NEW YORK CITY — A Hunter College professor and his husband were kicked off a JetBlue flight after the pair verbally accosted Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner on a flight Thursday morning.
In a series of now-deleted tweets Matthew Lasner, a professor of urban policy, said his husband calmly expressed displeasure at being on the same flight as the Trumps. But shortly before that tweet, Lasner said his husband planned to chase down Trump and Kushner to harass them.
Lasner spotted the pair in John. F Kennedy International Airport's Terminal Five.
A passenger, who was holding a child in his arms, reportedly started yelling at Ivanka Trump, “Your father is ruining the country.” And he continued, “Why is she on our flight? She should be flying private.”
Another passenger told TMZ that Trump attempted to distract her children and ignore the man, who was subsequently removed from the flight by JetBlue personnel. “You’re kicking me off for expressing my opinion,” he yelled as he was led off the plane, TMZ reported.
The decision to remove a customer from a flight is not taken lightly, a spokesperson for JetBlue said in a statement.
"If the crew determines that a customer is causing conflict on the aircraft, the customer will be asked to deplane, especially if the crew feels the situation runs the risk of escalation during flight," JetBlue said in a statement. "In this instance, our team worked to re-accommodate the party on the next available flight."
Lasner appears to have deleted his account following the incident.
