The man who went to a SE Portland bar a week ago Friday and was beaten by Portland Professional Protesters™ while wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat went to another bar before the beating and got into a shouting match with patrons there.
Now Antifa and “The Oregonian” newspaper think they’ve unearthed a “gotcha!” moment.
Here’s some of the background as I reported here:
KPTV and Gateway Pundit report that Luke Lenzner was on a date night with his wife and walked into Growler’s Taproom on SE Hawthorne in inner SE Portland in the early hours of August 17th. The bartender told him they weren’t serving anymore so Lezner left. As he did so, surveillance tape shows he pointed to his hat.
VictoriaTaft.com
As I recounted:
Apparently, that red hat was just too much for Portland Professional Protesters™ who met Lezner out on the side walk, “circled him,” attacked him and then cold cocked him.
VictoriaTaft.com
Lezner told KPTV:
“I got mobbed by everybody that was in that bar outside. People came from the inside out – just circled me and my wife.”
After the beating and the understandable outrage over the beat-down, including a hate-rain on Antifa, “The Oregonian” ‘found’ a video that the reporter obviously believed provided more context to the story about the tap room beating.
It seems Lenzner and his wife went to another bar before going to the tap room. At “The Vern,” Lenzner was seen yelling at customers:
The video shows an outburst by Lenzner – and a boorish one at that. He yells at patrons who lustily yell back at him. But notice where the 1:18 video starts. It starts after Lenzner starts his braying.
“The Oregonian” reported that the man who took the video, Michael Radosevich, “locked eyes” with Lezner [sic] and believed he was “looking for a fight”:
The Oregonian
“The second I locked eyes with him there was no doubt in my mind he was looking for a fight,” Michael Radosevich told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Tuesday. Footage captured by Radosevich shows the man hurling expletives and pointing at people inside The Vern on Friday night while claiming he served in the military and had been disrespected.
Maybe he was looking for a fight and didn’t get one. Doesn’t it make you want to know what happened before his outburst?
The Oregonian doesn’t, else that line of questioning would have been pursued and included in its post.
Antifa surely does not care what happened before.
After all … the hat…
Portland Antifa members and allies (forget deleting them, boys, I have them screen capped) reacted to the video by saying Lenzner deserved the beat down:
“Guy goes to a bar to troll people and gets beat up [sic] Well [sic] maybe he should have went [sic] to a bar to troll people [sic] Can’t really have sympathy for people looking for fights that get them [sic] That’s like having Sympathy [sic] for the school bully when he gets checked [sic]”
Twitter
Antifa allies (or members) waxed psychological about the possible underpinnings of Lenzner’s actions which resulted in his beat down at the hands of Portland Professional Protesters™:
They believe Lenzner went on a date night with his wife to pick a fight. Let’s assume they’re right for a second. No fight occurred at “The Vern.” Lenzner was boisterous and called out the customers, at one point actually lying about his ‘military service (he’s not a veteran),’ for which he apologized later.
I’d love to know what happened before his outburst.
Then, Lenzner went to the tap house with his hat on and was beaten by Portland Professional Protesters™ who have been arrested at protests before.
Over the years, I’ve interviewed some pretty spectacular guests. Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson, and Andy McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted the terrorists who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, have both presented me with strains of the same question, which I think is pertinent now:
What would it take to get you to [murder/commit and act of terrorism/beat up a guy in a MAGA hat]?
And that’s the question left unanswered by this video, the patrons and even Mr. Lenzner.
The answer should be that it would take nothing to get you to beat up a guy with a MAGA hat.
If Lenzner went to troll people at a bar on Friday night, that’s uncivil and not nice. It’s boorish, inadvisable and the height of douchebaggery.
Things have deteriorated to such an extent in Portland these days that people don’t even stop to ask the question. And that didn’t start with Lenzner.