Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s campaign on Wednesday defended its decision to kick out a Breitbart News reporter from a campaign event held at a historically black college earlier this week.
On Tuesday, Breitbart senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak wrote that a member of O’Rourke’s team asked him to leave while the candidate was giving a speech at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina.
O’Rourke’s press secretary, Aleigha Cavalier, said in a statement on Wednesday that the campaign “believes in the right to a free press,” but that Breitbart “walks the line between being news and a perpetrator of hate speech.”
“Given this particular Breitbart employee’s previous hateful reporting and the sensitivity of the topics being discussed with students at an HBCU, a campaign staffer made the call to ask him to leave to ensure that the students attending the event felt comfortable and safe while sharing their experiences as young people of color,” Cavalier continued.
In response to @BreitbartNews ejection, @BetoORourke spox @aleighacavalier says campaign 'believes in the right to a free press and works hard to ensure the campaign reflects that,' while 'Breitbart News walks the line between being news and a perpetrator of hate speech' … pic.twitter.com/kjWGmv0Edb
— David Siders (@davidsiders) August 28, 2019
A Breitbart spokesperson said Cavalier’s comments were “absurd,” pointing to Pollak’s Jewish faith and his marriage to a black woman as evidence.
The incident echoes fellow 2020 Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) refusal to hold a town hall on Fox News, which she described as a “hate-for-profit racket.”
This story has been updated to include Breitbart’s response.
Oxymoron Hall of Fame:
The incident echoes fellow 2020 Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) refusal to hold a town hall on Fox News, which she described as a “hate-for-profit racket.”
Shutting down hate for profit rackets will lop about a point off the nation’s GDP.
Calling Breitbart a news organization stretches the Chiclet well past the moon.
" The incident echoes fellow 2020 Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) refusal to hold a town hall on Fox News, which she described as a “hate-for-profit racket.”
Not to pick fights here, just wanna get some insights and I’m open to being corrected. I think the two things are different. First, FOX is an organization while the “journalist” is an individual (he was kicked out because of his personal behavior, not because he works for Breitbart). Second, whether to go on FOX is a choice to be made while the campaign event is not (the candidate was the one who made an invitation to the public). I get the rationale that going on FOX is to help a crime organization profit, but I don’t quite understand the logic behind kicking out a rethug before he started doing harm in an open event.
Breitbart is not press, if you are confused ask Shirley Sherrod they did a great job reporting on her (snark)