A New York Times reporter was kicked out of Donald Trump‘s Michigan rally on Thursday after posting pictures on social media of the audience not social distancing and not wearing masks.
Kathy Gray, a Times correspondent from Michigan, had tweeted that only 10% of the thousands of spectators at the rally had masks, and posted a picture of the crowd.
She later tweeted, “And so it begins,” with a picture of Air Force One, which had just landed at the event. After 13 minutes, the reporter tweeted that she had been removed from the event. She claimed that Trump’s campaign tracked her down via the pictures attached to her tweets and then escorted her out.
A representative from the Trump campaign told The Hill that Gray did not get press credentials “through the normal process” and was moved to the area for the general public as long as she did not do any reporting.
Gray told Bridge Magazine that she was kicked out after campaign officials told her she couldn’t tweet from her work account.
“They said because I was using my work Twitter account and since I didn’t have media credentials I couldn’t be working there, and I had to leave,” she said. Gray said she missed the deadline to request media credentials, but contacted the campaign multiple times to get them and received no response.
The New York Times responded to Gray’s removal from the event in a statement writing, “We’re disappointed that the Trump campaign refused to credential our freelancer and then, when she registered and attended as a member of the public, they ejected her from the event. Our goal is to cover these campaign events and talk to voters about the candidates, and that’s what Kathy was trying to do.”
In the past, Trump has called out the Times, and labeled it as a “fake newspaper” and “a true enemy of the people.”
