White House Shields Trump as Protester Is Removed

“Trump went on the Jeffrey Epstein plane!” Rob Potylo shouted at Donald Trump’s rally in Chillicothe, Ohio. People booed as security escorted him out of the gymnasium. His protest interrupted a campaign event for Sen. Jon Husted and gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy. The White House responded afterward by defending Trump’s record.

A protest, then a White House defense

Potylo, an anti-Trump musical comedian and political activist who performs in a giraffe onesie and posts parody songs on YouTube, wore a pro-Trump hat at Wednesday’s rally. He later wrote on Instagram, “I'm okay I think! I do it for you!” In another post, he said he sang “The Epstein Plane” song, called Trump “Pumpkin Spice Peeedo,” gave him the finger and “got attacked.” That was Potylo’s account; the base report says security escorted him out as attendees booed.

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told the Daily Beast that Trump had been “totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein.” Bis said Trump released thousands of pages of documents, cooperated with the House Oversight Committee's subpoena request, signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act and called for more investigations into Epstein's Democratic friends. “President Trump has done more for Epstein's victims than anyone before him,” she said.

A released email from an assistant U.S. attorney described a record that accompanied those claims. The email, written in January 2020, said Trump had flown on Epstein’s private jet at least eight times from 1993 to 1996. People later nicknamed the plane the “Lolita Express,” a reference to young women and girls allegedly trafficked aboard it. The prosecutor wrote: “Donald Trump traveled on Epstein's private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware).” In 2024, Trump said he was “never on Epstein’s Plane.”

At the Chillicothe rally, Trump spoke about Husted before stepping away from the microphone. Potylo shouted, and Trump called the heckler “paid” and “not a young guy.” Then he said, “You know, he mentioned Epstein. So I threw Jeffrey Epstein out of the club like 20 years ago because I thought he was a whackjob.” Trump later called his critics “sick, weak people.”

Campaign events, controlled access

Trump canceled a Saturday stop in Kansas and a Sunday event in Iowa, but said a Friday rally in Florida would go ahead. A White House official told the Daily Beast Trump would hold “more than 20 telerallies” before Tuesday’s election. The White House hadn’t explained the change. Asked Thursday, Trump denied fatigue and told a Reuters reporter, “I'm not going to Kansas because he's doing very well,” adding, “You've been following me for two weeks; I feel perfect.”

Potylo celebrated the cancellations on X: “Trump canceled the rest of his rallies! You're welcome America!” The campaign made the decisions to cancel those stops and plan telerallies; the source doesn’t indicate Potylo caused them. The campaign was seeking votes for Husted and Vivek Ramaswamy. Protesters could interrupt the stage only briefly before security removed them.

Other interruptions and encounters

Three separate protests interrupted Thursday’s rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Rows of empty chairs were visible. “They always hit me in the middle of my damn punchline,” Trump said onstage. On Oct. 12 in Youngstown, Ohio, several attendees attacked a woman wearing a “Release the Epstein Files” shirt.

Potylo had also faced arrest at an ICE protest in Minneapolis in January and ICE detention in Portland, Oregon, in October 2005. He told Boston.com he went to Minneapolis to “see what I could do to sort of help the cause and bring my art to the darkest areas.” At these events, people in the crowd protested; security and campaign organizers controlled access to the stage.