Beto Staff Kicks out Conservative Reporter to ‘Protect Black Students’
The flailing 2020 presidential campaign of former Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (D-TX) claimed Wednesday that a staffer ejected Breitbart News senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak from a speech at Benedict College, a historically black college, to protect black students.
In a statement Wednesday, O’Rourke’s press secretary, Aleigha Cavalier, attempted to defend against the growing controversy stemming from Pollak’s removal, claiming 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, 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,” the statement added.
>@joelpollak of Breitbart reported that he'd been ejected from an event by the O'Rourke campaign bc he'd been "disruptive" at previous events. https://t.co/RSNYTXjBUE I asked O'Rourke campaign for its side of the story and got this statement from Aleigha Cavalier: pic.twitter.com/3pNkZrek8Y
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) August 28, 2019
A Breitbart spokesperson hit back shortly after the O’Rourke campaign’s statement: “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 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.” (Read more from “Beto Staff Kicks out Conservative Reporter to ‘Protect Black Students'” HERE)
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