McDaniel Spox Flips Out At Reporter: ‘When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?’

State Sen. Chris McDaniel speaks at a rally in Madison, Miss., Thursday, June 19, 2014. McDaniel is in a runoff against long-time U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran for the GOP nomination for Senate. Former Republican presidenti... State Sen. Chris McDaniel speaks at a rally in Madison, Miss., Thursday, June 19, 2014. McDaniel is in a runoff against long-time U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran for the GOP nomination for Senate. Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum spoke, and endorsed McDaniel at the rally. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) MORE LESS
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A Chris McDaniel spokesman seemed to lose his temper a bit when he was confronted about possibly improper campaign coordination related to the ongoing effort to overturn McDaniel’s loss in the Mississippi GOP Senate primary.

“Off the record, when did you stop beating your wife?” McDaniel spokesman Noel Fritsch told the Clarion Ledger’s Sam Hall, invoking a well-known rhetorical device of presupposed guilt.

Hall reported in the first-person narrative published Thursday that he had been inquiring about allegations that the McDaniel campaign might have improperly coordinated with a Washington, D.C., law firm as the campaign mounts a legal challenge to the primary results.

“That would require me trusting anything you write,” Fritsch told Hall at one point. “I don’t accept the premise of your questions,” he said at another.

At the end of their interview, after they had moved onto a different subject, Fritsch “yelled something angrily that I couldn’t understand and then hung up,” Hall wrote.

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