Of what was Greg Gianforte ‘sick and tired’?

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[Commentary] Montana GOP congressional candidate Greg Gianforte said of a Guardian reporter, “The last guy did the same damn thing.” From the looks of things, “the same damn thing” appears to boil down to asking questions of the candidate. Polite and relevant questions: Are they what had made Gianforte so “sick and tired”? Are polite and relevant questions what he was bemoaning when he talked about “the same damn thing”? Speaking of the news media as the people’s enemy and singling out reporters in menacing fashion at public events are both aspects of Trump’s trickle-down authoritarianism. He has done both. For decades, Republican candidates talked and talked and talked about the ravages of the so-called liberal media. Historians may look back at recent events — the manhandling of reporter Michelle Fields by a Trump campaign aide last year; the Jacobs confrontation — as the beginning of an action phase.


Of what was Greg Gianforte ‘sick and tired’?