Jussie Smollett, the gay and black star of TV show Empire, has said that he believes he was assaulted in Chicago two weeks ago because he is an outspoken critic of Donald Trump.

In his first detailed interview since the alleged 29 January assault, Smollett was asked by Good Morning America on ABC News why he thinks he was targeted. In his reply, he referred to Trump by his moniker as the 45th president of the United States.

“I come really, really hard against 45,” he said. “I come really, really hard against his administration and I don’t hold my tongue.”

During the interview, Smollett was played a clip of Trump responding to news of the alleged attack on the actor and R&B singer. The president said: “I think that’s horrible. It doesn’t get worse as far as I’m concerned.”

The actor said he appreciated that Trump had not brushed over the event, but added that he had no doubt that his assailants were motivated by his criticism of the president. With ABC News censoring the comment on taste grounds, Smollett said: “I can only go off of their words. Who says, ‘[bleep] Empire, this Maga country,’ [bleep] ties a noose around your neck and pours bleach on to you? And this is just a friendly fight?”

Shortly after ABC News aired, Chicago police announced a potentially important development in their investigation. They said that two men had been detected in surveillance film in the area of the alleged attack and were now being questioned, though they were not being treated as suspects.

Important for media reporting: The people of interest are alleged to be in the area where a crime was reported. They are not considered suspects at this time as they are currently being questioned by detectives. We remain in communication with the alleged victim. pic.twitter.com/JuH1kYRTYV — Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) February 14, 2019

Smollett grew emotional in the TV interview and became teary. He said: “I will never be the man that this did not happen to. I am forever changed.”

His family has said he suffered a hate attack, and the actor has been supported by a surge of sympathy on social media. But doubters have also questioned his account.

He addressed some of those doubts in the interview. Asked why he had taken so long to contact police after the incident he said: “There’s a level of pride there. We live in a society where as a gay man you are considered somehow to be weak and I am not weak, and we as a people are not weak.”

At first he refused to hand over his cellphone to police for forensic investigation. He said: “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to do that. I have private pictures and videos and numbers. My partner’s number, my family’s number, my cast mates’ numbers, my friends’ numbers, my private emails, songs, voicemails.”

Police have said that he has now handed over records of his phone activity at the time of the alleged attack, but that it was so heavily redacted that they needed further information.

Smollett said that on the night he had walked detectives down to the site of the alleged attack and had seen a surveillance camera right above the spot. But the camera was found to be pointing in the wrong direction to capture anything.

Smollett said he was “pissed off” not only by his attackers but also by those who had questioned the veracity of his account. “How can you doubt that, how can you not believe that, it’s the truth? And then it became, oh, it’s not that you don’t want to believe that this is the truth, you don’t even want to see the truth.”

He added: “It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim or a Mexican or someone black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me a lot more. That says a lot about the place that we are in our country right now.”

The actor, best known for his role as the gay character Jamal Lyon on the Fox TV show, said the attack happened when he was out looking for food in Chicago having just landed in the city. He was walking back to his apartment from a Subways franchise, and on the phone to his manager, when he heard someone shout at him “Empire!” from behind.

“I don’t answer to Empire so I kept walking,” he said.

He said that his assailant had used the phrase coined by Donald Trump, Make America Great Again, Maga, as he laid into the actor. “I turned around and I see the attacker masked and he said: ‘This Maga country [bleep]’ and punched me right in the face so I punched his ass right back. We started tussling and it was very icy, we ended up tussling by the stairs, fighting, fighting, fighting.”

A second attacker, Smollett said, started kicking him in the back. “Then it just stopped and they ran off. I saw where they ran off … Then I looked down and I see there was a rope around my neck. I noticed the rope around my neck and I started screaming. There’s a [bleep] rope around my neck!”

Chicago police, who have scoured through hundreds of hours of surveillance footage from Chicago street cameras, have found film of Smollett arriving back at his apartment with the rope still round his neck.

The actor said he had been unable to give detectives a good description of his assailants as their faces were obscured. “You have to understand it’s Chicago in winter – people can wear ski masks and nobody’s going to question that.”