The Media Hid Donald Trump's Physical Attack On A Reporter For 37 Days
Can't Upset Their Cash Cow
Imagine this following scenario: President Joe Biden is upset after a speaking event, and a reporter asks him a question.
Perturbed by the question, Biden grabs the reporter’s phone that they were recording on and throws it aside. Now, imagine that such an event occurred in full view of multiple reporters and that instead of breaking into the 24-hour news cycle to report it, the journalists sat on the story for 37 days.
This actually happened, but it didn’t happen with Joe Biden — it happened with Donald Trump. The decision to suppress this event says a lot about the mainstream media, and it isn’t anything good.
On March 27 after his rally in Waco, Texas, multiple reports now tell us that Trump grabbed NBC reporter Vaughn Hillyard’s phone after Hillyard asked him if he was “irritated” by the ongoing criminal investigation occurring in New York.
Somehow the story of this didn’t surface until May 1, in a Vanity Fair report by Charlotte Klein.
About 10 minutes later, as Hillyard continued to ask about the investigation, Trump snapped, grabbing the reporter’s two phones and chucking them to the side, according to a source familiar with the matter. “Get him out of here,” Trump told his aides, according to a recording obtained by Vanity Fair.
In a report published the next day, May 2, the Washington Post confirmed further details of the story:
When Hillyard presses on, Trump is heard demanding, “Let’s go, get him out of here. Outta here! Outta here!” and then asking if a phone on the table is Hillyard’s.
“Whose is this?” Trump asked.
“That one’s mine, too,” Hillyard said, referring to another phone.
In the audio, a soft thud can be heard as Trump tossed the phones to the side. The journalists were ushered away from Trump, who remained seated at the table, according to a person on the flight who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the exchange.
According to the Post, the following reporters were in attendance and apparently witnessed the attack: “The journalists traveling on the plane with Trump included Vaughn Hillyard of NBC, Brian Glenn of Right Side Broadcasting Network, Sophia Cai of Axios, Rob Crilly of the Daily Mail, and Evan Vucci, a photographer with the Associated Press, according to photographs taken on board the plane and audio recordings of the gaggle.”
They didn’t bother to report this physical altercation involving the former President of the United States and the current, leading Republican candidate for the presidency.
Even Hillyard himself gave Trump a pass. In his report on the back-and-forth aired on MSNBC, Hillyard didn’t mention any of this.
Hillyard: “Donald Trump bristled at any specifics and instead called us fake news, that we were not telling the truth.”
He didn’t indicate that Trump grabbed his phone. He didn’t play any recording of the incident, which we now know exists thanks to the Vanity Fair and Post reports.
This is profoundly strange and disturbing behavior. It is hard to imagine any politician in America getting such deferential treatment, and I definitely can’t see the press letting someone like Biden or Hillary Clinton or John Kerry and definitely not President Barack Obama get away with this.
But as always, there is a Trump exception.
The mainstream media has a symbiotic connection to Donald Trump. They profit handily from his continued prominence as a significant political figure in America.
With Biden, the book deals for soap opera-style tell-all books are few and far between. Trump and his gaggle of fools had more drama in their first week than Biden has had in over three years in office. With Biden, there are few clickbait headlines to be had with absurdist stories about late night tweets, crocodile-filled moats, and plans to buy Greenland.
But Trump in power means gold in the media hills, and just like when he was in office, the press engages in smoothing down his rougher edges, hiding the bizarre nature of the man and the cretins in his orbit, hoarding it for their books and other media products.
As I said before, the mainstream media misses Trump, and they want him to win.
The public loses out thanks to this greed and code of silence. We aren’t told information that we have a right to know. The press covers it up. It’s shameful and wrong, but it doesn’t look like it will stop any time soon.
If you like this newsletter, please consider becoming a paying subscriber by clicking here to join. I won’t be putting any of my regular columns behind a paywall and they will always be free. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed so far!
— Oliver
Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Twitter @owillis and on Substack Notes
Exclusive Kal-El Photo
Kal tired himself out barking at a lawnmower, and collapsed in sleep on my shoulder.
The Main Stream Media needs to be called out on each and every incident on how they coddle up to Trump at the expense of our democracy.
America’s tombstone will bear the epitaph,
“But it sure did drive traffic.”