Fight Breaks Out at Nerd Prom
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It appears that the waves in Watters world are a bit choppy.
The Washington Post says that in the early-morning hours of Sunday at a White House Corespondents Dinner after party, a scuffle broke out between Fox News correspondent Jesse Watters and Ryan Grim, the Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief.
The fight — unusual among a tuxedo-clad crowd more used to venting their differences with Twitter snarks — briefly caused ripples in the party, where political staffers and journalists were grooving to tunes spun by DJ Biz Markie and noshing on mini servings of chili cheese fries.
The Post writes that here’s how it went down, per several witness: Grim and Watters were among a group located in a heated tent just outside the main party area. The two apparently don’t have a personal relationship, but Grim realized who Watters was and recalled a beef he had with the “O’Reilly Factor” correspondent that dated back to 2009, when Watters, known as an “ambush journalist,” had engineered an on-camera confrontation of writer Amanda Terkel, now a HuffPo colleague of Grim. Terkel’s account of the incident was headlined “I Was Followed, Harassed, And Ambushed By Bill O’Reilly’s Producer.”
Grim decided to give Watters a taste of his own medicine, whipping out his camera phone and filming him. Watters didn’t take well to this, eventually snatching the phone away from Grim and putting it in his pocket. Grim set out to retrieve it, and a scuffle ensued. No cinematic sparring or broken beer bottles, witnesses said, but the two flailed around a bit, upending a table and bumping into several people.
“Punches were definitely thrown,” said one witness.
Before any damage was done, several bystanders, including Sean Spicer, communications director at the Republican National Committee, separated the two.
Fox sources tell FTVLive that Watters will address the incident on The O'Reilly Factor tonight.
