Apparently, Trump Spokeswoman (and bigoted shoplifter) Katrina Pierson agrees with her boss that shredding the First Amendment is all part of making America great again.
On The Kelly File last night, host Megyn Kelly brought up the news that Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger had been denied access to Trump’s “press conference” last night. Schreckinger had earlier been issued press credentials but they were rescinded after Schreckinger published a report that Trump staffers wanted Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski fired even before he allegedly assaulted reporter Michelle Fields.
“Is this what we’re gonna see under a Trump presidency?” Kelly asked. “Denial to reporters of access to cover him if they write something that is negative about him or his lieutenants?”
Pierson pretended otherwise but it was not hard to see that she really meant, yes, that’s exactly what we’re gonna see and she’s just fine with it.
PIERSON: No, I don’t think that’s what you can expect. What I do think you can expect is people being treated properly. More importantly, if you have a reporter that is not really reporting but just doing constant hit pieces for no reason? Then that’s something we need to look at. We have a lot of reporters who essentially have just been glorified bloggers who aren’t really interested in covering the campaign or even the race for that matter. They’re just out there trying to start trouble.
Kelly could have challenged Pierson to explain how the campaign evaluates “proper treatment” vs. “hit pieces,” especially given that Schreckinger cited “more than 20 sources who have dealt with Lewandowski during his nearly year-long tenure with the Trump campaign and in his previous job with the Koch brothers-backed advocacy group Americans for Prosperity.”
Instead, Kelly seemed to lecture Pierson. Kelly cited Fusion, Univision, The Huffington Post, and The Des Moines Register as other outlets Trump has barred, seemingly out of personal pique. “You understand that there’s a First Amendment, there’s freedom of the press and you don’t get to snuff that out when you’re president of the United States, right? Does he understand that?” Kelly asked.
“Oh, he definitely understands that,” Pierson said. As “proof,” she held up the fact that Trump talks to all reporters in a spin room. As if that’s the same as covering a campaign event.
The other guest, Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review (which devoted an entire issue to criticizing Trump), said his reporters “can’t get credentials to any Trump event.”
Kelly dropped the subject at that point and moved on to asking Pierson why Trump would pay the legal fees of “that guy who sucker punched that African American protester?”
Kelly played the video that clearly shows a Trump supporter punching a protester without being attacked.
But Pierson announced, “Mr. Trump says that he wants his supporters to defend themselves.” She went on to suggest that most protesters deserve the violence, even if this one didn't. “What people don’t see on TV and probably not even on Fox, are when these protesters come in there and they start punching and pushing around supporters,” she insisted.
“In this case, Mr. Trump was on stage and did not see what happened,” she claimed. So when he was asked about the incident, “He said I don’t know, I’d have to see what happened first,” Pierson contended.
But Lowry, pardon the expression, perfectly smacked down that argument.
LOWRY: Why would you possibly consider defending someone who punches someone out of the blue? …This is someone who follows the media obsessively and especially the coverage of himself obsessively, so the idea he didn’t know about this incident is fantastical. …He may get away with this in the primaries, but in a general election is he gonna go out there and say it’s OK and we might actually defend you if you punch people? It’s going to be a debacle.
“If you defend yourself, big difference,” Pierson responded, suggesting that she’s just fine with more violence along with less First Amendment.
If you’re not familiar with Pierson’s character, do check out AlterNet’s report of the "12 Craziest Things About Trump’s Spokeswoman Katrina Pierson.” For one thing, it reveals Pierson has a criminal record, having been arrested for shoplifting when she was 20. “She has since woven this episode into her story of pulling herself up by her own (stolen?) bootstraps,” AlterNet notes.
Pierson also shares Trump’s ethnic bigotry. She reportedly wrote on her Facebook page, “Islam preys on the weak and uses political correctness as cover. Two things that Americans won’t be concerned with when @realDonaldTrump is in the White House.”
Violence and the Constitution are not the only ethical concerns that don’t seem to bother her much, AlterNet reveals:
(S)he took a job as a spokesperson for the Tea Party Leadership Fund, which Politico reports, “has been described in media reports as a ‘scam PAC’ for tactics that include spending unusually high percentages of its funding on overhead. ‘We all have to pay the bills, but for Katrina, there is no principle that she isn’t willing to abandon for the right price,’ complained Matt Mackowiak, an unaligned Republican consultant from Texas.”
When you add Pierson to Lewandowski and Trump’s thug lawyer, you get quite a depressing picture of Trump's “great” America.
Watch it below, from the March 15 The Kelly File.