Trump campaign now calling Michelle Fields a liar, says campaign manager didn’t assault her

The Trump campaign is denying that Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, assaulted Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and is even suggesting she just wants attention:

trump_campaign_denial

And on top of that Lewandowski then tweets this, directly accusing Fields of just seeking attention:

What a puke.

If there were no witnesses and no encounter, then how is it that Ben Terris from the Washington Post saw the whole thing and even wrote about it today?

WAPO – As security parted the masses to give him passage out of the chandelier-lit ballroom, Michelle Fields, a young reporter for Trump-friendly Breitbart News, pressed forward to ask the GOP front-runner a question. I watched as a man with short-cropped hair and a suit grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the way. He was Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s 41-year-old campaign manager.

Fields stumbled. Finger-shaped bruises formed on her arm.

“I’m just a little spooked,” she said, a tear streaming down her face. “No one has grabbed me like that before.”

She took my arm and squeezed it hard. “I don’t even want to do it as hard as he did,” she said, “because it would hurt.”

Michelle Fields posted this picture of her bruised arm today on Twitter:

What’s interesting about the Trump campaign’s denial is that Lloyd Grove at the Daily Beast is reporting that Lewandowski did admit to Matthew Boyle that he manhandled Fields:

The [Breitbart] statement was issued in the wee hours of Wednesday morning but remains Breitbart’s official comment on the matter, hours after sources said Lewandowski acknowledged to Breitbart’s Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle, that he did manhandle Fields.

Lewandowski’s explanation to Boyle, said these sources, was that he and Fields had never met before and that he didn’t recognize her as a Breitbart reporter, instead mistaking her for an adversarial member of the mainstream media. Trump’s press secretary, Hope Hicks, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. Nor did the usually responsive Boyle.

So manhandling a MSM reporter is okay but not a Trump-friendly Breitbart reporter?

The article at the Daily Beast goes on to unscore just how inadequate many feel the Breitbart statement was in defense of their reporter:

The Breitbart statement struck sources within Breitbart and outside the company as strangely inadequate, given that it blames an unidentified “someone,” uses the conditional phrase “if that’s the case,” and leaves open the possibility that Lewandowski didn’t lay hands on Fields.

“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.”

And then there’s this:

There had better be some questions about this at tonight’s debate because Trump needs to answer for this thuggery. It’s totally outrageous and inappropriate behavior and Lewandowski needs to be fired for it. Not reappropriated within the Trump world, fired. End of story. It’s that simple.

Remember, Trump hires the ‘best’ people.


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