CNN’s Sara Murray recounted some of the scarier moments she’s experienced while following Donald Trump as an embed for the network Monday, including a couple unpleasant encounters with Trump rallygoers and the car she traveled in.
In a piece titled “Anger unleashed: On the trail in Trump’s America,” Murray paints a bleak picture of Trump rallies where protesters and supporters clash with each other and with security. She also details how it feels to be in an environment where the press is so virulently hated.
“Time and time again, I have seen Americans from both sides of the aisle fail to treat one another with respect and dignity,” Murray wrote. “I’ve watched them fail to treat one another as human beings.”
Murray recounts one moment when Trump called her out and mocked her at a rally, adding that when the press enters a rally the attendees boo them and flip them off. Murray said that in response, she just smiles.
“It didn’t happen in a vacuum. The anger and emotion against the establishment —whether that meant politicians, the press or the financial elite—didn’t build overnight,” she wrote.
But there have been times, she said, that the rallygoers’ displeasure turned into action. Murray said that someone tampered with the cables of a CNN live truck during New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s Trump endorsement in February, and that her team struggled because the cables were cut twice.
Murray also said that someone followed her producer to CNN’s car at an event in Florida, and when the two emerged from that event later, the car had been keyed.
Despite this, Murray said she finds small ways to keep her faith in humanity going—like when she landed in Cincinnati and passengers watched in reverence as a fallen soldier returned.
“Amid the chaos of that Trump rally, all I could think about was that solemn moment the night before,” she wrote.
“That’s the kind of country we want to be,” she continued.
