Mark-David Hutt, founder of the LGBTrump Facebook group, was arrested twice in one weekend for defacing the Black Lives Matter mural painted on New York City’s Fifth Avenue. The mural sits just underneath Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, where the president still maintains an apartment.
“Saturday, I splashed red. Sunday, I splashed white. & on Monday….” Hutt wrote in a July 27 tweet, which included video of the vandalism.
Hutt, 33, splashed red and white paint over the yellow letters on July 25 and 26 and was arrested and charged with criminal mischief on each occasion, Sergeant Mary Frances O’Donnell, a New York Police Department spokesperson, confirmed to NBC News on Monday.
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The mural has been defaced several times since it was first painted in early July.
Hutt is the founder of the LGBTrump Gays for Trump Facebook page, which has nearly 14,000 followers. The page describes the group as a “political organization” and a “group of proud, patriotic Trump supporters.”
However, LGBTQ Trump supporters — and LGBTQ Republicans more broadly — are in the minority. In the 2016 presidential election, Clinton received 78 percent of the LGBTQ vote, compared to 14 percent for Trump, according to exit polls. And in 2018, exit polls found just 17 percent of LGBTQ voters chose their Republican House candidates.
The trend goes back years, with LGBTQ voters consistently telling pollsters they prefer Democrats over Republicans. In fact, from 2014 to 2018, the percent of LGBTQ voters identifying as Democrats increased 13 points, while the percentage identifying as Republican dropped by 7 points.
President Trump, however, is not without his vocal LGBTQ supporters. Gay former liberal Brandon Straka, founder of the #WalkAway movement, was profiled by NBC News in 2018 for his efforts to get others to “walk away” from the Democratic party and support the GOP. And in a reversal from its 2016 decision, LGBTQ conservative group Log Cabin Republicans endorsed Trump for the upcoming election, though the move caused several of the group’s leaders to depart.
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