MAGA lawmaker's 'embarrassing' excuse for on-camera meltdown leads to ridicule

Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) was ridiculed en masse Friday after the Maryland Republican doubled down on his outburst earlier this week in which he lashed out at his constituents for laughing at him and threatened a student journalist with arrest for recording him.

“The digging ….. continues,” quipped MeidasTouch journalist Scott MacFarlane in a social media post on X Friday.

During a debate against his Democratic opponent on Tuesday, Harris attempted to blame rising fuel costs on Democrats — a remark that sent the audience into a fit of laughter.

“You are rude!” Harris shouted at a woman in the audience.

Later, Harris called for police to arrest Cat Murphy, a graduate student at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merril College of Journalism, for filming him during a post-debate press gathering without his consent. He cited a Maryland law requiring all parties to consent before a conversation is recorded. However, the law applies only when there’s a reasonable expectation of privacy, which a press gaggle doesn’t offer.

Appearing on Fox affiliate Fox45, Harris was pressed on the incident by broadcast journalist Mikenzie Frost.

“You threatened a student journalist with prosecution for recording you while asking questions. What happened during that moment, and do you regret how you handled that interaction?” Frost asked.

Harris remained defiant, providing his own account of the incident that omitted his threat to have the student journalist arrested.

“The bottom line is it’s not very newsworthy that the liberal media badgers a conservative politician — what was newsworthy was that I actually pushed back against it,” Harris said.

“She was not asking questions, she actually started by criticizing the way that press gaggle was being conducted, that’s not the role of a journalist! And what I did in the end is just say, ‘Look, this is all done,’ and just left.”

Frost pushed back.

“Well, congressman, that’s not exactly all you did, though,” she said. “You threatened to bring in the police and you threatened to have her prosecuted for recording you, and you falsely claimed that there was a need for a two-party consent when that wasn’t the case.”

Harris insisted, falsely, that Murphy was legally required to have his consent to film him.

“Embarrassing jack---,” wrote veteran journalist John Harwood, former White House correspondent for CNN.