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Watch: security chokes and tackles a Time photographer at a Donald Trump rally

Libby Nelson is Vox's policy editor, leading coverage of how government action and inaction shape American life. Libby has more than a decade of policy journalism experience, including at Inside Higher Ed and Politico. She joined Vox in 2014.

A photographer was choked and slammed to the ground by a security guard at a Donald Trump rally in Radford, Virginia, this afternoon. Trump's campaign says the guard is part of the US Secret Service.

The photographer, Christopher Morris, a contract photographer for Time, told reporters afterward that he had tried to step "18 inches" out of the designated press area when he was choked and slammed to the ground. This Instagram video — which was recording a nearby protest — shows the full altercation (watch the lower right-hand corner):

The confrontation started when Morris got into an argument with the security guard, telling him, "Fuck you":

After he got up, Morris briefly grabbed the security guard's neck, apparently to demonstrate what the guard had done to him:

Trump hates the media, and his rallies have a history of violence

The Trump campaign put out a brief statement saying the guard involved was a Secret Service agent and it was "not aware" of any additional details. The Secret Service hasn't yet commented on the incident.

But Trump's campaign rallies have a disturbing history of actual and threatened violence against protesters. (Matt Taibbi reported in Rolling Stone that supporters are instructed to surround protesters, yell "Trump! Trump! Trump!" and wait for security.)

And Trump — who wants to weaken protections for the media against libel suits, and who has had to specify that unlike Vladimir Putin, he would not want to kill journalists — routinely uses his podium at rallies to taunt the media, urging the crowd into booing members of the press:

The violence against a photographer is evidence of those two trends coming together.