For You
Settings
news Alerts
There are no new alerts at this time
At least two men attending President Donald Trump’s rally in Ohio attacked a female protester in a “senseless” confrontation decried by the mayor of Youngstown on Tuesday.
A pair of men, one in an adjustable baseball cap and a bald man in a dark T-shirt, put hands on a woman Monday during the GOP event inside Covelli Centre in Youngstown, multiple videos of the incident showed.
The man in a blue baseball cap pawed at the woman, wearing a shirt reading “Release the Epstein Files,” and pushed her down before the balding man jumped on her.
He appeared to throw multiple punches at the woman’s face, pull her hair and put her in a headlock before uniformed law enforcement officers arrived to take her away.
“It must be emphatically stated that senseless (political) violence has absolutely NO place in our community or in our democratic process,” Youngstown Mayor Derrick McDowell said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
“Regardless of someone’s political affiliation or their point of view, every person attending a public event has the right to do so without fear of being assaulted or threatened,” he wrote. “I condemn this senseless conduct unequivocally.”
Youngstown police were not at the event, as security was provided by the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office and the Secret Service, McDowell said.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone was arrested or charged. Representatives for the sheriff and the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.
The violence briefly delayed Trump’s speech as he watched it unfold.
He mocked the protester’s weight and said, without evidence, that she must have been paid to be there.
“You know they’re paid protesters,” Trump said. “That’s a very low-class protester.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump is in Ohio seeking to boost GOP hopes in what has been a reliably red state. Sen. Jon Husted has been trailing in polls against Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown, and onetime Trump rival Vivek Ramaswamy is locked in a close battle for the governor’s office against Democrat Amy Acton.
Senior Breaking News Reporter
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC