This week, a Politico reporter named Marc Caputo decided to let America know what he really thought about supporters of Donald Trump.  After seeing how the crowd reacted negatively to the media at one event, he decided to call these Trump supporters “toothless “garbage people.”

Specifically, he wrote:

“If you put everyone’s mouths together in this video, you’d get a full set of teeth.”  Then, after receiving criticism, he added, “Oh, no! I made fun of garbage people jeering at another person as they falsely accused him of lying and flipped him off. Someone fetch a fainting couch.”

Wow.  That’s not very tolerant, is it/

Politico spokesman Brad Dayspring said that Caputo’s Twitter criticism fell beneath the company’s standards.  I should hope so.  He also said editors “have addressed the issue” with the writer.

The Washington Post says that Caputo apologized for his Twitter rant:

The tweets from Marc Caputo, who covers Florida politics for Politico, fueled criticism from conservatives, who said his mockery of the president’s supporters validates their hatred of the media. The following day, Caputo deleted his tweets and apologized, saying he should not have stirred further anger and division in an already deeply polarized political landscape.

“Hate begets hate,” Caputo tweeted Wednesday, clarifying that he was not mocking a broad swath of Trump supporters but only those screaming at the media at the Tampa rally. “But the fault is mine for causing confusion and feeding anger. In the age of social media, where divisiveness serves no decent purpose, these flippant comments on my part only made things worse and contributed to a cycle of rage that I should not have inflamed further. So I’m sorry.”

Well, that’s actually not a bad apology.  Kudos to the reporter for realizing his mistake, even if it was after his employer reprimanded him.

We’ve got to do better, America.

Hat Tip: Washington Post

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

3 × 5 =