On Friday afternoon, two people were arrested for throwing blue paint on the Black Lives Matter mural outside Trump Tower in Manhattan. One of the people arrested was wearing a rainbow flag and a shirt emblazoned with the slogan “All Lives Matter,” NBC News reported, adding that roughly ten people were part of the group from which the two suspects came.
The NBC News reporter stated, “As we know, police are stationed just outside Trump Tower almost every day.” The reporter added that he asked one of the people who threw the paint to explain why she did it, but she did not answer.
On Monday morning, a man splashed red paint over the Black Lives Matter mural painted on the street in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue, the same mural that Mayor Bill de Blasio helped paint last Thursday as he yelled, “We are saying Black Lives Matter in New York City, and Black Lives Matter in the United States of America! Let’s show Donald Trump what he does not understand; let’s paint it right in front of his building for him!”
ABC News, which obtained a copy of the video showing the man splashing the paint, reported, “The suspect was described as a white male wearing a black hat and black T-shirt who fled westbound on West 56th Street.”
Last week, appearing on CNN with host Wolf Blitzer, de Blasio took aim at President Trump, who had said that the mural “denigrated” Fifth Avenue. De Blasio called Trump’s remarks about the mural “pure racism,” stating that the mural was “liberating” Fifth Avenue:
We’re taking resources from our police department and putting it into youth programs. We’re acknowledging institutional racism and coming up with specific plans to tear it down. We need to take this transcendent moment and get the most out of it. But the president, rather than having a chance to acknowledge America’s original sin, he literally made it worse by suggesting that honoring black people on Fifth Avenue would somehow make it less valuable or luxurious. I gotta tell you, people are outraged by that, but more importantly, they’re speaking out, and folks today felt jubilant and triumphant. We were not denigrating Fifth Avenue; we were liberating Fifth Avenue by putting those crucial words right there in front of President Trump’s building.
Meanwhile, earlier this week, as The Daily Wire reported, the man who allegedly beat the highest-ranking uniformed cop in the New York City Police Department, as well as two other police officers, was released from jail without bail.
“Quran Campbell, 25, is accused of socking the highest-ranking uniformed cop [NYPD Chief Terence Monahan] several times in the face as Monahan tried to arrest him after Campbell had allegedly punched another NYPD officer and lieutenant” near the Manhattan approach to the Brooklyn Bridge, the New York Post reported.
“They are part of this anarchist group that has been infiltrating this Black Lives movement since the beginning,” Monahan said. “This is what we dealt with since the first protest after George Floyd. It is a legitimate movement, but it is being hijacked by these anarchists, and they are the ones that have been attacking our police officers [and] are out hiding behind the many, many peaceful protesters that are out there.”