Supporters and opponents of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have clashed in the city of San Diego in California.<\/p>\n
Police declared a gathering outside the city’s convention centre unlawful and made 35 arrests, as stones and water bottles were thrown.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump was in the city near the Mexican border to hold a rally ahead of the 7 June California primary.<\/p>\n
He has pledged to build a border wall to keep out illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n
‘Fantastic job’<\/strong> Dozens of police officers in riot gear had been deployed to separate them.<\/p>\n Some protesters scaled a wall of the centre to throw water bottles at police.<\/p>\n After ordering the crowds to disperse, police then moved them away from the city’s Gaslamp Quarter. San Diego’s population is about one-third Latino and hundreds of thousands of people cross the border with Mexico legally each day.<\/p>\n One San Diego protester, Martha McPhail, told the local City News Service: “I am opposed to the hateful, bigoted, racist language of Donald Trump and his arrogance and intolerance.<\/p>\n “I’m for all of our people – all races, sexes, genders, military veterans – and he’s divisive.”<\/p>\n But Trump supporter Riley Hansen defended the controversial businessman.<\/p>\n “My Dad always told me you need a businessman as president. I like his policies,” he told CNS. Mr Trump tweeted to the police after the event: “Fantastic job on handling the thugs who tried to disrupt our very peaceful and well attended rally.”<\/p>\n Mr Trump told an earlier rally in Fresno that California had “no drought”, despite the state seeing its driest ever four-year period.<\/p>\n After speaking to farmers who complained of a lack of water for crops, he said: “They don’t understand, nobody understands it. There is no drought. They turn the water out into the ocean.”<\/p>\n The reference appeared to be about water discharged from the Sacramento River into the San Francisco Bay, partly to protect endangered species.<\/p>\n Mr Trump said that if he came to power he would “start opening up the water” and ensure farmers had enough for crops.<\/p>\n The comments sparked some mockery on social media – a number of tweets carried links to Charlton Heston in his role as Moses parting the Red Sea in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments.<\/p>\n Mr Trump is running unopposed in California after his Republican rivals pulled out and he reached the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination. It has yet to be formalised.<\/p>\n ‘Bully’<\/strong> “As much as I want to debate Bernie Sanders – and it would be an easy payday – I will wait to debate the first place finisher in the Democratic Party, probably Crooked Hillary Clinton, or whoever it may be,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.<\/p>\n Mr Sanders told reporters on the campaign trail that he hoped Mr Trump would change his mind. Mr Trump said the Democratic nominating process was “rigged” – and that Mrs Clinton and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Deborah Wasserman Schultz would not allow Mr Sanders to win the nomination.<\/p>\n The latest opinion polls suggest Mrs Clinton leads Mr Trump by about four percentage points.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Supporters and opponents of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have clashed in the city of San Diego in California. Police declared a gathering outside the city’s convention centre unlawful and made 35 arrests, as stones and water bottles were thrown. Mr Trump was in the city near the Mexican border to hold a rally ahead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":217672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/217672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe skirmishes flared as the convention centre emptied following Mr Trump’s rally, and supporters and opponents met in the streets, jeering and heckling each other<\/p>\n
\nPolice try to separate supporters and opponents of Donald Trump in San Diego, California. Photo: 27 May 2016.<\/p>\n
\nThe San Diego Police Department said that 35 arrests had been made and there was no damage to property and no injuries reported.<\/p>\n
\nEarlier on Friday, Mr Trump backed out of an offer to debate with Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.<\/p>\n
\n“Well Mr Trump, what are you afraid of?” he said, calling the Republican nominee a “bully”.<\/p>\n