At the Republican rally in Montana on Thursday night, the president lauded and made jokes about the violent attack by Gianforte, when he was a candidate, on the Guardian’s political reporter Ben Jacobs in 2017.
A spokeswoman for British Prime Minister Theresa May, when asked about the president’s remarks, said yesterday: “Any violence or intimidation against a journalist is completely unacceptable.”
Journalists across the US launched into criticism of the congressman, via social media.
“Gianforte is a criminal. He pled guilty to [assault]. The president is congratulating a criminal on committing a crime,” said the New York Times correspondent Binyamin Appelbaum on Twitter.
Gianforte was sentenced to six months of deferred jail time, 40 hours of community service, 20 hours of anger management sessions, and $385 in fines and court fees for the misdemeanour assault that propelled him and his congressional race into the national spotlight last year.
Gianforte also paid $50,000 to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), one of the groups now critical of Trump.
“At a time when journalists are being killed [and] imprisoned around the world, this is indecent,” said Joel Simon, CPJ’s executive director, urging Trump to stop the insults on journalists.
Trump’s comments “mark the first time the president has openly and directly praised a violent act against a journalist on American soil”, added the New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg.
Trump fondly reminisced about the physical assault that occurred on May 24 last year when Jacobs, the Guardian’s political correspondent, asked Gianforte a question about healthcare policy in the course of a special congressional election in Montana.
At Thursday’s rally, Trump said that anyone who could perform a body-slam, as Gianforte did on Jacobs, was “my guy”, and that news of the attack, which occurred the night before the special election, probably helped Gianforte win.
“Any guy that can do a body-slam, he’s my guy,” he told the political rally in Missoula, Montana. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
Trump said he originally thought the assault – which took place on the eve of his election – might hurt Gianforte’s chances.
“Then I said, ‘Well wait a minute, I know Montana pretty well, I think it might help him.’ And it did,” the president said.
Trump finished his account of the physical assault by saying of Gianforte: “He’s a great guy. Tough cookie.”
The partisan crowd at the rally in Missoula in western Montana clapped and cheered.
The writers’ organisation PEN America, which had filed a lawsuit earlier this week against Donald Trump accusing him of violating the first amendment of the United States constitution by using his powerful position to threaten press freedom, has also condemned the president’s encouragement for Gianforte’s attack.
In a statement issued yesterday, PEN America said Trump’s “explicit praise” for Gianforte’s assault “marks a startling new low in terms of the White House’s open hostility toward the press”.
It added: “Trump’s remarks are a chilling reminder that US global leadership on press freedom has collapsed utterly under the president’s watch. In its place is an attitude of contempt, excusing and now even applauding violence toward the press.”
Meanwhile, Axios’s national political reporter Jonathan Swan replied to Stolberg’s tweet, saying: “Nothing tough about jumping a reporter for asking you a substantive question. Just unhinged.”
He also pointed out that Gianforte and his staff lied about the assault to police and the public.
“Only reason Gianforte got caught is because there was a tape,” Swan said.
Katharine Viner Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, said yesterday: “At a time when reporters around the world are being harassed, arrested and even murdered these are incredibly irresponsible comments, which fly in the face of press freedom and send a dangerous message to autocrats and dictators around the world.”
She added: “The world’s press would welcome a clear statement from the US government that it remains committed to the rights of journalists everywhere to do their work without fear of violence or repression.”
The CNN reporter Jim Acosta, who was at the rally in Montana, observed: “The disturbing part of Trump’s jokes about Gianforte was the effect on the crowd. I saw one young man in the crowd making body-slam gestures.
“He looked at me and ran his thumb across his throat. I talked to him after the rally was over. He couldn’t stop laughing.”
A number of journalists pointed out how Trump’s comments are especially troubling this week, coming as evidence mounts that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman is directly linked to the presumed murder of journalist and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul earlier this month.
“Tonight [Trump] celebrates an assault on a reporter in Montana at the same time as his administration tries to minimise the murder of a reporter in Turkey. His words matter, and they reveal his character,” said the New Yorker and CNN contributor Jeffrey Toobin.
“Doing this after a journalist was apparently murdered by an autocratic regime – while complaining that you yourself are covered unfairly – is quite something,” added the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
The Washington Post executive editor, Marty Baron, referenced a statement issued by the Guardian US editor, John Mulholland, on Thursday night soon after the event, noting that the president’s remarks run “the risk of inviting other assaults on journalists both here and across the world”.
Mulholland’s statement continued: “We hope decent people will denounce these comments and that the president will see fit to apologise for them.”
Yesterday the White House Correspondents’ Association president, Olivier Knox, said: “All Americans should recoil from the president’s praise for a violent assault on a reporter doing his constitutionally protected job.
“This amounts to the celebration of a crime by someone sworn to uphold our laws and an attack on the first amendment by someone who has solemnly pledged to defend it.”
He continued: “We should never shrug at the president cheerleading for a violent act targeting a free and independent news media.”