Man who got punched at Trump rally: Attacker should be in prison

The man who was punched in the face while being escorted out of a Donald Trump rally says the Trump supporter accused of striking him should be in prison.

“I want justice,” Rakeem Jones said Thursday on MSNBC before noting that the other man, John McGraw, will “probably be bailed out.”

{mosads}Ronnie Rouse, who attended the event in North Carolina with Jones, said it was “disturbing” that the man who allegedly punched Jones “went home that night.”

McGraw was arrested Thursday morning and charged with assault and battery and disorderly conduct, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday.

Rouse said he and his friends were at the rally to “spectate.”

“We like to look at both sides of the aisle,” he said, adding they wanted to see what the hype was all about. But Rouse said Trump had not spoken two sentences before security began escorting Jones and him out.

“We were the first people thrown out,” he said.

As they were leaving, Rouse said Trump told them to go home to their mothers, and the crowd started chanting it too. 

Jones’s mother is dead, Rouse said, so Jones got “a little emotional” on his way out after hearing what Trump said.

“It’s pretty appalling, because he’s the victim here,” Rouse said. “It was just obvious.”

Rouse said when they saw the police on their way out, they thought “it’s cool … we’re good, we’re just going to leave.” 

The disturbing part, he added, was not that Jones got punched in the face, but that the incident happened in front of multiple law enforcement officers who did nothing in response.

“You would think Rakeem was the one who threw the punch,” Rouse said of their reaction.

Videos surfaced following the event taken from several different angles clearly showed what happened, he said.

“When I woke up yesterday, I never thought this was going to happen,” he said.

Trump’s campaign has issued a statement saying it was not involved in the incident, MSNBC reported.

But Jones rejected that, saying Trump’s call to “go home to my mom” could be seen as a death threat if he had known his mother was deceased.

Rouse closed the interview with an exasperated “bless his heart” when asked once more about McGraw.

Updated at 4:39 p.m.