Ann Coulter attacks immigrants as ugly rapists, prompts walkout in Boulder

Ann Coulter attacks immigrants as ugly rapists, prompts walkout in Boulder

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter spent most of the first 15 minutes of her appearance Wednesday at the University of Colorado deriding immigrants as ugly rapists who depress wages and “block vote” for Democrats.

“I’m totally a ‘looksist,’ ” Coulter said, and claimed she could determine who should be allowed in the United States solely by physical appearance. “I told Donald Trump when he was running that he could completely get rid of (Immigration and Naturalization Services) and I’d do it all before breakfast on Tinder,” she said.

The talk was put on by the conservative Turning Point USA as a “free speech” event.
The auditorium on the Boulder campus had filled to almost capacity ahead of Coulter’s appearance, which started about 40 minutes late, but about 100 people stood up and walked out en masse after about 15 minutes.

A man who sat on an aisle and chuckled at Coulter’s jokes about Muslims and immigrants chastised the people as they filed out past him. “You were taking seats away from people who wanted to be here,” the man said.

“Now that we have just adults in the room, I can really cut loose,” Coulter said to cheers from her mostly white supporters.

She opened with a shot at former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has recently taken to criticizing the Republican Party and announced plans to sue big oil companies over climate change, as proof that California is too liberal.

“That’s what you get when you sleep with a Kennedy instead of a porn star,” she said in reference to Schwarzenegger’s ex-wife, Maria Shriver, who is a niece of President John F. Kennedy and, apparently, President Trump’s alleged affair with pornographic actress Stormy Daniels.

Law officers from Boulder, the university and two sheriff’s offices maintained a strong presence in and out of the Cristol Chemistry building, and paper towels and trash cans had been removed from the restrooms out of safety concerns.

The university and Boulder police sent employees to a Coulter event in Mountain View last weekend to help CU prepare for her appearance. The employees reported that the private event in California was well-attended and went off without any disruption.

At Wednesday’s event, among those who left was CU student Mahmoud Aljuhani, who said he and his friends are “fans of free speech, but Coulter was blurring the line between free speech and unproductive hate speech.

“It’s feeding on people’s pain and not providing any solutions,” Aljuhani said.

Aly Badran, another CU student, also said that he welcomes free speech and wanted to see Coulter talk so he could understand her point of view.

“There was nothing in the talk that was fruitful for us to learn from,” he said. “We did come in with an open mind.”

Inside the auditorium, a smattering of people wearing the “Make America Great Again” hats associated with Trump could be seen taking their seats, as well as people wearing “Black Lives Matter” shirts and a homemade shirt denouncing the National Rifle Association. Numerous women donning hijabs, the traditional Muslim head scarf, also came to see the speech.

CU student Dillon Stevens came to the event in his red MAGA hat, which he said he doesn’t wear every day because he is harassed for it in Boulder. He claimed that he had been spit on off campus for his hat choice.

Stevens said he saw CNN anchor Anderson Cooper speak on campus earlier this month and came out to see Coulter on Wednesday night — not because he agrees with everything she said, but because he wanted to hear some of his political viewpoints affirmed.

“Being a conservative at a liberal town and a liberal university is pretty tough,” he said. “It’s pretty hard for me to voice my views because I get called a racist and a misogynist.”

Coulter, who is at times controversial, last appeared at CU in 2003 and spoke at Macky Auditorium, and a Daily Camera story at the time noted that tension existed between Coulter and the generally liberal audience.

CU spokesman Ryan Huff said no university funds or student organization funds were going toward Coulter’s speaking fee, and it was paid for by a “private group.” A representative of Turning Point did not answer a question regarding the fee or what group paid for the presentation and walked away from a Camera reporter when the questions were asked.

An attempt to reach Coulter’s booking agent was not successful, and its website did not make her fees public, but stated she requires two first-class airplane tickets, two hotel rooms, transportation and local expenses.

The New York Times reported in August that Coulter was expected to receive $20,000 for a speech at the University of California Berkeley that was later canceled.