I think the surprise element to this story is that there is someone in Portland wearing a MAGA hat. Beyond that, the reaction of other Portland natives barely qualifies as news, but I’m putting it here for posterity. The victim, in this latest case, is a man named Luke Lenzner who was wearing the hat while looking to get some food with his wife. The couple walked into a place called Growler’s Taproom after midnight and were told it was closing. On his way out, Lenzner said he was mobbed and assaulted by a group of people from the bar. From Fox 12:

Security camera footage provided by the bar shows the couple did try and make their way in, but it doesn’t appear to be very busy. In fact, bar staff say they were already done serving for the night and that they told the couple they were closing.

Lenzner attests that things escalated between people outside the bar. That’s when police say 22-year-old Leopold A. Hauser and 23-year-old Adebisi A. Okuneye assaulted Lenzner and his wife.

“Surrounding me, like literally surrounding me, pushing me. I’m just trying to get through, trying to stop the person from hitting me, from taking my hat, and then I get sucker punched,” Lenzner told FOX 12.

Police were called to the scene around 12:50 am. Hauser and Okuneye had left but Lenzner gave police a license plate number and they were arrested and booked for assault.

The caveat here is that the bartender claims that Lenzner started the altercation by saying something which set people off. Fox 12 doesn’t reveal what Lenzner allegedly said but in the video, you can see that he points to his hat as he’s walking out.

For his part, Lenzner doesn’t seem to be denying he said something but claims he never became physical with anyone at the bar even after he was mobbed and assaulted. So this looks like a case where some people in Portland don’t understand the dividing line between speech and violence.

But given the number of these incidents we’ve seen it’s not just people in Portland having a hard time with the concept of free speech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLPoKgGRNwg