Trump Campaign, GOP, Media Respond to Beto Ejecting Breitbart News Reporter

Beto Responds to Pollak
Breitbart News
Hannah Knudsen

Members of the Trump campaign, media, and GOP reacted to Beto O’Rourke (D) ejecting a Breitbart News reporter from his speech at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, Tuesday, calling O’Rourke a “fraud” and adding that his action is an “attack on a free press.”

O’Rourke, who has lauded himself as a champion of a free press, had Breitbart News’s Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak removed from his event at Benedict College Tuesday, with a member of his campaign claiming that Pollak had been “disruptive” at past events – an assertion that is patently false.

As Breitbart News reported:

This reporter has covered two O’Rourke events. The first was at a protest outside a shelter for migrant teens in Homestead, Florida, in June; the second was at the College of Charleston “Bully Pulpit” lecture in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday evening. At no point was there any disruption whatsoever.

This reporter asked a question during a press gaggle on Monday evening; that was the only interaction of any kind with the candidate.

The question asked the Democratic presidential hopeful whether misquoting Trump’s comments on riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 was consistent with O’Rourke’s pledge to “heal” and not “inflame” divisions in this country.

In the hallway at Benedict, “Steven” threatened this reporter, saying that I could either leave voluntarily or be “officially uninvited” from campus, suggesting arrest.

This reporter complied with the police officer, who said that he was just doing his job.

Prominent members of the Trump campaign, media, and GOP took to Twitter to condemn O’Rourke’s enigmatic decision.

“I look forward to @CNN & @nytimes sticking up for @joelpollak & @BreitbartNews & publicly decrying this attack on a free press from Beta,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote.

“Unless… they don’t actually care about freedom of the press & only care about their own power. Only time will tell!”:

“Rob O’Rourke’s campaign has a journalist escorted out of an event by campus police,” GOP spokesperson Elizabeth Harrington wrote in part. “Will the rest of the media be outraged by this “attack on the free press?”:

“What a fraud this furry is,” Matt Wolking, Deputy Director of Communications for Trump’s 2020 team, responded:

More:

O’Rourke once said freedom of the press is the “best defense against tyranny,” adding, “We need to vigorously defend the freedom of the press. It’s essential for our democracy.”

It remains unclear how O’Rourke reconciles those words with his recent actions.

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