Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle abruptly ended a book event at UCLA after they were heckled by right-wing protesters.
Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle waled off stage about 20 minutes into a scheduled two-hour event to promote his new book “Triggered: How The Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us.”
Videos on Twitter show that crowd chanting “USA! USA!” at the event before the shouts changed into chants of “Q&A! Q&A!” after it was announced that the couple would not take questions.
After trying to ignore the hecklers and then trying to reason with them, the couple abruptly walked off stage.
Don Jr. and Kim battle hecklers:
Don Jr. Initially seemed to believe he was the target of left-wing protesters.
“Name a time when conservatives have disrupted even the furthest leftist on a college campus,” he said. “It doesn’t happen that way. We’re willing to listen.”
After an audience member shouted for him to “open the Q&A,” Trump Jr. replied, “see what I mean?”
“And that is the problem. And the reason oftentimes it doesn’t make sense to do the Q&A is not because we’re not willing to talk about the questions, cause we do,” he said. “No. It’s because people hijack it with nonsense looking to go for some sort of sound bite. You have people spreading nonsense, spreading hate, trying to take over the room.”
Guilfoyle also tried to get the audience to quiet down before berating them.
“You’re not making your parents proud by being rude and disruptive and discourteous,” she yelled. “We are happy to answer a question. Respect the people around you so that they can hear.”
“Let me tell you something, I bet you engage and go on online dating because you’re impressing no one here to get a date in person,” she added.
Right-wing group take credit:
Though Trump Jr. decried left-wing protesters, far-right podcaster Nick Fuentes, who hosts “America First,” took credit for the stunt.
Fuentes wrote that the protest was aimed at Charlie Kirk, whose Turning Point USA group hosted the event.
“Our problem is not with [Trump Jr.] who is a patriot — We are supporters of his father!” Fuentes tweeted. “Our problem is with Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA organization that SHUTS DOWN and SMEARS socially conservative Christians and supporters of President Trump’s agenda. We are AMERICA FIRST!”
Fuentes accused Kirk of being a “fake conservative” and alleged that TPUSA “promotes the LGBT agenda, supports immigration policies that hurt the American worker.”
America First is a fringe group that believes the “Trump administration has been taken captive by a cabal of internationalists, free-traders, and apologists for mass immigration,” according to The Guardian, which first reported the protest.