NEW YORK, NEW YORK — For the second straight day, a man attempted to climb Trump Tower, but this time around it ended in dramatic fashion.
When 32-year-old Miguel Rodriguez attempted to scale the glass windows of the building in which Republican presidential candidate and alleged billionaire Donald Trump works and lives, witnesses say he told them that he was doing it as a way to bring attention to immigration issues. However, even though Rodriguez attempted to climb Trump Tower using suction cups, in the same manner as the young, white man who did so the previous day, he was met with a much different fate. Armed building security shot Miguel before he could even get the first suction cup affixed to the window.
“I was just pulling the first suction cup out of my backpack when I heard a loud bang,” Miguel told us via Skype this morning, “and I hit the ground in sharp, agonizing pain.” Rodriguez says having never been shot before, he didn’t “put two and two together” and security rushed over to him, demanding he keep his hands away from his body. They were shouting questions at him.
Shep McWilliams, a spokesman for the security company that Trump employs told the press the incident was “regrettable but unavoidable.”
“The first guy,” McWilliams told reporters, “was a different situation altogether. Our guards could just tell by looking at him that he wasn’t a danger or threat to Mr. Trump.” Rodriguez on the other hand “just seemed more dangerous” to the security detail working Trump Towers this morning, and he was “neutralized for the safety of everyone” around the building.
When asked by the press how the guards were able to ascertain that the first climber wasn’t a threat, but Miguel was, McWilliams said “just by certain exterior factors.” He said that Trump has “made it very, very clear” to his company that “rapists, drug dealers, and murderers are to be stopped from entering at all costs.”
“So when our guards saw that the second climber was clearly from the place where the murderers, rapists, and drug dealers come from,” McWilliams said, “they exercised their discretion and incapacitated the subject.”
A reporter for the Topeka Free Beacon handed McWilliams four pictures of random people the security spokesman had never seen before, three white and three Hispanic, and asked which he’d let scale the wall of the building before apprehending them, and which he’d neutralize. They were arranged so that every other picture was a Hispanic male.
“Let ’em in, shoot ’em, let ’em in, shoot ’em,” McWilliams said, “in that order.” Then a fifth picture of a black man was handed to him. McWilliams asked if he was “part of BLM or any other clearly dangerous organization of activists.” The reporter told him for the purposes of this exercise, he had to judge solely on the person’s appearance. McWilliams said without flinching, “Shoot to kill, then. Just to be on the safe side.”
Rodriguez, for his part, says that he isn’t mad at Trump or the security guards that shot him.
“I guess that’s just what I get for looking a certain way,” Rodriguez said, “I mean, this is America after all. That’s one of our binding principles, judging people you just met and assuming they’re out to harm you.”
Miguel is expected to make a full recovery, but said he will probably move to Canada if Trump wins.
Follow James on Twitter @JamboSchlarmbo.
