The alleged manhandling of a female reporter by Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is starting to look increasingly bad for team Trump.
At the conclusion of a Trump press conference on Tuesday night in Florida, Lewandowski reportedly roughed up Michelle Fields (above) of Breitbart, an ultraconservative website with a pro-Trump stance, as she tried to ask the candidate a final question.
The incident was not caught on camera. Politico published a transcript based on a 2 1/2-minute audio recording:
Terris: “You OK?”
Fields: “Holy sh*t.”
Terris: “Yea he just threw you down.”
Fields: “I can’t believe he just did that that was so hard. Was that Corey?”
Terris: “Yeah, like, what threat were you?”
Fields: “That was insane. You should have felt how hard he grabbed me. That’s insane. I’ve never had anyone do that to me from a campaign.”
Terris: “Can I put that in my story?”
Fields: “Yeah, go for it – that was really awful. That’s so unprofessional.”
Terris: “He really just almost threw you down on the ground.”
Fields: “He literally went like this and was grabbing me down. I don’t even what to do [about] what he just did to me. Oh my God, that really spooked me that someone would do that.”
Terris: “What threat were you?”
Fields: “Nothing. I was asking about affirmative action.”
Terris: “And he probably knows you, right?”
Fields: “Yeah, I don’t understand. That looks horrible. You’re going after a Breitbart reporter, the people who are nicest to you?”
Terris: “I know, I’m going to put it in my story.”
This has been a fast-moving story, with Breitbart getting hammered by members of the press corps this morning for initially taking no action to defend their reporter or to demand an apology from the Trump campaign. Then the Trump team insisted that nothing unprofessional had happened. Breitbart then announced that it had suspended an editor for suggesting it was a non-story.
Lewandowski had reportedly explained to the Breitbart editor that he did not recognize Fields and mistakenly thought she was a hostile reporter from the mainstream media.
