Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is known for his hard-charging persona when it comes to getting what he wants politically. But Buzzfeed’s Michael Hastings is now alleging that the former White House chief of staff “crossed the line” by physically assaulting him during an interview.
On Thursday’s broadcast of Cenk Uygur’s “The Young Turks” on Current TV, Hastings played an audio recording of a verbal exchange he had with Emanuel that came on the heels of his 2010 Rolling Stone article “The Runway General,” which resulted in the termination of then- Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
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“I’m not going to let you do to me what you did to Stanley McChrystal,” Emanuel said at one point during the interview, which appears to have gone off the rails immediately after Hastings said “we’ll see” in reference to President Barack Obama’s re-election.
Emanuel also apparently did not want to be videotaped for the interview.
“I never experienced anything like this in my career from an American public official,” Hastings said. “He grabbed me — right before that exchange, he grabbed me by the arm and wouldn’t let go while his bodyguards approached me, clearly trying to intimidate me with a threat of physical violence. And look, it was abusive. I don’t mind being yelled at, like verbally abusive, fine. But I think the mayor — and I made this point in an email later to his staff, clearly crossed the line by grabbing me.”
