Video captured by POLITICO's Ben Schreckinger at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Protests disrupt Trump at ritzy Manhattan fundraiser

NEW YORK — Multiple waves of protest disrupted Donald Trump’s speech at a private fundraiser for Pennsylvania Republicans at the upscale Plaza Hotel on Friday, as fallout from the businessman’s call to suspend the entrance of Muslims into the United States spreads.

While hundreds of protesters and curious tourists mingled outside the hotel, several burst into the closed room upstairs where hundreds of Pennsylvania Republicans had paid $1,000-$2,500 a plate for at a state party fundraiser featuring Trump.


After a scuffle in the room, which interrupted Trump’s speech and upended some furnishings, security pushed the protesters, who carried a banner reading, “Islamophobia + Arabophobia are violence,” down a staircase to the ground floor.

There, protesters and police continued their scuffle. One protester fell to the floor twice and as the group was pushed out of the building along with at least two reporters who were caught in the fray.

Back upstairs Jordan Wouk, a New York Democrat, along with his wife and two other protesters who had obtained tickets to the event, stood up and started a separate disturbance by reciting a revised version of German pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous poem about the rise of the Nazi Party, which in one common version begins, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a socialist.” The protesters recited the first few lines of their version, which began “First they came for the Muslims,” before being ejected by security.

As they were being removed, Wouk heard a third protest begin as two women at the event broke out in song.

Inside the room, where few members of Pennsylvania’s Republican donor class count themselves Trump supporters, the sporadic protests worked to the businessman’s advantage. “The protesters actually united the crowd,” said a Republican operative who declined to provide his name. “Because when you have an outside force come in, it gives you something to rally around.”