Things exploded in Los Angeles during ABC News Live’s coverage of the city’s protests and riots on Saturday, June 14, during which an ABC News reporter involved in the coverage lied about what had happened during an altercation with an officer and got exposed by a furious Los Angeles Police Department officer standing nearby.
The explosive confrontation occurred when ABC News correspondent Matt Gutman was reporting on the riots live, and told an officer that he was involved in a confrontation that the coverage was going out live, which in turn led to the LAPD officer exploding in his face and shouting about the lies the reporter was telling.
Gutman, during the clip of the coverage that took off online, whined to the officer as the footage rolled, “You’re pushing me on live television.” The officer, firing back, snapped that Gutman had assaulted his partner. He snapped, “You touched my partner! Don’t touch my partner! I’m letting you know! Don’t touch him!”
Backing off after the explosion from the officer and seemingly lying about what happened as he did so, Gutman said that tensions were “high” in the area as the protests dragged on and turned into riots/ That was a comment that led to yet another explosion from the officer, who was obviously furious about being slandered by the woke reporter.
As he backed away, Gutman told those watching the live coverage, “Obviously tensions are extremely high here.” Shouting from the police line, the officer fired back at Gutman and shouted that the tension was only there because he had acted illegally, saying, “Yes! Because you touched the officer!”
That officer then brought another LAPD officer into the confrontation, and the second officer snapped at Gutman as well, saying, “Don’t touch the officers.” Gutman, backing off, denied that it had happened, whining, “We clearly didn’t touch the officers.” The first officer fired back, “Yes you did!”
Watch the incident here:
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Predictably, woke commentators online took the journalist’s side in the confrontation, denying that assaulting an officer with unallowed touch was a big deal. For example, a woke poster named Christopher Webb wrote, “Whoa! Hats off to ABC News reporter Matt Gutman for keeping his cool yesterday. This LAPD officer needs to be relieved of duty if he can’t handle an alleged ‘touch’ without snapping.”
Slamming Webb and the ABC News Live reporter, a commenter on Webb’s post fired back ,”You have no right to lay hands on an officer without invitation. Letter of the law, that’s assault on a peace officer. Now, that law may be excessive, and inflexible. But if you don’t like it? Change the law instead of breaking it.” Similarly, another commenter wrote, “Here’s a thought. Don’t touch riot officers when they’re dealing with riots. Real simple actually… 🤣🤣🤡”
Still another commenter roasted Webb by noting that reporters like Gutman are the reason all this is even happening in the first place, saying, “I see an officer who sees a petulant agitator who exploits situations for views and lies to make them worse. That lying reporter is the reason the cop had to be in that situation in the first place. It’s no wonder he’s annoyed.”
Featured image credit: base image from the embedded video