XPost: alt.fan.madonna, alt.cities.chicago, alt.earth.crisis
XPost: alt.solar.thermal
President Trump once declared at a campaign rally that he hates
some of the journalists who cover him but that he “would never
kill them.”
That might be the only limit on media bashing in politics these
days.
Republican Greg Gianforte won Montana's lone congressional seat
in a special election Thursday, one day after he allegedly
grabbed a reporter by the throat and slammed him to the ground.
I say “allegedly” because, although Gianforte has been charged
with misdemeanor assault, he has not been convicted. But his
actions aren't really in dispute. The Gianforte campaign's
initial statement on the altercation blamed the reporter, the
Guardian's Ben Jacobs, for “aggressively” holding a recorder up
to the candidate's face and asking “badgering questions,” but it
did not deny what Jacobs characterized as a body slam.
The message was basically this: Yeah, I did it, but that liberal
journalist deserved it.
Many voters apparently agreed. NBC News reported that donations
poured in to the Gianforte campaign after the manhandling. The
election vote tally is still being finalized, but
FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver observed that “it looks as though
Gianforte won the early vote (before the incident) by something
like 5 to 10 points and the Election Day vote by about the same
margin.”
Silver pointed out that early voting often favors Democrats, so
the fact that Gianforte did not fare better on Election Day than
he did in early voting could indicate that he did pay some small
price for scuffling with a reporter.
It is clear, however, that Wednesday's ugly episode in Bozeman
was not a dealbreaker for a lot of voters. In fact, the only
thing that seemed to bother some of Gianforte's backers was his
decision to issue a public apology to Jacobs during a victory
party speech Thursday night. The Washington Post's David Weigel
and Elise Viebeck described the scene:
Some in the crowd laughed at the mention of the incident. “I
made a mistake,” said Gianforte.
“Not in our minds!” yelled a supporter.
CNN captured the same sentiment at the victory rally:
After Gianforte was charged with misdemeanor assault, Screnar
said she was only “more ready to support Greg.”
“We've watched how the press is one-sided. Excuse me, that's how
I feel. making him their whipping boy, so to speak, through this
campaign,” Screnar said. “There comes a point where, stop it.”
Her husband, Terry, chimed in that he believed Gianforte was
“set up.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/26/greg- gianfortes-win-in-montana-proves-theres-no-penalty-in-politics- for-media-bashing/?utm_term=.9da9d643e620
It's time to take baseball bats to some CNN and LA Times
reporter skulls.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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