Is It Safe to Wear a MAGA Hat in 2019?

Over the past year, we’ve seen story after story of people being assaulted over something as simple as what they’re wearing. And no, it’s not a hijab or a Chicago Bears jersey. It’s a MAGA hat.

I want to run through a couple of these stories over the past 10 months to construct a bit of a narrative. It’s possible, dare I say likely, that you’re already familiar with some of these stories; regardless, I still want to cover them briefly because I think it’s important for us to see this coverage all together in order to draw some important conclusions.

CASE #1: Massachusetts Meltdown in a Mexican Restaurant

This one comes with footage:

In the video, we see 41-year-old Rosaine Santos swipe at the hat of 23-year-old Bryton Turner; she’s then apprehended by some of the MANY police officers in the Mexican restaurant in which the altercation took place.

Apparently, leading up to this, Santos had been yelling unprovoked at Turner over his cap. I repeat, unprovoked: Turner had done nothing up to this point besides sit down and order his food, according to a bartender at the restaurant. What kind of person thinks it’s okay to start harassing a person over the political message on their hat? I mean, you’d have to be pretty heavily intoxicated to think that was an acceptable way to behave, right?

“I had a little bit to drink maybe that’s the reason that I couldn’t walk away but being discriminated for so many times in my life, I just had to stand up for myself,” she [Santos] said. “He’s not a victim. I am the victim. I have been bullied, OK?”

Oh.

So not only did she admit readily that alcohol may have been a factor, but she also somehow manages to believe SHE’S the victim? Unbelievable, and yet, so totally on brand for this type of person.

CASE #2: Elderly Man Attacked in New Jersey

There’s really not much to this one, to be honest. An 81-year-old man “suffered minor injuries” after a confrontation over his MAGA hat outside a supermarket in New Jersey. An 81-YEAR-OLD. Absolutely disgusting.

CASE #3: Maryland Immigrant Beaten and Robbed

Atsu Nable, a naturalized US citizen originally from West Africa, has been “a long-time supporter of President Trump.” He attended campaign events, volunteered at the president’s inauguration, and proudly wore his MAGA hat. He is a man who loves America enough to make it his home and really believes in the president– a stellar example of patriotism. He certainly has my respect.

The same could not be said of the two men that attacked him over his hat:

Atsu Nable told FOX5 DC that he was the one in the MAGA hat. He said the two men approached him Saturday in Germantown, outraged he was wearing it. He said one of the men struck him from behind, leaving him shocked.

“I was like, ‘Why are you doing this?’” Nable said. “They said, ‘No, the hat,’ and they started punching me on my head.”

A pair of utter cowards attacked from behind and beat Nable until he fell to the ground. Then they robbed him.

CASE #4: New Jersey Native Suffers Fractured Cheekbone For Wearing MAGA Hat Home

Jahangir Turan isn’t “a hat guy.” He purchased a MAGA hat from Trump Plaza to place on his TV at home, and decided to wear it on his way back to Hoboken from New York City. But on that commute, Turan claimed he was “accosted by a group of ’18-20′ people on Canal Street who ‘chanted anti-Trump stuff’ like ‘f— Trump’ and ‘f— you’ because of his MAGA hat.”

During the attack, he was pushed into a scaffolding pole, which fractured his cheekbone. He found this out the following day, having initially refused medical treatment; but when his condition worsened overnight, he decided to go to the hospital.

CASE #5: Man Beaten in Bathroom in California Over MAGA Hat

This headline has been floating around the past few days; its most recent iteration informs us that the attacker has been arrested.

David Delgado is facing charges related to “robbery and battery with serious injury” for assaulting a man in a restaurant bathroom because he was wearing a hat that said, in Russian, “Make America Great Again.”

“The suspect approached the victim in the restroom and questioned him about the meaning of the hat, after which the suspect repeatedly punched the victim in the face causing the victim to fall to the ground,” police said in a news release.

After the victim fell to the ground, police said Delgado continued to punch the victim before eventually stealing his hat and fleeing from the restaurant.

Yeah, you read that right. He beat a man to the ground, then continued to punch him. For nothing more offensive than a hat.

CASE #6: ????

What I’ve attempted to illustrate here is a pattern of behavior over eight months, unconfined by state or region, unrelated to demographics. There was a white native-born American. There was a black immigrant. There was an elderly man. The only constant in all of these stories is what the victim had on their head.

The other thing we see here is escalation. Case #1 was a drunk woman smacking at the cap in question, but by case #5 we have serious assault and injury. Why is this still happening? Why is it getting worse? How long until someone suffers serious brain injury because someone took umbrage at their MAGA hat? How long until someone dies?

The sad thing is, we know exactly why. We’ve been drowning in the rhetoric of the left while the media chooses to focus on the “hateful rhetoric” of the hundreds of debunked, contextless “quotes” from President Trump. We’ve been barraged from all sides by false claims of hate crimes that garner the outrage and condemnation of every liberal with access to the news, up to and sometimes even after the alleged events are proven fabricated. (Jussie Smollett, anyone?)

But when it comes to the Nables, the Turans, the Turners, the undisclosed victims of assault– attacks that I won’t call “hate crimes” because I find the term useless, but CERTAINLY must meet the left’s metrics for being defined as such– what do we get from politicians? Radio silence, if we’re lucky. When we’re not, well, we get things like Maxine Waters actually ENCOURAGING her supporters to harass political opponents.

I don’t mean to suggest that Democratic politicians or the mainstream media are to blame for these attacks. It would be insane to hold a person accountable for actions they had nothing to do with or even actively condemned, even if their rhetoric may suggest support for such behavior. But at some point, you have to address the culture at large that’s fostering, even encouraging this behavior, and it’s not hard to see who’s putting this rhetoric in motion.

We owe it to every person who’s suffered for their MAGA hats, their political opinions, their conservatism, libertarianism, anything-but-leftism, to hold our politicians, our media, our peers, our culture accountable. We owe it to each other to take a hard look at ourselves and ask ourselves, honestly, what role we have to play in the polarization of America. This can’t keep happening. I don’t want to add a case #6.