Marco Rubio supporters manhandled a man dressed as a robot on Tuesday, pushing the protester as he attempted to highlight an alleged subterfuge by the Florida senator.
The demonstrator contended that Rubio is not a human being but a cyborg, thus making him ineligible to run for the White House.
Towards the end of the scuffle, a second protester dressed as robot (an older model with a cardboard torso) joined the melee.
Until recently, Rubio was considered a common or garden expression of the extant human species and a solid bet for the establishment lane of the Republican Party race.
However, a series of “malfunctions” have given rise to the notion that Rubio may be part machine – a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton with a misfiring CPU.
The “programme error” was first spotted during Saturday’s ABC debate when the R-1000 repeated the same phrase four times.
The glitch resurfaced on Monday evening, when he repeated a second phrase twice.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz faced similar unease earlier in the campaign when his Canadian birth sparked questions over his eligibility.
The natural-born citizen clause of the constitution was introduced to protect the nation from foreign influences. Unfortunately, the framers made no specific legal requirement pertaining to machines.