Black Trump Supporter And Vietnam Vet Allegedly Shot After Political Argument

A Cleveland military veteran described as a staunch supporter of Donald Trump was allegedly shot Monday night following a heated discussion over the presidential election in a neighborhood bar.

Paul Jones Jr., who reportedly served in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War, was talking politics over a beer with a friend when the suspect — apparently not a fan of the New York real estate mogul and first-time candidate — overheard him and allegedly became upset.

Cleveland, of course, was the site of the Republican National Convention, where Trump accepted the GOP nomination for president last Thursday night.

“He butted in the conversation. The conversation wasn’t directed at him or to him,” Jones, 60, told local media in Cleveland from the hospital where he is recuperating from the attack. Currently in stable condition, he is expected to make a full recovery.

Ohio man, while being interviewed from hospital bed, says he was shot because he's a @realDonaldTrump supporter: https://t.co/jnIb5iqHaM

— WCPO 9 (@WCPO) July 27, 2016

The suspect allegedly went out to his car to retrieve a handgun, came back in and shot Jones in the thigh, and exited the pub.

The shooter is still at large, and Cleveland cops plan to charge him with felonious assault when he is taken into custody.

Reacting to the shooting, Paul Jones Jr.’s mom noted that “I’m quite sure you have a lot of people having their own opinions. But that doesn’t say you should hurt somebody because you have your own opinion.” Mrs. Jones added that “People today, if you don’t think like you do, they’re ready to cause problems.”

Against the backdrop of this week’s DNC convention and its push, among other policies, for gun control, The Daily Caller opined about the Paul Jones Jr. shooting in Cleveland that “Here is a new incident of ‘gun violence’ you probably won’t hear anybody at the Democratic convention decrying tonight or tomorrow.”

Dilbert creator Scott Adams, who has long predicted that “master persuader” Donald Trump will win the November election in a landslide, provides a presumably tongue-in-cheek disclaimer on his website that he has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president “for my personal safety because I live in California where it is dangerous for people to think you are a Trump supporter.”

Emotions are clearly running high in this election season. There are been a number of violent incidents at Trump rallies, for example, must notably in San Jose, California, where 14 Donald Trump fans have filed a class-action lawsuit against city officials for failing to protect them from mob violence outside the rally venue, the San Jose Convention Center, on June 2, the San Jose Mercury News explained. Protests outside the RNC convention last week were relatively mild, to the relief of authorities and delegates.

Although Donald Trump has gained ground in the opinion polls after the Cleveland convention, it is a reasonable question that as to whether in the current highly politicized/polarized environment, a voter would share his or her true feelings with a stranger on the telephone, to an automated data collection device of some kind, or even (to a lesser extent) via an internet survey.

With that in mind perhaps, one Democratic pollster told the Washington Examiner earlier this week that the Hillary Clinton camp is worried about hidden Trump support from those who may be too shy to reveal for whom they are going to vote to outsiders. “The pattern is in the online surveys, even if you control for demographics, Trump does three to nine points better than in telephone surveys. So it really does suggest that there is a secret vote for Donald Trump.”

Donald Trump now has a two-point lead over Hillary Clinton in the Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll, the first time he has pulled ahead of the former secretary of state since May in the Reuters compilation. Since the presidency is won on a state-by-state basis — with particular emphasis on the battleground states — on a path to at least 270 electoral votes, national surveys, assuming appropriate methodology, are less significant at this stage of the campaign. The Real Clear Politics average of 10 national polls gives Trump about a one-point edge over Clinton, but Clinton may benefit from the DNC convention coverage this week.

[Photo by Patrick Semansky/AP Images]