LePage demands apology from reporter, vows to never speak to press again
LePage last Thursday left an obscenity-laced voicemail on Democratic state Rep. Drew Gattine’s phone after he was told by a reporter that Gattine had called the governor a racist. He ordered Gattine to “prove that I’m a racist” and warned “I am after you.”
Speaking to reporters later that day, LePage expressed his desire to challenge the “snot-nosed little guy from Westbrook” to a duel in which he would point a firearm “right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt and he has not done a damn thing since he’s been in this Legislature to help move the state forward.”
LePage met with Gattine on Wednesday morning and apologized to the state legislator and Maine, but he also suggested that he isn’t the only person who has a reason to be sorry.“After speaking with Representative Gattine, I think that the reporter who put the mic in my face owes the people of Maine an apology as well, because [Gattine] never called me racist,” LePage told reporters. “He said I made racially [charged] comments. Maybe, in my mind, it is semantics. But in his mind, after talking to him, it was clear that there was a real difference. Fine.”
LePage conceded that he may have responded the same way had Gattine’s comment been portrayed accurately “because race bothers me, because I try to help minorities.”
“And I will say this: The biggest discrimination in the United States of America is not race. It’s poverty,” he added. “And we need to educate people out of poverty and not by throwing money at them, and that’s another area that’s very, very dear to my heart.”
Maine Democrats, who control the state House, have called for LePage’s resignation. And although some Senate Republicans have said they want to see “corrective action,” the House GOP on Tuesday chose not to take any action against the governor after meeting privately for more than two hours about his inflammatory rhetoric.
“The House, I believe, is very supportive. I believe the Senate would like me to leave,” LePage said. “That’s the truth. I’m brutally honest.”
Despite telling a local radio station on Tuesday that he may or may not resign and acknowledging “maybe it’s time to move on,” his position was firm Wednesday.
“I may not supposed to be that sensitive to these things, but I am. I lose sleep over this, and it’s frustrating when you hear people talk about cheap political stunts to hurt their opponent and not do the right thing,” he said. “Being called a racist was a horrible thing for me. It was enormously hurtful. It hurt my family. I will not resign, though.”
What he said he will do, however, is stop speaking to the media.
“I will no longer speak to the press ever again after today,” LePage said, prompting laughter from reporters. “And I’m serious. Everything will be put in writing. I am tired of being caught — the gotcha moments.”
“You folks live in a seven-second fiction world,” he continued. “I live in 24-hour reality.”
LePage accepted responsibility for what he characterized as taking the reporter’s “bait.”
“Frankly, it’s been going on, and after six years I should have caught on, but that was a cheap shot, and he got my goat,” he said. “And I don’t know if he researched and knows that I am very sensitive to helping black people in some of the Caribbean islands, but it’s very, very sensitive, and he hit a wrong button. He hit the wrong nerve.”
LePage said he will seek “spiritual guidance” from his family and dismissed speculation that he’s a victim of alcohol abuse, drug addiction or mental illness.
“To whomever it was, I’m not an alcoholic and I’m not a drug addict and I don’t have mental issues,” he said. “What I have is a backbone, and I wanna move Maine forward and, you know, in this politics, it’s very hard to be a one-man show.”
LePage, who called black and Hispanic people “the enemy” last week after remarking that most drug dealers in Maine are minorities, denied making any “racially charged” comments.
“I apologized for what I did. You need to either not print any more articles about drug trafficking because every single thing I did came out of newspapers, and it’s right here,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I look at newspapers. Let’s put it this way, human beings are coming to Maine and killing Mainers, and, frankly, I call that murder because they know people will die when they sell that poison. Now let’s leave the ethnicity out of it. Some of my friends have kids who are dying.”
“Maybe my temperament for the poor and the underdog is over the top, but I live my life that way,” LePage concluded. “I’m comfortable fighting for the underdog. I’m just not a very good politician.”
In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, Maine Republican Party Chairman Richard Bennett praised LePage as the change agent voters sought in the state’s past two gubernatorial elections but noted that his controversies “have been tremendously difficult and unnecessary for the people of Maine” and he was right to apologize for his “harmful and inappropriate” language.
Bennett, however, insisted that the focus of Maine lawmakers and the state’s community should shift back to what’s important, citing jobs, the economy and its drug crisis as examples.
“In order to do so, the Governor needs to take full responsibility for his words and exercise the leadership I know he is capable of,” he said.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/paul-lepage-vows-never-speak-media-227589#ixzz4Mh9pMq00
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