Given the seismic events shaking up the American political scene, the resignation of a 28-year-old female journalist from Breitbart seems a trifling matter indeed. But in fact it throws into sharp relief why the rise of Donald Trump has Jewish conservatives in an uproar.
It is a tangled tale that began when Michelle Fields claimed she had been roughly manhandled by Trump’s campaign manager in the crowd around the front-runner during his campaign in Florida. The charge led to counter-accusations, then more accusations. Video and photographic evidence was ambiguous, to say the least, and it did not help when it was revealed that Fields has a history of workplace dramas or that she has a book out in June.
This is when things began to get really messy. The editor of Breitbart, Joel Pollack, held off fully accepting Fields claim, subjecting it to proper scrutiny. Then he seemed to walk it back, suggesting in a follow-up Breitbart article that Fields had misidentified the alleged assailant.
Apparently enraged by the editor’s unwillingness to lend full-throated support, this triggered a mass resignation, led by Fields, her main supporter Ben Shapiro, and three other members of staff.
So far, so complicated, but this is where it gets really interesting because, as it now emerges, l’affaire Fields was really just the spark that set off long simmering internal divisions over Breitbart‘s support of Trump. ...
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