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GOP candidate struggles to burn rainbow flag on top of U-Haul truck while screaming at 2 people - LGBTQ Nation

FloridaGDELTGDELT event65% biasedThu, Jun 11, 2026, 12:00 AM

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2.4

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24 of 37 sentences classified as biased · Model: roberta-anno-lexical-ft-v1

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GOP candidate struggles to burn rainbow flag on top of U-Haul truck while screaming at 2 people - LGBTQ Nation.Jake Lang — a racist Republican candidate for Florida’s U.S.Senate seat who was jailed for allegedly assaulting Capitol Police officers during the January 6, 2021, riots — struggled to set two Pride flags on fire outside of the Delaney ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey, yesterday afternoon while yelling, “Happy Pride Month, fa**ots,” to his cameraman and one other supporter holding a gong on the sidewalk.Lang stood on top of a U-Haul and yelled, “We will not allow this degeneracy!” as he ignited an intersex-inclusive Pride flag.The wind quickly extinguished the flames before they could seriously harm the flag.Related Insights for the LGBTQ+ community Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.He then struggled to re-light the flag, dousing it in lighter fluid before yelling, “These people need to go.We will overcome the homosexual agenda to destroy our children.” Meanwhile, he continued struggling to re-ignite the flag as his lighter repeatedly failed to produce a flame.Upon finally reigniting the flag, he yelled, “Happy Pride Month, fa**ots,” as the wind quickly extinguished the flames once again.“Get out of our country!” he yelled, holding the unlit flag.“This is a Christian country!” He soon threw away the unlit flag and unwrapped a basic rainbow Pride flag and unfurled it in the wind.Someone then laughed at him.“Get these homos out!” he continued.“They’re the ones bringing in all the migrants!” He re-lit the flag before the wind quickly extinguished its flames once more.Throwing the flag towards the sidewalk, he yelled, “Here you go, fa**ots — happy Pride Month!” But the video showed only two people on the sidewalk: his cameraman and one other individual (holding a handheld gong) running alongside the truck.Lang then yelled, “Make America great again!” triumphantly raising his arms while standing on top of a U-Haul truck that costs about $30 a day to rent.Someone off-camera yelled, “F**k you,” in response.He unfurled a banner off the back of the truck that said, “Save America.Deport 100+ Million.” He then jumped off the front of the truck and yelled into the camera, “America, we are so f**king back!” while a long-haired white man in a black bowler hat repeatedly banged a small hand-held gong.Lang entered the cabin of the truck and used a megaphone to say, “Traitors of the Deep State will see the gallows.You will hang traitors.Our country is worth fighting for.We will stand united.This is a Christian country.They have stolen the rainbow from God, and we’re here to take it back.It’s white boy summer!” Lang is 30 years old.Despite Lang’s racist display of anti-LGBTQ+ hatred, a Black transgender woman helped rescue him from an angry mob of 100 anti-racist counterprotestors in Minneapolis this past January.In that incident, Lang had promised to lead a march through the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood (which has Minneapolis’ highest concentration of Somali-American residents) before burning a Quran on the steps of City Hall.But he reportedly didn’t get to do either because the counter-protestors — who outnumbered the 10 attendees at Lang’s event — cornered him outside City Hall before attacking him and chasing him away.The anti-racist counterprotestors threw objects and water balloons at Lang before a 30-year-old Black Minneapolis resident named Isaiah Blackwell helped Lang escape.While Blackwell and other men led Lang away, the crowd continued to lob abuse at Lang, with one person even kicking Lang in the head and numerous others opening the rear car door and kicking Lang some more as a Black trans woman eventually helped Lang escape.Lang suffered bruises, scrapes, and a cut on his head, though he didn’t report his injuries to local law enforcement, the Minneapolis police said.Last January, Lang threw a Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute during a racist and antisemitic rally that he held outside of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) headquarters in Washington, D.C.At the rally, Lang declared, “Congressmen and women that have been taking AIPAC money, we suggest you stop now before the crusaders really start….Treasonous traitors will be hanging from the gallows, rightfully and justly prosecuted and hung for treason.” He also said, “White Christian men are not gonna sit around while [AIPAC and pro-Jewish activists] turn our children into a bunch of [n-word]-lovers.” Trump pardoned Lang after he had served four years in prison for attacking a U.S.Capitol police officer during the January 6, 2021, riots.Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.