Trump supporters clash with counter-protesters in New York city on 2nd day of voting

The clashes erupted as a large car parade of Jewish Donald Trump supporters was met with resistance in the city as it was passing Trump Tower, with the two sided trading punches.

The lines of Trump supporters’ vehicles, many of which draped with American and Israeli flags, stretched for several miles.

It was in Manhattan, where pro-Trump protesters violently clashed with counter-demonstrators and brawled in the street, as anti-Trump protesters began ripping signs off vehicles and throwing paint at them.

A large number of people were detained by the police.

The violent encounter occurred on the on second day of early voting in New York state, with people jamming polling places in long line for hours to cast ballots nine days ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election.

New Yorkers, in the reliably Democratic state, joined a flood of more than 56 million Americans across the country who have cast early ballots at a record-setting pace. Early in-person voting will continue in the state until Nov. 1.

Early voting in the 2020 US election has surpassed all the pre-election ballots from four years earlier, an independent vote monitor said Sunday.

Millions of Americans, intensely interested in the contest between Trump and Biden, are smashing records for casting ballots, whether by mail or in person amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump for months has been claiming, without evidence, that mail-in ballots lead to fraud.

The rush to vote early is a sign of Americans’ concerns about avoiding crowded polling places on Election Day and reducing the risk of exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 225,000 Americans.

New York’s violent clashes came as the FBI warned last month of “combustible violence” on US streets ahead of the November presidential election as tensions had increased between anti-racial protesters and far-right extremists during nationwide demonstrations that followed the police killing of African American George Floyd.

Concerns about violence and voter intimidation are growing in the United States as Trump’s reelection campaign continues to call for poll watchers to be dispatched across the country.

Trump himself urged his supporters during the first presidential debate earlier this month “to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that is what has to happen, I am urging them to do it.”

Voting rights activists and government officials are now concerned that the president’s supporters will scare away Democratic voters fearful of confrontation.