Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh have dismissed former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields’ claim that Donald Trump’s campaign manager assaulted her, but they were outraged in 2010 when a male reporter said a Democratic aide did the same to him.
“This is somebody who got shoved out of the way. This is nothing,” Limbaugh said Thursday in reference to Fields’ allegations. “She did not get thrown to the ground. She didn’t look like she was going get thrown to the ground. She didn’t look like she came anywhere near contact with the ground.”
“She didn’t look like she’d been moved more than six inches, to me,” he added.
Fields alleged in March that Corey Lewandowski assaulted her at a campaign event in Jupiter, Fla. She said he pulled on her arm violently, and nearly knocked her to the ground when and she tried to ask the 2016 GOP candidate a question.
Lewandowski initially denied the incident ever occurred. He called Fields “delusional,” and circulated several articles on social media characterizing her as a serial fabulist.
She responded by posting a picture to social media purporting to show bruises caused by the incident.
Trump himself suggested several days later she likely fabricated the story.
Fields then filed charges.
Lewandowski was charged and arrested on March 29 for simple battery. Florida law enforcement officials released security footage that same day showing he did indeed grab Fields’ arm.
Lewandowski was released that morning, and his court date was set for May 4.
On Thursday, Palm Beach County Florida State Attorney David Aronberg announced he would not prosecute Trump’s campaign manager. The security footage released on March 29 showed Lewandowski’s contact with Fields was initiated after she, “brushed or touched Mr. Trump’s arm,” his office said, adding they determined there was a, “reasonable hypothesis of innocence based on the real time facts and circumstances recorded on the video.”
However, Aronberg emphasized in a statement, “Mr. Lewandowski could have called this agent’s attention to her actions before taking action himself, if he considered her a threat. In addition, soon after the incident, Mr. Lewandowski publicly denied ever touching Ms. Fields in any way.”
For Limbaugh, the real lesson here is that the former Breitbart reporter is a coddled millennial in need of an education.
“She grabbed Trump first,” he said Thursday. “This is absurd anyway, that this was battery, in my humble estimation.”
“Battery” is defined in the state of Florida as, “when a person actually and intentionally touches or strikes another person against the will of the other or intentionally causes bodily harm to another person.”
Limbaugh’s website posted a transcript of the host’s remarks, with the headline, “Corey Lewandowski Cleared of Assaulting Millennial Snowflake Reporter.”
He continued, “But, you know, folks, in the millennial world it’s not absurd. Here’s the truth: In the millennial world, that was assault.”
“In the millennial world, the way they have been raised, when everybody gets a trophy for waking up, you get a trophy for waking up and getting out of bed, you get self-esteem left and right, you’re told every day how wonderful you are, you have this belief that nobody, no how nowhere no way can invade your space or what have you. That was assault,” he added.
Hannity has been similarly dismissive of Fields’ charges, and has stated repeatedly that he doesn’t see what Lewandowski did wrong.
When the cable news host hosted Trump in April for a town hall-style interview, he gave the casino tycoon plenty of room to accuse Fields of concocting the entire story. When she called out Hannity publicly out for not challenging Trump’s version of events, the Fox host sided with the GOP candidate.
“I watched the tape 150 times. I do NOT see what u allege. Sorry I don’t,” he wrote in response to her remarks.
These dismissals of Fields’ claims, and the corroborating security footage, stand in sharp contrast to how Hannity and Limbaugh responded in 2010 after an aide to former Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley manhandled a Weekly Standard reporter.
John McCormack was knocked to the ground and blocked from asking a question of Coakley, who was running at the time against Republican Scott Brown for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Sen. Ted Kennedy.
“I understand you got bruised and had a ripped-up suit,” Hannity asked McCormack in an interview that took place soon after the incident.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
Hannity underscored that McCormack was “was shoved to the ground,” and accused the Coakley operative, Michael Meehan, of being “overly aggressive.”
Limbaugh was also fit to be tied over the event.
“[T]his was assault and battery. The video shows it,” he said in January 2010. “[Coakley] stood there and watched this whole thing take place and didn’t do anything about it. It’s like Eric Holder with the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia.”
“It’s on YouTube. I have seen it; I have watched it,” he added.
Limbaugh then excoriated media for soft-pedaling the story.
“[T]his reporter did not ‘fall down.’ He did not ‘stumble.’ He was pushed down,” he said, adding that the, “way this is reported is just comical.”
“Where is Martha Coakley’s statement on this? She saw it. She’s a witness. And where is the media demanding that she make one about her aide attacking a reporter? A reporter! I thought reporters circled the wagons. When Dan Rather ran fake quotes, fake reports, fake stories, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw circled the wagons and gave him some makeshift award. They circle the wagons!
“Where are the media? One of their own was bullied, was literally shoved to the ground. It happened last night right before Martha Coakley’s eyes. She is an attorney general. She witnessed assault and battery. She should say something about it,” he added.
Hannity and Limbaugh opined at the time that reporters should not be blocked or intimidated by campaign aides when they’re just trying to do their jobs, and they both stood firmly behind McCormack.
Meehan apologized immediately for the entire ordeal.
In contrast, Trump and his team have maintained several different positions regarding the alleged Fields assault, including that it never happened and that she “started it.”
