Last weekend, an attempted bombing occurred outside Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York City’s Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani (D). During a heated clash between anti-Islam protesters and a group of counterprotesters, two teenagers from Pennsylvania — 18-year-old Emir Balat and 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi — allegedly threw two improvised explosive devices toward the crowd.
Fortunately, neither bomb detonated, and no one was injured. Both Balat and Kayumi were arrested and charged with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, using a weapon of mass destruction, transportation of explosive materials, and unlawful possession of destructive devices.
TPUSA Frontlines photojournalist Gabriel Victal was present at the scene when the attack occurred. But the attempted bombing, he says, “wasn't the first instance" of violence.
On this episode of “The John Doyle Show,” Victal gives his first-person account of the incident, sharing on-the-ground observations you won’t hear from mainstream outlets.
“There were other scenarios where basically [the counterprotesters] were beating the crap out of right-wing journalists that they discovered were ‘Zionist.’ They were chasing them out, saying, ‘He's a Zionist. Get out of here,”’ Victal recounts.
It was when he and his partner were editing this footage that the attempted bombing occurred.
“We were editing that footage, and out of nowhere … I see this Muslim individual jump the fence, which he was not supposed to cross, and, you know, a big kind of smoke comes out. … Everybody's looking around, saying, ‘Bomb bomb bomb!’” he tells Doyle, laughing that despite the chaos, his “first instinct as a journalist [was to] start recording.”
One of the people yelling “bomb” was a “transsexual,” who immediately began trying to assist the alleged attacker after he was apprehended, Victal reports.
“Didn't that same transsexual also yell to the guy when he was apprehended something like, ‘Who's your emergency contact?’” asks Doyle.
“Yes. … This happens all the time,” says Victal. “Every time someone on their side, where they perceive to be an ally of theirs, they are always trying to get them out of trouble.”
“Every time we're in Minneapolis, it's the same thing,” he says. “Somebody gets arrested for, you know, punching a police officer or attacking a journalist or whatever it may be, and they're always trying to defend them, have them call [Monarca Rapid Response]” — a community-run rapid response team that mobilizes specifically for sightings of federal immigration enforcement activity.
“Then there are lawyers who will go out of their way to defend these people,” Victal adds.
To hear more details of his firsthand account, watch the full interview above.
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