McCain reacts to DC brawl: Throw Turkey's ambassador 'the hell out'

Reaction to the trademark thuggery of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s security detail continued to grow today as US Sen. John MCain, a veteran voice on foreign policy issues in Congress, called for the expulsion of Turkey’s ambassador. “We should throw their ambassador the hell out of the United States of America. This kind of thing cannot go unresponded to diplomatically,” McCain, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told MSNBC in an interview. McCain also called for legal action.

District of Columbia police have teamed up with the State Department and the Secret Service to investigate the bloody fracas outside the Turkish ambassador’s Sheridan Circle residence on Tuesday. At least nine people, including two women, who were chanting pro-Kurdish slogans, were injured after being brutally assaulted by pro-Erdogan demonstrators and individuals thought to be members of the Turkish leader’s security detail. The Wall Street Journal’s Dion Nissenbaum, who was deported from Turkey earlier this year after being held incommunicado for three days over a tweet, reported that the State Department is exploring ways to block members of Erdogan’s security detail from re-entering the United States.

Video footage of the incident suggests that some of the security guards were repeat offenders who were involved in violence outside the Brookings Institution last year while Erdogan was delivering a speech there.

After analyzing footage of the melee, the online investigative journalism collective BellingCat concluded, “The Turkish security officials did not just hold back or try to protect themselves from the protesters, but sought to hurt them, including multiple officials who deliberately kicked defenseless protesters on the ground. … Many of the men who either started the skirmish or injured the protesters were wearing lapel pins, lanyards, and earpieces — all indicating that they were security officials.”