In May of 2017, eight men met at Mackesey’s Irish Pub in downtown Madison to drink beer and talk politics. The men, all of them White and most in their 20s, had met online and were getting together for the first time.
The meeting would establish the Wisconsin chapter of an emerging national group called the Proud Boys. For Thaddeus Pall, it was a rare opportunity to openly express his support for
President Donald Trump in liberal Madison.
As the men were leaving the bar for a member’s apartment, Pall, then 26, separated from the group to buy cigarettes. According to Madison police, as Pall was returning to his new friends, he was approached on the street by men in hoodies with what Pall described as baseball bats or wooden sticks. He told police the men had targeted him as a Trump supporter because of his T-shirt, which read: “Basket of Deplorables 2016.”