Why I Got Thrown Out of a Jasmine Crockett Rally

https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1rghzns/why_i_got_thrown_out_of_a_jasmine_crockett_rally/

Not that people here need a reminder that the Democratic Party only values truth and accountability and concern for the Constitution and *freedom of the press (intended originally and accidentally deleted it before pressing submit) when the party is backgrounded by Trump and the majority of the contemporary Republican Party, but I thought this particular anecdote was worth sharing considering the candidate and the hype around her.

as I attempted to join the other reporters interviewing the lawmaker, a woman with a badge approached me.

“Are you Elaine?” she asked. I recognized her from the entrance of the event, where I had identified myself as she’d waved me into the building’s press area. Yes, I answered. “Her team has asked you to leave,” she said. When I asked why, the staffer looked at her phone and read dutifully: “They just said, ‘Elaine from Atlantic, white girl with a hat and notepad. She’s interviewing people in the crowd. She’s a top-notch hater and will spin. She needs to leave.’”

I will, of course, own up to being a white woman wearing a Menards baseball cap. But “top-notch hater” is a distinction that I had never considered for myself. Last year, I wrote a profile of Crockett that displeased the congresswoman. I interviewed her several times for the story, but after she learned that I’d called some of her colleagues in Congress without asking her permission, she told me that she was “shutting down the profile and revoking all permissions.” (In retrospect, I suppose this was a helpful signal that Crockett does not have a firm grasp on the First Amendment, or at least does not particularly care for it.)

As security guards began to materialize around me, I wondered to myself what distinguished a top-notch hater from a middling one. I agreed to leave, and four guards, including at least one who was armed, escorted me out of the building, through the parking lot, and right to the edge of the nearby highway, where they waited as I ordered a car. A spokesperson for the Crockett campaign did not respond to my request for comment on these events or for elaboration on the tiers of haterdom. A spokesperson for her team told Semafor that I had not been removed from the event. Crockett told CBS News there is “no evidence” that a reporter had been removed from an event. She added that there is a “specific journalist” who has a “history of being less than truthful,” and that this person had been sued for defamation and lost. Perhaps she was thinking of someone else, because that’s not something that has ever happened to me.