O'Reilly Tangles With Obama Staffer
January 05, 2008 3:29 PM
blogs.abcnews.com
ABC News' Sunlen Miller Reports: When candidates are working the rope lines after their events, it’s common practice to see reporters yelling questions at them as they are greeting voters.
But, after Sen. Barack Obama’s event in Nashua it was a reporter, FOX’s Bill O’Reilly, who got in a tete-a-tete with Obama’s National Trip Director, Marvin Nicholson.
O’Reilly was trying to get access to Obama, who was unknowingly just working the rope line about ten feet in front of them. Nicholson, standing 6 foot, 8 inches in height and a veteran of Senator John Kerry's, D-Mass., 2004 campaign, was standing next to Obama, as his job calls for, and thus blocking O’Reilly’s cameraman from a clean shot of Obama.
So O’Reilly took things into his own hands…literally. He maneuvered around the steel gate barricade, yelled expletives at Nicholson, and called him "low class."
In an interview after the incident, Nicholson said, "He grabbed me with both arms and tried to push me out of the way."
Secret Service then stepped in and told O’Reilly to get back.
After the commotion, Obama shook hands with O’Reilly.
Nicholson, however, said he’d never seen anything like it.
"I've never seen a member of the press lay hands on a staffer before."
January 5, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (145) |
