Rep. Michael Grimm faced public backlash this week after threatening to chuck a NY1 reporter over a balcony, and disgraced former representative Anthony Weiner has as a few words of advice for him.
“I’m sure that had Grimm actually done what he threatened and thrown [Michael] Scotto off the balcony, in today’s media environment, being the reporter who got tossed onto a tour group of visiting Boy Scouts would probably be career gold,” Mr. Weiner wrote in the New York Daily News. “Still, as Grimm himself has surely realized by now, this was not a close call. A congressman should not threaten to break, throw, ask to step outside or otherwise get physical with a reporter.”
The confrontation with Mr. Grimm began when Mr. Sotto asked him to address allegations about campaign finance abuse. The encounter was captured on video and Mr. Grimm at one point told the reporter: “I’ll break you in half,” the New York Post reported.
“If you don’t want to talk about your fund-raising scandal, maybe just maybe don’t have one to begin with,” Mr. Weiner suggested.
“Bottom line, notwithstanding the fact that there are lousy reporters — and that we all pay too much attention to scandals and not enough to all the people in public life who get up every day to do the best they can to do good work — the basic deal of representative government is this: The people who get elected have to be held accountable by the people who pay their salaries,” he wrote.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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