Reports: Thuggish Dan Patrick Supporters Confront Texas Reporters


According to various media outlets, a television reporter says he was assaulted as he tried to cover the election night victory party for state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, last Tuesday. Patrick’s right-wing supporters were celebrating an election that will make Patrick — who even the Dallas Morning News has characterized as “potentially explosive,” “reckless” and “untrustworthy” — the Lone Star State’s next lieutenant governor.

As Talking Points Memo reports, a Patrick supporter apparently was upset that the reporter was on the air while someone prayed from the stage:

Foti Kallergis, a reporter from television station KTRK, and his colleague, Deborah Wrigley, were covering the election results when somebody apparently confronted them for going on air during the prayer.

In video posted on Monday by Mediaite Kallergis could be seen on camera just before the altercation took place, but the broadcast cut away from the live shot to other footage before the commotion began. In the video, Kallergis could be heard trying to continue to read his report while a man’s voice began to speak over him. Kallergis eventually went silent.

The reporter later tweeted that he had been “assaulted.”

Later on, apparently, another Patrick supporter confronted one of Kallergis’s colleagues:

In addition, Isiah Carey, a reporter from television station KRIV, posted a photo to Instagram, alongside a description of the incident. Carey described it as “a physical assault.”

“Deborah Wrigley from channel 13 had to step in and stop the Republican supporter (tan jacket) from attacking her fellow reporter (black suit) on the air,” Carey said. “Wrigley says then another woman from the event approached her and called her a fucking bitch.”

Appalling and more than a little chilling.

8 thoughts on “Reports: Thuggish Dan Patrick Supporters Confront Texas Reporters

  1. Ha! The thuggery is just getting started. Dan Patrick is the perfect new lieutenant governor for Texas since he so perfectly represents the corrupt values of the people who voted for him. He has contempt for constitutionally-mandated secularism (the separation of religion and government), minorities, the poor, and working-class people. He hates and disparages people who disagree with him. Patrick is callous to women since he obviously cares nothing about their reproductive health. His declared intention is to use the power of his elected public office to force his extreme, reactionary political, religious, and ideological values on all the citizens of Texas without their consent. Patrick shares the authoritarian and dogmatic thinking of most Tea Party Republicans who think of everything in Biblical terms.

    I have always said that Texas serves as the best microcosm of the Radical Religious Right’s future vision of America.The Tea Party wants to fasciform America (like terraform, but modifying the land to make it amenable for the success of irresponsible authoritarian power rather than organic life!). Patrick is determined to be the leader of this God-inspired effort in Texas, the state that serves as the test dummy of what they hope the United States will become if things go right. The specific vision that Patrick and his unctuous Tea Party colleagues share is one of America as a bright, shining pile of theocracy on a hill. To the rest of us, that would be a bright, steaming pile of theocracy on a hill.

    1. Steven, you are dead on the money. Should you want to read a chilling look at where this all ends, get a copy of “The 15% Solution,” a book by Steven Jonas. Fiction, but all to real …especially now.

  2. Ah yes, more of the upstanding so called christian repubs showing their true colors. Texas is so f__ked with these morons running things.

  3. Kallergis and Wrigley should count themselves lucky that the Patrick thugs didn’t try to stone them to death for their “transgression.” After all, stoning is Biblically correct and an option the Patrick Dominionist thugs would choose if they could.

  4. Why don’t Christians pay any attention to what their guy told them in Matthew 6? He told them NOT TO PRAY IN PUBLIC! And what do the idiots do? They want to force people listen to their blatherings IN PUBLIC.
    I cannot begin to recall how many time I have walked out of what was supposed to be a business meeting when some jerk decided that he just had to pray.
    One time it cost one business over $275,000 in business because neither my employer nor I would stay in any room in which a prayer that would invariably end “…in Jesus’ name.”
    When we walked out we took our business with us. Christians will never learn, never.

  5. There was a time when I thought that ours was a secular nation, one in which religion had no control. Wow, was I stupid.
    The anti-Abortion movement is 100% religious movement…a Christian movement at that.
    I sure wish that the separation of church and state was respected.

  6. And the beat goes on…the Liberty Foundation is warning Plano that they are going to sue them because they just passed an anti-discrimination ordinance.
    WAY TO GO! You assholes want LIBERTY but want to deny it to others.
    What hate and bigotry have to do with religion I don’t know, but since your main concern is about “biological” males useing women’s bathrooms.
    If a male is making the transition to female, a requirement is that she dress and live as a woman for a period of time. If I were a man and a person who was wearing women’s clothing walked into the men’s room, I’d freak out!
    As far as I’m concerned, I’m just delighted that I’m not one of them; my religion doesn’t permit me to hate anyone.