The man who turned a Fox News interview at President Donald Trump’s South Carolina rally into a viral jab at MAGA says his disdain for the president started long before the red hats.
For Tom Hoyle, it goes back to Trump’s treatment of five Black and Latino teenagers wrongfully convicted in the notorious Central Park jogger case.
“I have hated Donald Trump since 1989,” Hoyle told journalist Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket after his unexpected television appearance. “What he did with the Central Park Five.”
Hoyle said he already disliked the future president, but his response to the case cemented it.
The five teenagers — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise — became the targets of a media firestorm after a woman was brutally raped and beaten in New York City’s Central Park in April 1989.
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Trump, then a prominent real estate developer, bought full-page advertisements in four New York newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty. The ads carried the headline, “Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!”
The teenagers maintained their innocence after recanting statements obtained during lengthy police interrogations. Nevertheless, juries convicted them despite DNA evidence that excluded them and the absence of eyewitness testimony connecting them to the jogger’s attack.
Their convictions unraveled in 2002 after convicted rapist Matias Reyes confessed and DNA evidence backed up his account. A judge vacated their convictions, and the men, now known as the Exonerated Five, reached a $41 million settlement with New York City in 2014. Decades later, Hoyle found himself holding an unexpected opportunity to tell Trump’s preferred television network exactly how he felt.
The 57-year-old Charlotte business owner told Kabas that rally organizers called his company inviting him to attend. He registered using his real information and went with plans to heckle Trump.
Then Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson approached him.
Hoyle said the Jonestown remark came off the cuff. He also said he had spent decades registered as a Republican before switching to independent about a year and a half ago.
The Jonestown massacre was one of the largest mass murder-suicide deaths in history, according to Britannica.
Cult leader Jim Jones ordered some 900 members of his California-based Peoples Temple cult to drink a cyanide-laced beverage similar to Kool-Aid in November 1978 at their agricultural commune in Guyana. Of the hundreds of deaths, at least 300 were children under 17.
The exchange unfolded Thursday in Rock Hill, where Trump was campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Darline Graham.
“Why are you here?” Tomlinson asked the rallygoer.
“Well, in the late ’70s I was a little too young to get involved and, uh, go to South America for the Jonestown massacre, but this is as close as I’ll ever get. So, that’s why I’m here,” Hoyle told him.
An incredulous Tomlinson paused.
“Wait, the Jonestown massacre?”
“That’s right. See, there’s nothing like seeing a cult right up front, man,” Hoyle quipped.
The reporter tried to laugh it off as the realization landed.
“So maybe this is not a Trump supporter,” he said into the camera before moving away.
The clip quickly spread across social media, where viewers delighted in the interview’s unexpected turn.
“I’m surprised that reporter was smart enough to understand what that guy was saying. I bet it surprised him too. He probably expected a follow-up question,” one X user remarked.
Another loved it: “Witnessing the downfall of a cult in-person and calling it out as such. Absolute legend.”
“Lol, Why do they immediately end the interview? Are his opinions not newsworthy?” another commenter asked.
Still another viewer suggested, “This guy has been rehearsing and waiting to drop this statement for way too long.”
Hoyle’s account offered a different explanation: He had planned a disruption, but the television opportunity presented itself.
He told Kabas that men who identified themselves as Secret Service approached him minutes later and escorted him out. That account came from Hoyle.
On his way out, he said he spotted a man who had questioned him before allowing him inside. Hoyle reminded him that his screening had missed something.
