“You put that man’s finger on the nuclear button,” a woman told a Donald Trump supporter on an Alaska Airlines flight before she and her husband were asked to leave.
A woman was kicked off an Alaska Airlines flight on Saturday for apparently insulting a Donald Trump supporter.
The Trump supporter, Scott Kotesky, recorded part of the incident that took place on a flight from Baltimore to Seattle. He posted the video on Facebook where it has received more than three million views as of Monday.
An Alaska Airlines spokesperson confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the woman was removed from the flight for berating a passenger sitting next to her.
"We can confirm that a disruptive passenger was removed from flight 761 from Baltimore to Seattle prior to departure," Alaska Airlines said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.
"The female passenger was insulting passengers in the boarding area and then onboard the aircraft. Several passengers expressed concerns about her behavior. We stand by our employees’ decision to remove the disruptive passenger," the statement said.
According to Kotesky's Facebook post, the woman asked him if he was there to celebrate or protest Trump's inauguration as he was taking his seat.
Kotesky claimed he told her, "I came here to celebrate democracy ma'am."
The video showed Kotesky telling the flight attendant that the woman next to him "called me names and insulted me just for sitting down on this seat saying that I came here to celebrate today."
The woman told the attendant that she wanted Kotesky to change his seat, to which the attendant replied, "You don't have that right."
The woman and her husband were seen leaving the flight as other passengers applauded and chanted, "USA, USA!," in a second video posted by Kotesky.
The airlines spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the couple's tickets were refunded but that the airlines did not book the couple on another flight.
The incident was seized upon by several conservative outlets and blogs as a sign of the woman's "liberal" intolerance.
Kotesky alleged that before he started recording the video, the woman called him a "bigot" and told him she was going to "get drunk and puke in your lap."
Kotesky said that he was "touched" that many passengers, who were not Trump supporters, defended him.
"As the lady was removed I saw that I was surrounded by blacks, Latinos, Asians, and whites, all who had chimed in asking her to be removed and who had defended me," Kotesky said in his Facebook post. "I was touched and moved knowing later that not all these people were trump supporters."
"It truly was a great demonstration of AMERICA and its people coming together and standing up for one another," he wrote.
Kotesky did not respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/2iWklZB
No comments:
Post a Comment