Mikenzie Frost, a local anchor at Baltimore’s FOX45 News, grilled Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) this week, following a viral confrontation between Harris and University of Maryland journalist Cat Murphy.

During a Tuesday night campaign stop, Harris was heckled by audience members, resulting in the Republican incumbent chastizing a woman at the event: “You should let me finish the sentence, Ma’am. You are rude!”

The 69-year-old physician and member of the House Freedom Caucus took questions from reporters after the event, but got into it with Murphy, whom Harris accused of illegally recording him and making statements as opposed to asking questions.

Here is a quick transcript from the exchange:

HARRIS: You do not have my permission to record. If you record, we will refer you to the prosecutor.

MURPHY: Everyone in here is recording

HARRIS: But you are not allowed to. We are in a two-party state. You are not allowed to record.

The back-and-forth ended with Harris insisting, “Take her camera. You’re gonna take a camera. She is violating the law. In fact, get an officer in here. She’s violating the law on two-party, two-party recording.”

“We need an officer” he continued. “Video and audio, and video have to have two-party approval in Maryland now they may not have to have it in Washington DC. They have to it in Maryland. She needs my approval to record.”

“Sir, we are in public. We’re in public,” insisted Murphy.

The exchange quickly went viral, and Frost questioned Harris about it.

“Congressman, before I let you go, I want to ask you about the event in Cambridge. During that event, you talked about your First Amendment rights when someone in the audience was interrupting you, but after that, you threatened a student journalist with prosecution for recording you while asking questions. What happened during that moment, and do you regret how you handled that interaction?” Frost asked.

“Look, the bottom line is, it’s not very newsworthy that the liberal media badgers a conservative politician. What was newsworthy is that I actually pushed back against it. She was not asking questions,” Harris replied, adding:

She actually started by criticizing the way that press gaggle was being conducted. That’s not the role of a journalist. And what I did in the end is just say, “Look, this is all done,” and just left.

Frost hit back, “Well, Congressman, that’s not exactly all you did, though. You threatened to bring in the police, and you threatened to have her prosecuted for recording you. And you falsely claimed that there was a need for two-party consent when that wasn’t the case.”

Below is the rest of their exchange:

Harris: Oh, there is clearly a need for two-party consent, but it would have applied to everyone. That’s why, in the end, I just left everyone in their cameras and left the room.

Frost: Do you believe you owe that student journalist an apology for how you treated her?

Harris: You know, if she called me and asked, I would tell her what bothered me. What bothered me is that she didn’t ask a question. She criticized the way I was conducting the news conference. She’s a journalism student; I think she should realize that’s not really your purpose.

That’s not your purpose, to attempt to run a press conference. And yeah, I think we’d talk it over.

Frost: Do you think that it is your purpose to tell a reporter how to do their job?

Harris: Uh, no. Uh, she was telling me how to do my job. That’s not– that’s not what she was telling me, how to conduct the press conference. Again, pushing back against the liberal media badgering a conservative politician is really what’s newsworthy here, because they’ve been doing it. Liberal media has been doing this for years. Nobody pushes back. I pushed back. Liberal media got offended.

Frost: Do you think that the liberal media got offended because she was pushing back, or do you think that people covered a newsworthy event between a sitting congressman and a student journalist?

Harris: Well, look, I was there to answer questions. The liberal media was not there to answer questions. The liberal audience was there to heckle and to cause trouble. And the liberal media just followed right up on that afterwards.

Frost: Alright, Congressman Harris, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it.

Harris: Thank you.

Watch the clip above.

The post Local Anchor Excoriates GOP Congressman Over Confrontation With Student Journalist: ‘Not Exactly All You Did!’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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