White House press aide who vowed to ‘destroy’ reporter quits

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White House press aide who vowed to ‘destroy’ reporter quits

February 14th, 2021

Awake Goy

White House Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo has quit after it was exposed that he threatened to “destroy” Politico reporter Tara Palmeri for writing a story concerning his relationship with Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond, according to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Reuters reported.This follows Ducklo’s one week suspension without pay by the White House, which Vanity Fair reported on Friday. The White House decision arrived after Vanity Fair reported the threats. McCammond had been covering the campaign of US President Joe Biden.

Despite Ducklo being contacted by both a male reporter and Palmeri for reactions to the story, which they both were working on, he chose to contact Palmeri and tell her he would ruin her reputation.

The call, which was off the record, included Ducklo alleging the that reporter is “jealous” of his romantic relationship. The story was assigned to her by Vanity Fair and she did not pursue it independently. The relationship had already been exposed by People magazine when she began working on her story.

An editor at Politico reached out to the White House, which both suggested Ducklo apologize in a note and blamed the reporter for sharing information she learned during an off the record call.

Psaki had said at the time that not only did Ducklo send the note, he will be suspended without pay for one week and will not work with any reporter writing for Politico after the suspension.

On his first day in the White House, Biden told staff that he would fire any one of them “on the spot” should they ever treat another colleague with disrespect or talk down to someone, according to Vanity Fair.

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