Donald Trump’s campaign is once again facing allegations of physically abusing the press. This is how The Washington Post’s Ben Terris’s explains the latest event:
When Donald Trump descended into the crowd after speaking Tuesday night, the instinct to defend kicked in.
As security parted the masses to give him passage out of the chandelier-lit ballroom, Michelle Fields, a young reporter for Trump-friendly Breitbart News, pressed forward to ask the GOP front-runner a question. I watched as a man with short-cropped hair and a suit grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the way. He was Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s 41-year-old campaign manager.
Fields stumbled. Finger-shaped bruises formed on her arm.
“I’m just a little spooked,” she said, a tear streaming down her face. “No one has grabbed me like that before.”
She took my arm and squeezed it hard. “I don’t even want to do it as hard as he did,” she said, “because it would hurt.”
Breitbart, of course, has responded to the events as well, with more than a little befuddlement considering their site’s right-of-center leanings.
“I think in general, Donald Trump does not have that many news organizations that have been favorable towards him,” he said. “This one has been. I think in terms of the media that drives coverage on the right, Breitbart matters a lot. Being in a fight with Breitbart is no good for Donald Trump. I will say also, it goes back to our previous topic – not just in the sense we’re roughhousing or not roughhousing, but roughness, undue roughness going on. But it talks about the other things in the rally that we see is their attitude how they treat the press, is again, not something you normally see in presidential campaign rallies and the way they treat the press has not been appropriate for a long time. So it’s a broader issue beyond just Breitbart.”
It’s easy to blame media bias when a news organization goes after Trump, but it’s hard to blame Breitbart of anything of the sort. If anything, they were one of the only friends the Trump campaign has in the news business.
Now, Fields has filed charges against Lewandowski, as confirmed by Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone:
Video has emerged showing that Lewandowski only reached in Fields’s Direction:
Update 3:55 p.m. ET: A sequence of screenshots, corresponding to seconds 0:09-0:10 in the C-SPAN video, illustrates Lewandowski reaching towards Fields:
Update 3:15 p.m. ET: Putting some pieces together, with video made newly available today:
1. The video already available this morning, shot by the local NBC reporter, shows the altercation from a distance. Lewandowski is on Trump’s left, as seen at roughly 16:00, when Trump starts to move. At 16:08, Fields is seen next to Trump, on his right. She is then obscured, and does not reappear alongside Trump when he emerges a few seconds later.
2. The new MSNBC clip shows Fields approaching Trump and walking alongside him. At about 0:10, the camera moves suddenly to avoid its view being obscured, then settles again. At roughly 0:13-0:14, Fields is jerked backwards, and does not reappear in the frame. Lewandowski and the security guard do reappear, however, andWashington Post reporter Ben Terris appears to exchange words with Lewandowski.
3. The new C-SPAN clip, as indicated below, shows Lewandowski reaching in Fields’s direction at 0:09-0:10. It is, again, unclear that contact is made in that clip, and the scrum passes behind a bank of cameras. That moment, or a moment shortly thereafter, would seem to correspond with 0:13-0:14 in the MSNBC video, which seems to be when Fields is injured.
Additional video will continue to be posted.
Update 2:50 p.m. ET: The C-SPAN video being debated online raises new questions. Lewandowski appears to reach in Fields’s direction at 0:09-0:10. It is unclear whether contact has actually been made — though the Daily Beast said that he is shown “briefly grabbing her.” (An earlier still shot, purporting to show contact at 0:08, is somewhat less plausible.)
The scrum then moves behind a bank of cameras, roughly at the point where someone — possibly Lewandowski — grabbed Fields’s left arm.
Additional video will clarify, and will be posted here when it is released. Fresh clips can be tweeted to @joelpollak.
Awe poor baby lady dog gone it anyway what the hey
All she wants is 5 mins. of fame! It is a stet up, to bring Trump down! We smart people can see right through it! You are all being deceived! Vote Trump!
Sounds to me like the lady got a pay raise.just another way to try and discredit the candidate that has them all scared because they can’t buy him.