Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Fox News on Sunday morning that a Black Lives Matter protester thrown out of his Birmingham rally perhaps deserved to be "roughed up" for being "obnoxious."
In response to being asked about the protester being "roughed up," Trump said: "I don't know. Rough up? Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing."
"The man that was -- I don't know, you say 'roughed up' -- he was so obnoxious and so loud. He was screaming. I had 10,000 people in the room yesterday -- 10,000 people. And this guy started screaming by himself," Trump continued.
"I have lot of fans and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy, who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble," he said.
Mercutio Southall Jr., a well-known Birmingham activist, heckled Trump during the rally. He said he was punched and then pushed down by attendees.
He said the incident began after a Trump supporter knocked a phone out of the hand of another activist who was recording the event.
"They said 'Go home, n****r, and somebody punched me,'' Southall told AL.com. "I punched back. You know don't do the turn-the-other-cheek (expletive)."
He said people encircled him, and he was being pushed and punched from every direction. Someone hit him from behind, and the next thing he knew, he was at the bottom of pile. He was kicked in the stomach, and the chest, both men and women. "I got enough people off of me that I was able to get up a little bit,'' he said. "Somebody got behind me and started trying to choke me out."
A CNN reporter captured part of the incident on cell phone video.
See related: Video shows black protester pushed down, kicked at Donald Trump's Birmingham rally
Southall was expelled from the building.
Birmingham police are said to be investigating the incident.