The heckling of CNN reporter Jim Acosta by a crowd of Trump supporters has flared up tribalist impulses. One such person was Politico reporter Marc Caputo, who has now apologized after referring to the hecklers as “garbage people.”
At a rally Tuesday night in Tampa, Acosta experienced the wrath of Trump fans who belligerently shouted “CNN sucks! CNN sucks!” behind his back during a segment. The chants and boos were at one point led by the group “Blacks For Trump.” In response, Acosta tweeted out his fear that Trump’s rhetoric against the “fake news” media would result in violence against journalists.
“I’m very worried that the hostility whipped up by Trump and some in conservative media will result in somebody getting hurt,” wrote Acosta. “We should not treat our fellow Americans this way. The press is not the enemy.”
Politico’s Marc Caputo then stepped into Acosta’s corner to defend him.
“If you put everyone’s mouths together in this video, you’d get a full set of teeth,” Caputo wrote in a now-deleted tweet.
After experiencing significant backlash, Caputo went on to double-down on his comment in another now-deleted tweet: “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.”
Eventually, Caputo deleted the tweets and apologized, admitting he had become a part of the problem: