Kash Patel once said he would 'come after' journalists. It now hangs over his FBI candidacy.
Trump's pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, has vowed to "come after" the media. But he also later emphasized to NBC News that his comments only apply if people "broke the law."
Since Donald Trump announced Kash Patel as his pick for FBI director, a 2023 podcast interview he did with fellow Trump loyalist Steve Bannon has circulated far and wide.
In the recording last year, Patel asserted how he would handle reporters if he were put in power.
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said then. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”
Now that Patel is in the running to head one of the most powerful agencies in the U.S. government, the question of whether he will really “come after” journalists is troubling both sides of the aisle, and it is likely to become a central point of contention if he comes up for Senate confirmation, with one senator calling his remarks “vile.” Patel has privately conceded he needs to publicly clean up the remark, according to a Trump ally who has spoken with him.
In a brief interview with NBC News in February, Patel laughed off the notion that he was hellbent on attacking reporters and even praised them as “invaluable.” He backed off a bit on his tough talk with Bannon, seeming to suggest that he believed his words had been blown out of proportion and adding that he had meant for his threat to apply only to people who had broken the law.
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