Grant Park {downtown Chicago} cross burner was sending a message to ‘MAGA Christian nationalist supporters’ of Donald Trump

A 21-year-old University of Illinois Chicago senior says he is the person who set fire to a cross in Grant Park last week, though he insists he had no idea that burning crosses are a symbol of the Ku Klux Klan. Merlin Lu told NBC 5 in an interview Monday that his target was not a racial group, but rather supporters of President Donald Trump, whom he described as “MAGA Christian nationalist supporters.” His chosen method of protest: placing a red baseball cap atop a cross, the central symbol of Christianity, and setting it ablaze. “I don’t want to wait...