The Slatest

Protesters Disrupt Ryan Lochte’s Dancing With the Stars Debut. No Sequins Were Harmed.

Apparently, not everyone is ready to move on after swimmer Ryan Lochte’s drunken shenanigans in Rio de Janeiro during the Olympics this summer. Lochte lost a host of sponsors as part of the fallout of his reckless night out and even more disastrous cover-up attempt where he (falsely) claimed to have been robbed at gunpoint. But the swimmer did find celebrity refuge in the sweet embrace of the somehow still on the air Dancing With the Stars. Normally the show offers a soft landing for the down on his luck celebrity, but during the season premiere Monday, following Lochte’s performance, the stage was rushed by anti-Lochte protesters!

It’s a little hard to decipher at this point what exactly happened here, mostly because we’re relying on storied outlets like E! News, Entertainment Tonight, and the investigative prowess of Billy Bush. But it appears two protesters wearing anti-Lochte shirts rushed the stage while judge Carrie Ann Inaba was delivering a critique of Lochte’s performance. The disruption caused host Tom Bergeron to cut to commercial break during the live taping of the show.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life,” a witness told Fox News. “Two men were yelling, ‘Lochte, you suck!’ And ran toward Ryan and his dance partner, Cheryl Burke.” I don’t know, witness, that doesn’t seem like a life-altering level of scariness. The two men were reportedly cuffed and removed as were two women in the audience who were also wearing anti-Lochte T-shirts.

Lochte described himself as a “little hurt” after the protest. “So many feelings are going through my head right now.” That’s not normally where I store my feelings, but Lochte was the one who was just told he “sucks” by men wearing T-shirts, so who’s to judge really.