Discussion: Reporter Strong Armed By Trump's Top Aide Speaks Out: He Was 'Out Of Line'

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Discussion for article #247175

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“Even if Trump was done taking questions, Lewandowski would be out of line. Campaign managers aren’t supposed to try to forcefully throw reporters to the ground, no matter the circumstance,” she said.

I’ll feel bad for her when Breitbart itself stops acting like a petulant child and takes a stand for anyone not in the right-wing sphere.

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Fields was walking next to Trump, on his right, when she pointed her recording device at him and asked if he still disagrees, as he said last December, with late Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s attacks on affirmative action.

Before Trump could answer, Lewandowski grabbed Fields from behind, taking hold of her left forearm and “yanking her down toward the ground like a rag doll,” a witness told The Daily Beast.

Lewandowski’s explanation was that he and Fields had never met before and that he didn’t recognize her as a Breitbart reporter, instead mistaking her for an adversarial member of the mainstream media.

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Think about that.

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Ms. Fields was obviously not wearing her “Right Wing Nut Job Propaganda Tools for TRUMP” tiara conspicuously enough.

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At least the jerk was honest: “Hey, I didn’t know she was one of us.”

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Breitbart? If there is no video, it never happened. Even if there is video, is still may have never happened.

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I know that in polite discourse we are not supposed to compare any current politicians to a certain 20th Century figure, but The Donald is certainly starting to resemble…

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“But I’ll still vote for Trump,” she added.

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A view of a DT administration?

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But everyone remember, it’s only democrats who ever intimidate voters.

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A trump presidency (retch) will go full Putin on journalists. That’s a cosmic snicker considering media made it possible in the first place.

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Oh, poor Michelle Fields. Trump and his campaign are a monster your so-called news organization has helped to create and now you are part of the Trump journalism pograms. Little hard to feel sorry for you.

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Lewandowski just wears his jackboots under his suit pants as if they were cowboy boots…

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What he did to the reporter was the crime of battery.
As such he should be charged!

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Trump rallies seems to function as sovereign territories in which anything that occurs is OK as long as The Donald permits it!

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Amazing - part 1: You have to really think of the possible concerns:

  1. An unvetted person is not allowed to ask a question, period
  2. The particular question was dangerous in itself
  3. It was known that Trump had no prepared patter for that question
  4. Trump’s answer, no matter what, could be bad

Amazing - part 2: Swift physical action was “called for”.

It was not sufficient for Trump to stick his short fingers into his ears and start singing “La La La La”

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To Trump women are just chattle.

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Found the source for this btw: “Lewandowski’s explanation to Boyle, said these sources, was that he and Fields had never met before and that he didn’t recognize her as a Breitbart reporter, instead mistaking her for an adversarial member of the mainstream media.”

They should ask him why he didn’t fire Lewandowski at the debate tonight. Not doing so would be journalistic malpractice.

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As noted by Digby, Breitbart has been a major Trump supporter and we don’t mean that in a nice way:

Florida Republican political consultant Rick Wilson, an ardent supporter of Rubio—whom Breitbart’s writers continually portray as a liar who favors amnesty for illegals—has become a favorite Breitbart target since Trump’s rise in public opinion polls.

During a confrontational CNN appearance opposite Breitbart’s Marlow in August, Wilson derided the news site as Trump’s “Pravda” and referred to Trump fans as “low-information supporters.”

The next day, Bannon used his radio show to essentially declare war on the Rubio backer. He referred to Wilson as “a Republican paid consultant [who] viciously attacked the grass roots.”

The bald, bespectacled Wilson, who has written for The Daily Beast, quickly became a Breitbart whipping boy in a series of articles that variously described him as “Republican establishment cheerleader” and “Gollum-in-glasses” (Breitbart columnist John Nolte’s epithet is a reference to the slimy, power-mad character in Lord of the Rings.).

“It was a planned deployment,” Wilson says. “After I criticized Breitbart and criticized Trump, they decided they were going to weaponize themselves and go after me.”

Around the same time, Wilson says, strange and alarming incidents began befalling him and members of his family.

Internal emails obtained by The Daily Beast indicate that Bannon and Breitbart’s Boyle worked to obtain a comprehensive list of Wilson’s political clients (with the intention of making them feel uncomfortable about hiring him, Wilson believes).

Around the same time, Breitbart reporter Katie McHugh “made repeated calls to the press office of my U.S. Senate candidate [Rubio ally Carlos Lopez Cantera], asking, ‘When will you fire Rick Wilson?’” he says.

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Numerous journalists have noted that if you cover Trump and ask him questions he doesn’t like, you wind up WAY in the back in an area the Donald pointedly refers to with his audience as where “the media” is gathered and the reaction is generally what you would expect from his crowd.

As a result, those who DO ask Donald questions are largely those who have demonstrated an ability to serve up softballs.

Trump to Joe and Mika: Don’t ask me any hard questions.