Beto O’Rourke’s poll numbers are in the toilet…let’s be honest. However, that shouldn’t be an excuse for blaming the reporters for your own failings. Particularly when he has personally made some very poor decisions when it comes to trying to “connect with the voters.” Remember the dental visit? Or trying to change a tire?
Then, of course, there was the furor over his remarks that he was raising his own kids while on the campaign trail, for which he apologized profusely before ultimately prostrating himself before the altar of the divas of The View.
The nail in the coffin was his front-page spread on Vanity Fair, with the caption “Born to Run!”
These hiccups aside, it just wasn’t in the cards for the media’s 15-minute darling, often compared to JFK. He won’t even consider running again against Ted Cruz. That said, it looks like the sour grapes of not registering with the voters have turned into the grapes of wrath.
In his most recent campaign stop, he opted to punish one of the reporters in the crowd by banishing him from the event.
Breitbart:
O’Rourke’s campaign ejected this Breitbart News reporter from a speech at Benedict College, a historically black college, on Tuesday afternoon.
This reporter was standing along the side of a lecture hall in the basement of the Henry Pinder Fine Arts Humanities Center, waiting for the event to start, together with roughly 200 students and college staff members. Other news outlets had set up cameras in the back of the room.
Several minutes after the 3:00 p.m. event had been scheduled to begin, a staff member in a Beto O’Rourke t-shirt approached this reporter and asked what outlet I represented. Upon reading the press credential on my chest, he put a hand on my shoulder and said, cheerfully, “Oh, hey. All right.”
A few minutes later, before the event began, a campus police officer approached this reporter and motioned for me to accompany him to the back of the room, adding that I should bring any property I had with me. In the hallway outside, he informed me that I was to leave.
A different member of the O’Rourke campaign staff, who said his name was “Steven” and would not give a last name, said that I was being ejected because I had been “disruptive” at past events.
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.
As it turns out, Beto apparently doesn’t really believe that “the press is not the enemy” as he singled out a Breitbart reporter due to nothing more than him writing for the “wrong” news site.
Animal Farm – George Orwell
I can understand that Beto was not happy that the Breitbart reporter was likely to give him a hard time, and I’m completely in agreement that sometimes you just have to push back. But if you are going to push back, better make sure that you’re not the one calling for a free press. Because, like as not, that “free press” is not always going to agree with you.
Just ask the conservatives.
The press is not the enemy of the people but the best defense against tyranny. We need to vigorously defend the freedom of the press. It’s essential for our democracy. pic.twitter.com/LnqtevuOCV
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) October 30, 2018
Source: Breitbart
