting the retiring Nevada senator as 'a
political hack.'
The
Republican presidential nominee has warned his devoted followers for
nearly a year that America's elections – both primaries and general –
are 'rigged', with him getting specific in Reno.
'It's
being reported that certain key Democratic polling locations in Clark
County were kept open for hours and hours beyond closing time to bus and
bring Democratic voters in,' he claimed, referring to the Las Vegas
metro area on the state's southern tip.
'Folks, it's a rigged system. It's a rigged system and we're going to beat it. We're going to beat it.'
Saturday's incident marked the second time Secret Service had to intervene to get Trump out of harm's way.
In March, a man leaped over a police barricade during a Trump rally at an airport hangar in Dayton, Ohio.
The man,Thomas Dimassimo, was charged with disorderly conduct and inciting panic, but he never reached the stage.
Secret Service tackled him when he was still several yards away from the candidate.
'I was ready for him, but it’s much easier if the cops do it, don’t we agree?' Trump said at the time.
'And to think I had such an easy life! What do I need this for, right?'
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