In Iowa this evening, Donald Trump’s pre-speech press conference was rudely interrupted by immigration activist and part-time journalist, Jorge Ramos. Here’s the video:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=mrdjM6qtkrs
I’ve been a staunch and relentless critic of Trump’s, and my general disapproval stands. But I have to say: He got this one right. Ramos claimed that he had a “right” to ask his question. Not really, no. Ramos certainly had a “right” to wait in line with the other journalists at the event, and he might even have had a “right” to be vexed if he’d been obviously passed over. But he certainly didn’t have a right to stand up and make a scene, nor to disrupt the proceedings for everybody else. Having a press credential in your pocket does not entitle you to behave like Code Pink. Ramos did. Ramos was evicted. Good.
Now, was Trump his usual abrasive self throughout? Sure he was. Did his line about “going back to Univision” jar a touch? Yes, it did. Was he nevertheless entirely within his rights to have a glorified protestor kicked out of his press conference? Absolutely. As we have learned over the past few years, Ramos has become accustomed to having it both ways: When it suits him, he’s an “activist” making a scene; when that’s not appropriate, he’s an intrepid journalist just doing his job. Eventually, someone had to call him out for it. As Allahpundit writes over at Hot Air, Ramos is
the most shameless amnesty shill in American media and makes no apologies for it; his advice to colleagues in journalism is “Don’t be neutral. Neutrality is for referees in a football game.” He’s an activist for a cause more than a reporter. When someone fitting that description stands up at a public event and begins talking over the speaker, there’s a word for it: Heckling. And hecklers get tossed. That’s what happened here.
Indeed so.
Know what else ”happened here”? By first explaining why he had Ramos removed, and then by bringing him back and debating with him for a while, Trump regained the moral high ground. As the Daily Mail reports, Trump did not banish Ramos. Rather, he let him return, and then he “proceeded to take questions . . . about immigration policy, the term ‘anchor babies’ and security at the Mexican border.”
I’ll give him this one.