Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is calling on federal officials and event organizers to cancel an upcoming “Trump Free Speech Rally” and other similar pro-Trump, pro-First Amendment events. His rationale: the participants might be “coming to peddle a message of hatred,” citing the fatal stabbing of two men by a convicted felon with an affinity for Nazi propaganda as an example of the results of such hatred.
The Associated Press reports that on Friday two men, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, 23, and Ricky John Best, 53, were stabbed to death when they attempted to stop Jeremy Joseph Christian from harassing two women, one of whom was wearing a hijab. Authorities say Christian, whose social media posts, AP notes, “indicate an affinity for Nazis and political violence,” grew violent when Meche and Best tried to intervene during an anti-Muslim tirade directed at the two women. Christian fatally stabbed both men and injured another and is now “accused of aggravated murder, intimidation — the state equivalent of a hate crime — and being a felon in possession of a weapon.”
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