Breitbart.com’s transition from awful right-wing news site to awful Donald Trump fan zine is nearly complete. On Sunday night, reporter Michelle Fields and editor-at-large Ben Shapiro resigned over the outlet’s response to Fields’s alleged assault at the hands of Trump’s campaign manager.
“Today I informed the management at Breitbart News of my immediate resignation,” Fields said in a statement, first published by BuzzFeed. “I do not believe Breitbart News has adequately stood by me during the events of the past week and because of that I believe it is now best for us to part ways.”
According to multiple witnesses, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski grabbed Fields’s arm and yanked her toward the ground at a press scrum last Tuesday. While the site initially called on Lewandowski to apologize, it later argued that video of the moments before the alleged incident proved Lewandowski’s innocence. Then, when subsequent video showed Lewandowski reaching for Fields’s arm, the site seemed to acknowledge that it had spoken too soon. It proceeded to forbid its staffers from speaking at all. According to BuzzFeed, some writers who publicly defended Fields were threatened with firing.
Meanwhile, Lewandowski branded Fields a delusional “attention seeker,” and the GOP front-runner argued that she probably made the whole thing up.
“Both Lewandowski and Trump maligned Michelle in the most repulsive fashion,” Shapiro wrote in his resignation statement. “Breitbart News not only stood by and did nothing outside of tepidly asking for an apology, they then attempted to abandon Michelle by silencing staff from tweeting or talking about the issue.”
The resignations follow that of company spokesperson Kurt Bardella, and, according to BuzzFeed, more departures are likely in the coming weeks.
The Lewandowski affair is a PR nightmare for the right-wing site. However, Breitbart.com is now in prime position to become America’s only legal news source, once Supreme Leader Trump dissolves the Congress.
