Michelle Fields Cuts Newsmax Interview Short, Denies Quote Is From Her Book (It Is, Sorta)

Author and political journalist Michelle Fields abruptly concluded an interview with Newsmax’s Steve Malzberg after the host spent a large portion of the interview discussing her altercation with recently fired Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Malzberg asked Fields, who was on hand to promote her new book Barons of the Beltway, if she was happy about Lewandowski’s firing Monday and accused her of having “tried to put him in jail.”

When Fields was a reporter for Breitbart, she accused Lewandowski of assaulting her as she tried to ask Trump a question at a press event in March. Lewandowski vociferously denied Fields’ claims and the charges against him were ultimately dropped. The ensuing media firestorm ultimately led to the departure of Fields (and several others) from Breitbart when the Trump-friendly site seemed to take the campaign’s word over that of their own reporter.

Malzberg, a Trump supporter, dredged up accusations that Fields had exaggerated or misrepresented the confrontation in order to promote herself. He quoted a segment of her book in which Fields writes that, after Lewandowski grabbed her arm, “I lost my balance and nearly fell to the ground.”

“I don’t know anybody who has seen the video and agreed with your assessment that you almost fell to the ground,” Malzberg said.

Fields denied ever using the event for her own benefit before abruptly wrapping up the interview. “I am on a tight schedule,” Fields said, “and it seems as though you do not want to talk about my book.”

“Michelle, that’s in your book! It’s a quote from your book!” Malzberg responded. “Is it not? Is it not from your book?”

“No, that’s not from my book. That’s not from my book,” she said, adding that she wrote and completed her book a year ago — long before the confrontation with Lewandowski, which took place in March.

So who’s right?

The words that Malzberg quoted in the interview do appear in Barons of the Beltway, but they appear in the prefatory “Note to the Reader.”

The note, written apparently after the bulk of the book, provides a summary of the events surrounding Fields’ departure from Breitbart and serves to link “the Trump phenomenon” to Barons‘ thesis, “that the entitlement that drives the Beltway class is alive and well.”

Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com