{"id":180316,"date":"2017-05-25T17:53:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-25T22:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/25\/only-in-america-2\/"},"modified":"2017-05-25T17:53:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T22:53:00","slug":"only-in-america-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/25\/only-in-america-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Only in America\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the special election for Montana’s only Congressional seat,  Republican Greg Gianforte has been formally charged with assault for body-slamming a Guardian<\/i> reporter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is an audio tape, and a Fox News camera crew witnessed it:<\/p>\n

The Republican candidate for Montana\u2019s congressional seat has been charged with misdemeanor assault after he is alleged to have slammed a Guardian reporter to the floor on the eve of the state\u2019s special election, breaking his glasses and shouting: \u201cGet the hell out of here.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ben Jacobs, a Guardian political reporter, was asking Greg Gianforte, a tech millionaire endorsed by Donald Trump, about the Republican healthcare plan when the candidate allegedly \u201cbody-slammed\u201d the reporter.\u201cHe took me to the ground,\u201d Jacobs said by phone from the back of an ambulance. \u201cI think he whaled on me once or twice \u2026 He got on me and I think he hit me \u2026 This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me in reporting on politics.\u201d <\/p>\n

Fox News reporter Alicia Acuna, field producer Faith Mangan and photographer Keith Railey witnessed the incident at Gianforte\u2019s campaign headquarters in Montana, according to an account published on the Fox News website<\/a>. After Jacobs asked Gianforte his question, Acuna wrote<\/a>: \u201cGianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him. <\/p>\n

\u201cFaith, Keith and I watched in disbelief as Gianforte then began punching the man, as he moved on top the reporter and began yelling something to the effect of \u2018I\u2019m sick and tired of this!\u2019 \u2026 To be clear, at no point did any of us who witnessed this assault see Jacobs show any form of physical aggression toward Gianforte, who left the area after giving statements to local sheriff\u2019s deputies.\u201d <\/p>\n

Jacobs subsequently reported the incident to the police. The Gallatin county sheriff\u2019s office said on Wednesday night it had completed its investigation and that Gianforte had been issued with a charge of misdemeanour assault. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It appears that Gianforte was upset with the Guardian<\/i>‘s earlier report detailing his financial ties to sanctioned Russian businesses.<\/p>\n

With heavy early voting, and with a significant portion of the Republican electorate objectively support assault in general, and assaults on journalists in particular, this nut-job is still likely to win the race, because \u2026\u2026\u2026 Montana.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the special election for Montana’s only Congressional seat,  Republican Greg Gianforte has been formally charged with assault for body-slamming a Guardian reporter. There is an audio tape, and a Fox News camera crew witnessed it: The Republican candidate for Montana\u2019s congressional seat has been charged with misdemeanor assault after he is alleged to have …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[423,447,435,375,589,421],"class_list":["post-180316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-40yrs","tag-congress","tag-crimes","tag-elections","tag-insane","tag-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}