As Donald Trump’s rallies got more popular, they appeared to get more violent as well. Things appeared to come to a head this past spring and early summer as his supporters got increasingly confrontational – sometimes, violent – when gathered into one space. At times, their passion resembled a rally of another sort [*cough* Klan *cough*].

This built up tension came to a head at multiple moments, including when a Trump supporter by the name of James Franklin McGraw was caught on video both sucker punching a black man named Rakeem Jones and later threatening him on video.

Months later, the two men have apparently put their differences aside and reconciled, according to CNN.

While McGraw appeared in court on Wednesday to apologize for his actions and even receive a hug from Jones before being sentenced to a suspended 30 days in jail and a year of unsupervised probation.

“You know what you did, and I know what I did. I’m not going to say you were wrong or I’m wrong,” McGraw reportedly told Jones. “I hate it worse than anything in the world. If I met you in the street and the same thing occurred, I would have said, ‘Go on home. One of us will get hurt.’ That’s what I would have said. But we are caught up in a political mess today, and you and me, we got to heal our country.”

Many who heard about the exchange were displeased and questioned whether or not it was staged to garner more leniency from the court.

“It was genuine,”  Jones said. “Even if it wasn’t what people expected him to say or felt like he should have said, it was him all the way around.”

Still, this interaction raises the question of exactly how forgiving one should be of people that wish them harm – in this case, actually going as far as to act on it. Some are sure to say that this is the approach we should take to heal a currently broken country. Others will likely treat it as another example of people of color being forced to look the other way after being wronged.

 

Photo via YouTube