The Beto O’Rourke campaign claimed Wednesday it ejected Breitbart News senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak from a speech at the historically black Benedict College to protect black students.
Pollak, however, as Breitbart pointed out, is Jewish and married to a black woman who who serves in the U.S. military.
O’Rourke’s press secretary, Aleigha Cavalier, explained in a statement that while the candidate “believes in the right to a free press,” Breitbart News “walks the line between being news and a perpetrator of hate speech.”
“Given this particular Breitbart employee’s previous hateful reporting and the sensitivity of the topics being discussed with students at an HBCU (event), a campaign staffer made the call to ask him to leave to ensure that the students attending the event felt comfortable and safe while sharing their experiences as young people of color,” Cavalier said.
A Breitbart spokesman responded.
“The false accusation that Breitbart is racist, or that its award-winning reporter — an Orthodox Jew, married to a black woman who serves in the military — is either racist or would make anyone at a black university uncomfortable is absurd,” the statement said.
“The irony of Mr. O’Rourke — who has stated himself that he is the beneficiary of ‘white privilege’ — purporting to decide for black students who should be banned from events that are open to the press, or what they should feel, is not lost on us.”
CNN reported late Wednesday that after strong criticism, the O’Rourke campaign said it will not remove Breitbart News reporters from future events.
Pollak recounted Tuesday a campus police officer escorted him out of the room where O’Rourke was scheduled to speak.
The incident occurred one day after Pollak asked O’Rourke during a press gaggle whether misquoting President Trump’s “very fine people” comments on the 2017 protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, was in line with his promise not to “inflame” divisions in the country.
Pollack pointed out that Trump condemned the white supremacists and the neo-Nazis “totally.”
“Are you aware that you are misquoting him, or partially quoting him — not quoting the full extent of his remarks in Charlottesville? Are you concerned that that might inflame tensions rather than heal divisions?” Pollack asked.
“No,” O’Rourke replied. “I believe in the truth, and in being honest about what the president was doing. And it’s not just that he referred to Klansmen as ‘very fine people,’ it’s that he attempted to ban all people of one religion from this country. We’re constantly warned of an ‘invasion’ of killers, and rapists, and animals, from Central America and Mexico, though we know that they commit crimes at a far lower rate than those who are born in this country. This is a very coordinated attack on minorities in this country, on the most vulnerable and the defenseless, for political gain for the president. And he knows full well that it not only offends our sensibilities as a country, it is leading to violence and the taking of lives, as we saw in El Paso.”
Pollack responded, “But he said that he wasn’t referring to the neo-Nazis and the Klansman — just a clarification — he said he wasn’t referring to the Klansmen as ‘very fine people,’ that he was referring to non-violent protesters, left and right.”
O’Rourke replied: “He has openly courted the support of white supremacists and that’s a matter of fact and a matter of record. He has repeatedly, though given the opportunity, refused to disavow their support. I reference — and you can check the tape on this one — at a rally in Florida in May, when someone says, “Shoot them!”, referring to immigrants, he laughs and smiles and he joked about that. If that is not a total failure of leadership, and a total inducement to violence and hatred, I don’t know what is. And you can also check a rise in hate crimes in this country, every single year that he’s been a candidate, or in office, and in fact in those counties that hosted a Trump rally, you saw a more than 200 percent increase in hate crimes there. He is very much responsible for much of the violence, the hatred, and the racism that you see in this country.”
Breitbart pointed out that along with specifically condemning white supremacists at the presser on Charlottesville, Trump has repeatedly condemned the extremist ideology, including during a speech this month on the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
Ironically, at an MSNBC town hall last year, O’Rourke declared the “need to vigorously defend the freedom of the press.”
“If we don’t have a free press, if we cannot make informed decisions at the ballot box, if we can’t hold people like me accountable, and make sure that we’re held honest to the promises that we made, to the job that we’re performing in these positions of public trust, we’ll lose the essence of our democracy,” he said.
