On Thursday night, Breitbart News senior editor-at-large and Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro appeared on The Kelly File on Fox News to discuss Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields’ alleged assault at the hands of Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Opposing him was David Wohl, an attorney and Trump supporter.
Kelly began by recounting the entire story. She played tape of Fields on ABC News; she played audio from the encounter’s aftermath and the conversation between Fields and the Washington Post’s Ben Terris. Then she asked Shapiro about Breitbart News’ position in defense of Fields, describing Breitbart as “an openly pro-Trump blog”: “Breitbart’s been all over the map when it comes to whether it should defend its reporter or defend Mr. Trump. In the end, you tell me where they stand tonight and I know you don’t speak for them in this particular capacity.”
Shapiro answered, “I’m not going to speak for management. I’m not privy to those decisions. My understanding is the statement released by Larry Solov, who’s the CEO, has called for the Trump campaign to apologize, for Corey Lewandowski to apologize. I personally feel that’s wildly insufficient. They should be calling for Lewandowski to be fired. If this had been Robby Mook [Hillary’s campaign manager] dragging Michelle Fields down to the ground, there’s no question they’d be calling for Lewandowski, or Robby Mook in this case, to be fired. It’s ridiculous.”
Kelly then asked about the pushback from Lewandowski – his allegations that Fields was an “attention seeker.”
Shapiro didn’t hold back: “Corey Lewandowski is a thug and Donald Trump is a thug for backing him… This has been a verified account. There’s a report in The Daily Beast this morning that Corey Lewandowski specifically went to Matt Boyle over at Breitbart, a guy I know, and said to Matt Boyle that if he’d known it was a Breitbart reporter, he wouldn’t have done it. As though that’s justification. As though you can go after somebody who’s not a Breitbart reporter just because Breitbart is friendlier to Trump than other publications? The whole thing’s absurd.”
Shapiro added, “And the fact that the Trump campaign continues to play this game, where they put out what’s not just violent rhetoric but in this case, a campaign manager engaging in allegedly violent action, and then they won’t even step down to apologize; it’s beyond disgusting. It’s just gross.”
Kelly then turned to Wohl to defend Trump’s campaign manager. He immediately suggested that Fields could be lying: “this whole thing from the beginning doesn’t look good to me. The reality is there were dozens of people around. No one apparently saw it other than this one Washington post reporter. There were 100 cameras, none of them caught anything?”
Kelly, skeptical, asked Wohl, “Were they acting when they had that exchange on tape?”
Wohl replied that Trump was the real victim: “Trump is under attack on multiple levels. On political, economic, social and a personal level. And this is a way to get at him… if it is a real, legitimate assault or battery, you file a police report, you don’t tweet it out and then 36 hours later, you tweet out pictures of bruises and you say, ‘Lewandowski caused it.’”
Shapiro responded brutally: “This is disgusting. How repulsive are you people?” He noted that he had spoken with Fields for over an hour on Wednesday night, and heard the whole story, and had personally encouraged Fields to go to the police to file a report; he suggested that she would be doing that shortly, and noted that Fields hadn’t been exploiting the case, given that she’d gone “silent on social media for almost 24 hours.”
Shapiro then concluded, “If the suggestion is that Breitbart News is out to get Trump – have you ever seen Breitbart News? Have you ever viewed its front page?”
Wohl, backpedaling, said, “I’m not suggesting it.”
Shapiro replied, “Only the Washington Post is out to get him.”
Kelly then moved on to Trump’s violent rhetoric with regard to protesters more generally; Wohl defended the rhetoric by saying that such rhetoric was popular with Trump’s followers.
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