Politics

Halperin: Hillary Camp ‘Getting A Huge Bum Rap’ For Reporter Rope Line At Parade [VIDEO]

Al Weaver Reporter
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Two days after the Clinton campaign infuriated the press corps by corralling them with a rope at a parade, one prominent journalist is defending Team Hillary’s actions as “purely logistical.”

During Monday’s broadcast of “With All Due Respect,” Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin argued that the Clinton camp is “getting a huge bum rap” for the rope line, adding multiple times that it was “purely logistical” even though to the naked eye it “looks horrible.”

“I’m going to take as much heat as Hillary Clinton did for this. It was purely logistical,” Halperin told guest co-host Heidi Przybyla. “There was a parade. They didn’t want the press preset so they’d miss the whole parade. They didn’t have a truck to ride with her.”

“They were ruining the parade by running around, and this was a way to keep them contained and moving forward,” Halperin said. “It looks horrible, but it was purely logistical. I think the Clinton campaign is getting a huge bum rap for this.”

“Given the history, they had to see this coming,” Przybyla pushed back. “It was stupid to do this, especially given the Clinton administration — the previous administration as well as Hillary Clinton’s own reputation with the press as being kind of paranoid with the press and having this brass knuckles approach to dealing with the media…”

“But it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy to say that because she’s got this bad relationship with the press, everything feeds into that image,” Halperin said. “The reality is they did this for logistical purposes. The press swarms all over her. There are security concerns. But again, think about the parade. If they had let the press go wherever they wanted to go — we are penned in all the time.”

“I agree it doesn’t look good, and that stuff doesn’t look good, and there is a special onus on her,” Halperin concluded. “But all I’m saying is in this case, I don’t think their motives are anything but to try to have the event not be ruined, and they pay a price for who she is. I agree with that.”

WATCH (Starts at 3:37):