Two weeks after he clashed with pro-union demonstrators protesting a law that gives workers in Michigan the choice of whether or not to join a union, Fox News contributor Steven Crowder has posted almost nine minutes of raw, vulgarity-laden footage.
Throughout the video, which was released to prove that Crowder and other conservatives in Lansing that day were attacked by union thugs, there's the incessant, irritating sound of someone at the protest beating on a drum.
The video starts with Crowder attempting to have his picture taken with a fan when a union member wearing a black cap and a black leather jacket interjected his sign between the men and the photographer.
When the activist/comedian accused the man -- whose name is Tony Cummings -- of being rude, he responded that Crowder was a “f**king idiot” and a “rat son of a bitch.”
A great deal of the footage chronicles the phrases the union protesters chanted, many of them aimed at the white tent put up by people from the conservative group Americans for Progress.
The mottoes began with “F**k This Tent,” then “Take the Tent” before turning their attention to Crowder with the chants of “F**k Your *ss” and “Go Back Home.”
Soon afterwards, the Fox News contributor was speaking with another protester when Cummings came up behind him and again shouted taunts and threats against Crowder.
That led to the rest of the union supporters chanting “Crowder is a d**k,” but many of the protesters got his name wrong, calling him “Cider”or “Slider."
As some snowflakes fell onto the scene, Cummings returned and accused Crowder of being connected with Amway, a company that isn't unionized.
The next section of the video shows the union supporters “bumrushing” the tent in order to tear it down.
At that point, Crowder and a few other men tried to push the union attackers away from the tent, and the situation boiled over when Cummings fell to the ground, then got up and started punching the Fox News correspondent.
After another man separated the two, the voice of another union supporter can be heard claiming he'll “kill the mother f**ker with a gun.”
When Crowder tried to return to the tent, another demonstrator grabbed him by the collar of his coat and dragged him back into the crowd.
The next scene showed the protesters cheering and shouting “good job” when the tent fell to the ground, apparently unaware that a woman had been caught inside who eventually managed to escape.
By then, Crowder had had enough, and he signaled his camera crew to leave the area.
But before he could get away, the commentator was confronted by another union worker, who accused Crowder and his crew of “f**king with our families” and demanded: “Get the f**k out of our state and out of our lives.”
But when the Fox News crew attempted to leave, the union supporter followed them, accusing the “pretty boy” of never having worked a day in his life.
The video ends with text that reads: “Notice no union thugs were recording the events? Only peaceful, right-to-work supporters showing transparency.”
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” the next text stated. “Breitbart lives.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, the union thugs claimed their assault on right-to-work supporters was democracy in action, and network news programs censored any discussion of the violence that took place at the protest site.
A few days later, Crowder filed a criminal complaint against Cummings, who had punched him several times during the incident.
My only misgiving about this unedited footage is that it doesn't definitively show how Cummings wound up on the ground, though Crowder has stated that that occurred when he and other men tried to push the union supporters away from the white tent.
My hope now is that this will finally satisfy the liberal media holdouts who have been refraining from reporting this story, ostensibly because Crowder had not released the unedited footage. Had he released the footage sooner, this story might have had a chance of getting more coverage. Now “old news” might be just the excuse needed to ignore the confrontation.
