American documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has released previously-unseen footage of pipe bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc in attendance at a Trump rally in early 2017.
Over a year and a half before he was arrested and charged with trying to send explosive devices to former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, former president Barack Obama, liberal philanthropist George Soros and CNN’s New York bureau, among others, Sayoc was at a Trump rally in Melbourne, Fla.
Also at the rally were a film crew dispatched by Moore, who at the time was gathering footage of Trump supporters for his documentary film Fahrenheit 11/9, which explores the impact of Trump’s victory.
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The footage, which never made it into the final film, was released by Moore on Sunday. It features panned shots of the crowd, who can be heard hurling abuse and invective at members of the news media taking up position at the front of the hall.
In the front row of the crowd is the muscular Sayoc, who is seen holding up a sign saying “CNN SUCKS” and zealously joining the crowd in chants of “Tell the truth!”
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Moore said in an Instagram post that his film set out to understand Americans who supported Trump, who described as “lost souls full of anger and possible violence, easily fed a pile of lies so large and toxic that we wondered if there would ever be a chance that we could bring them back from the Dark Side.”
In a blog post accompanying the video, Moore wrote that you can “see something profound” if you pause on Sayoc in the video.
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“Underneath his threatening Hulk-like exterior, there is fear in his eyes and, for a quick moment, you can see he is already gone, a lost dog with no direction home,” Moore wrote.
“What do we do with the thousands of other Cesar Sayocs? They have been told by Trump that they are at war — WAR! — against the rest of us, the vast, vast majority who believe climate change is real, who state without equivocation that women are equal citizens with an absolute right to control their own reproductive organs, who have seen how the free enterprise system is a hoax designed to destroy the middle class, and who demand that all people have a right to easily cast their votes without any interference.”
“Cesar and his bros ARE at war, against all these things, against us, the majority, and they are at war inside of and against themselves. This is why they will lose, but not before they take a few of us with them.”
WATCH: How authorities identified Cesar Sayoc as suspect in pipe bombs investigation
Moore added that he was shaken up when he found out that a photo of him — with a crosshair target over his face — was among the images plastered on the side of Sayoc’s van.
He said that police and security personnel were looking to see if a package was also sent to him.
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Moore concluded that the pipe bomb deliveries and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, which left 11 dead, behooved Americans to hit the polls for the Nov. 6 midterm elections “to end this madness.”
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