14 DAY TRIAL // Politics are certainly one of the less dangerous domains to be reporting from. But the statement is only true if you compare it to reporting from, let's say, a war zone. Because, in real life, politicians will eventually blow their top and attack a reporter.
This is exactly what happened with Republican New York Representative Michael Grimm, who decided to threaten a New York cable news station reporter with throwing him off a balcony and breaking him in half.
The dispute emerged at the Capitols, just after President Obama gave the State of the Union address. Grimm agreed to do an interview with Michael Scotto, a NY1 reporter. The politician thought it was going to be just a regular interview, where he had to speak about the president's recent address.
But Scotto wanted to take the discussion in a different direction and, at one point, asked Grimm about a Department of Justice investigation into his campaign finances. This clearly irked the Representative who cut the interview short and quickly walked off camera.
But he soon changed his mind, and, in a state of anger, quickly return to Scotto's side, and whispered in his ear a series of threats. What he forgot was the fact that Scotto was still holding on to the microphone, and the entire rant was caught on tape with full audio, although a little indistinguishable at times.
“You ever do that to me again I'll throw you off this [expletive] balcony,” the Republican said to the reporter, after which he added, among other things, that he was going to “break [him] in half.”
Later, the congressman issued a statement in which he explained that he was “extremely annoyed” with his interviewer and tried to brush the whole incident off by saying that he doubted he was the “first member of Congress to tell off a reporter.”
