Protests outside the NY Republican Gala

Rick Leventhal reports with the latest on 'The O'Reilly Factor'

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," April 14, 2016. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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O'REILLY: We continue now with a live Factor from New York City. You are looking at Governor Susana Martinez. The first Hispanic female governor of the United States. Ever. And she is teeing up Donald Trump. Senator Ted Cruz, Governor John Kasich who will speak after she is finished.

I want to go outside the Hyatt Hotel where the anti-Trump demonstrators are. We are going to bring in FOX News Correspondent Rick Leventhal. So, Rick, what's going on out there, man?

RICK LEVENTHAL, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Bill, the organizers of this protests have promised that tens of thousands of people would march on the Grand Hyatt and disrupt tonight's Republican fundraiser for Donald Trump and the other candidates. There were to be fair, hundreds of people here earlier. But right now you have got maybe 20 or 30 stragglers left who are now yelling at the front of the Cipriani Restaurant here on 42nd Street which as far as we know has nothing to do with the Republican event across the street.

There are people in there but they have nothing to do with it. This is the pen, one of the pens they set up for the demonstrators. They're shrank the Penn. It was all away into the next lane of 42nd Street. But now, they are shrinking it down. Because basically no one left. This is the front of the hotel. You see the NYPD out there enforced. They have been here all day. And there were large groups of demonstrators earlier today. In fact, we saw about 100 of them go inside Grand Central terminal at one point and basically blocked a whole lane of traffic inside the terminal and were chanting and carrying on in there.

And police allowed them to do that. They stayed for a few minutes. And then moved out into the street and there were, again, hundreds of people in the street as well. And I think you heard Jesse mentioned earlier that there were some fisticuffs in the crowd. We saw as one reporter actually went inside the Penn with all the demonstrators and protesters and stirred things up and there were some punches or at least eight punch thrown in some shoving going on before that guy was escorted out the Penn by the NYPD. But again, we have now just the handful of protesters left. The event is still going on inside the Grand Hyatt. And you have, you know, 20 or 30 people in front of the Cipriani Restaurant and everyone else I don't know where.

O'REILLY: Let me make a couple points. Number one, the NYPD is the best in the world at crowd control. They know how to do it.

LEVENTHAL: Oh, yes. No question about it.

O'REILLY: And number two, not a lot of anti-Trump people turned out. I mean, and you know, the ones that did are the hard core anarchists most of them. And outside of the one Trump supporter who tried to get in there which was ridiculous. I mean, it was fairly peaceful. I'm surprised. I thought it was going to be a lot worse. Go ahead.

LEVENTHAL: What they did is very clever. You know, they had these metal barricades.

O'REILLY: Yes.

LEVENTHAL: They created buffer zones. They created a lane for pedestrians away from the sidewalk across the street and then created an area that was completely sealed off to the public. Beyond that and that's where you see most of the officers were positioned.

O'REILLY: Right.

LEVENTHAL: So no one was going to get into the event this way. They even at the end of this block, there were a group of protesters that marched down to the end of the street. And they tried to cross and go in in the side entrance to the hotel and they blocked with these barricades the sidewalk. And they wouldn't let people even cross the street at that point.

O'REILLY: Well, New York City, then largest city in the country. Yes. And the cops really know how to control crowds. Rick, thanks very much. We appreciate it.

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