Donald Trump Friday slipped through a back door of a Hyatt Regency Hotel outside San Francisco to avoid protestors after about 20 people were arrested in skirmishes at a rally near Los Angeles in which the windows of a police cruiser were broken out.
"That was not the easiest entrance I've ever made," Trump said after taking the stage at the California Republican Convention in Burlingame about an hour after the event was scheduled to start. "My wife called and she said, 'There are helicopters following you.'
"We went under a fence and through a fence," Trump told the crowd. "Oh, boy. Felt like I was crossing the border, actually.
"I was crossing the border. But I got here."
To get inside the Hyatt, Trump's motorcade stopped behind the hotel shortly after noon local time, CNN reports.
The developer and nearly 20 security officers and campaign staffers jumped out of their SUVs, headed up a ramp before crossing a grassy area and back parking lot before heading through the rear of the hotel.
The entourage walked in single file,
Fox News reports.
Protesters, estimated by several news organizations as numbering about 200, surrounded the front of the Hyatt — with as many as two dozen trying to rush police barriers outside the hotel.
Police officers, dressed in riot gear and carrying batons, then rushed to the building’s doors, successfully blocking the demonstrators from getting in, Fox reports.
Shoving and other physical altercations could be seen between protesters and police officers, who were pushing back demonstrators with their batons, according to the report.
Many of protesters — both men and women — were bare-breasted, Fox reports, and they chanted "Stop hate" as they marched.
Others carried signs, including "Stop Trump."
"My message here today is: 'Stop hate and dump Trump,'" Nancy Mancias, a member of the progressive Code Pink group, told CNN.
She was kicked out of the Hyatt after yelling into a bullhorn that the Republicans should "dump Trump," causing a ruckus inside the convention, Fox reports.
In his Burlingame speech, Trump said: "They said Mr. Trump, it would be much easier, sir, if you just didn't speak today and just left and go back immediately to Indiana.'
"And I said: 'You know, we can't let these people down.'
"Do we agree?" Trump asked amid cheers from the crowd. "We can't do it. But I appreciate it.
"But it was fun. It was a little different."
The group left the Hyatt the same way about a half-hour later.