Shapiro, Fields quit Breitbart

The continuing saga of the alleged assault of Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields by Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski took a new turn with the resignation of Fields and a Breitbart editor Sunday night, BuzzFeed reports. "Today I informed the management at Breitbart News of my immediate resignation," Fields said in a statement. "I do not believe Breitbart News has adequately stood by me during the events of the past week and because of that I believe it is now best for us to part ways." She repeated that sentiment in a tweet Monday. Ben Shapiro, Breitbart's editor-at-large, also quit, tweeting that he was doing so in support of Fields and adding in his own statement that the site's handling of the incident has "betrayed" late founder Andrew Breitbart and "put a stake through the heart of Andrew’s legacy." Fields alleges Lewandowski grabbed her arm and yanked her from asking Trump a question at a Florida presser, per the Washington Post.

Lewandowski and Trump have both denied it, and Breitbart's response thus far has been a post noting what Fields says happened couldn't have happened the way she said, followed by a brief statement saying it did stand behind her, followed by a supposed order from a top-level editor to Breitbart staffers not to publicly defend Fields. "[Breitbart News chairman] Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew's mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump," Shapiro said. "He has shaped the company into Trump's personal Pravda, to the extent that he abandoned and undercut his own reporter." Breitbart, meanwhile, has its own take. "Ben Shapiro Betrays Loyal Breitbart Readers in Pursuit of Fox News Contributorship" reads a headline posted Monday that also accused BuzzFeed of "aiming to destroy Breitbart News since the moment Andrew Breitbart died." (Read both resignation statements in full.)

Kudos to Fields and Shapiro. Many of us are sick of the bias of our liberal media. We need to be equally as sick of bias from conservative media.

Goons and assaults

Ace of Spades commenters speak out on the actions of Trump's campaign manager:

Hillary must be so excited at the prospect of running against this guy. He's probably the only one on the planet who could turn her into a sympathetic figure. Serial adulterer running against Tammy Wynette. Awesome.

By Y-not

The worst part of this, and the most inexplicable, is the way they went after this woman afterward and tried to smear and discredit her.

Over something this minor -- something that could have been fixed with a simple apology.

This is a window into what sort of goon squad you'll be electing if he wins. "Oh but he's our goon this time" -- until he decides he's not. This is how he treats his backers.

by Pastafarian

I'm just not seeing assault.

I barely see anything, but if I had to give it a name, I'd call it crowd control.

Trump was obviously on his way out and they were clearing the way. She jumped in and got pushed/shoved/grabbed out of the way.

But I truly can barely even see it, and had I not known what is alleged to have happened, I wouldn't see it at all.

And I am a hardcore Cruzer.

by Tammy al-Thor

Or, this movie clip from a commenter who names himself or herself A Fistful of Trump

Trump campaign manager shows "strength" like China did at Tiananmen Square

Michelle Fields is a reporter for Breitbart News. She was manhandled by Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski Tuesday. Lloyd Grove reports for The Daily Beast,

According to knowledgeable sources, here’s what happened on Tuesday: Fields, whose usual beat is Sen. Ted Cruz, was subbing for Breitbart’s flu-suffering Trump reporter, Alex Swoyer, at the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, during the candidate’s election night rally/press conference. Trump had just racked up impressive victories in the Michigan and Mississippi primaries.

At the end of the night, as Trump and his entourage, including a Secret Service detail, slowly made their way toward the exit, the real estate mogul was taking questions from journalists representing CNN, NBC News, and other outlets.
Fields was walking next to Trump, on his right, when she pointed her recording device at him and asked if he still disagrees, as he said last December, with late Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s attacks on affirmative action.

Before Trump could answer, Lewandowski grabbed Fields from behind, taking hold of her left forearm and “yanking her down toward the ground like a ragdoll,” a witness told The Daily Beast.

Fields — who on Wednesday was sporting a purple bruise as a result of the encounter — was shocked and shaken, barely managing to keep her footing as Lewandowski and the Trump scrum headed out the doors, according to colleagues.
Fields didn’t see who had grabbed her. At first, she has told colleagues, she thought it was a Secret Service agent.
“Oh my goodness!” Washington Post reporter Ben Terris reportedly exclaimed after witnessing the encounter from a few feet behind. “That was Corey!” he told Fields in amazement.
Terris, who declined to comment for this story, has since confirmed to his newspaper that the aggressor was Lewandowski.

Nursing her bruises, Fields quickly recounted the incident over the phone to her longtime boyfriend, Daily Caller journalist Jamie Weinstein, who promptly tweeted: “Trump always surrounds himself w thugs. Tonight thug Corey Lewandowski tried to pull my gf @MichelleFields to ground when she asked tough q.”
Weinstein followed up with a second tweet: “Say what you will abt Bush or even Obama. They would never tolerate this type of thuggery toward women.”

Fields soon received an aggrieved phone call from Breitbart’s PR consultant, Kurt Bardella, telling her that Weinstein’s tweets were “juvenile,” and “immature,” according to sources, and advising her “to get your boyfriend under control.”

Ultimately Bardella drafted the Solov statement, and Fields asked Weinstein to stop tweeting. He, too, declined to be quoted in this story, other than from his Twitter feed.

Meanwhile, as of this writing, Fields had yet to hear any supportive words—or anything, for that matter—from Breitbart executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon or editor in chief Alex Marlow.

Matthew Boyle, however, did call Fields on Wednesday morning to ask how she was doing, the sources said.
After being asked why Breitbart’s official statement continues to cast some doubt on the identity of the manhandler, Bardella explained he had been awaiting a statement from the Trump campaign.

But he added: “I’m happy to tell you that Breitbart’s position is that Corey should apologize. Period.”
UPDATE: On Thursday morning, Breitbart writer Patrick Howley publicly voiced doubts about Fields’s story, demanding that she publish video from the incident and asserting that he’s never been physically abused while covering Trump’s campaign. The conservative media outlet took a stand, suspended him indefinitely for his “inappropriate” remarks about a colleague. Several hours later, the Trump campaign released a statement calling Fields’s accusations “entirely false,” and bashed the reporter as having a history of “exaggerating incidents.” In response, Fields tweeted a photo of her arm with visible bruises—“I guess these just magically appeared on me,” she snarked.

“Why the hell isn’t Breitbart standing up strongly for their reporter?” demanded a journalist covering the Trump campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to antagonize Trump operatives and hamper the reporting process. “Why the hell did they need somebody else’s name? Why do they say ‘if it happened’? And why aren’t they allowing her to talk about it at all?”

The journalist continued: “Because they like Trump. And Trump is more important to them than their own people. There’s something weird about that.”

Read more here.