5 days ago
‘Gutfeld!' Gangs Up on CBS Reporter for ‘PTSD' Diagnosis From Trump Rally Shooting: ‘Main Character Syndrome'
CBS correspondent Scott MacFarlane said he was 'diagnosed with PTSD in 48 hours' following his experience covering the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally where Donald Trump was nearly assassinated because his supporters turned on members of the press – and the 'Gutfeld!' gang couldn't contain their giggles.
MacFarlane, who was onsite for the July 2024 incident, said on Chuck Todd's 'The Chuck Toddcast' that 'for those of us there, it was such horror because you saw an emerging America.'
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'I got put on trauma leave,' MacFarlane said. 'Not because of the shooting but because — you saw it in the eyes. The reaction of the people. They were coming for us. If he didn't jump up with his fist, they were going to come kill us. There is a subset — not everybody — dozens of people in the crowd to start confronting us, saying, 'You did this, this is your fault, you caused this, you killed him.' And they were going to beat us with their hands.'
If MacFarlane was looking for sympathy, he wasn't going to find it on the Fox News late-night show.
'It shows you the level of main character syndrome,' said panelist and comedian Joe DeVito. 'That they were at a place, a man died, the guy running for president almost got his head blown off on live TV, and this guy's like, 'What about me? What about what I went through?''
DeVito said had he been there, he would've gotten PTSD, too – from the Secret Service detail.
'All these tiny little chubby ladies,' DeVito said. 'It was the most bizarre — I would have been freaked out by that. I didn't know the Secret Service would have two dozen tiny Melissa McCarthys climbing over to save your life.'
Host Greg Gutfeld steered the conversation for a moment to over-labeling of mental conditions.
'This actually — it speaks to something everyone is kind of scared to talk about, which is the overdiagnosis of PTSD,' Gutfeld said. 'It used to be just for people that suffered war trauma or just violent trauma. But now it's like people say, 'I have PTSD, I had a terrible boss. I was at a rally.''
The Free Press editor Will Rahn then chimed in: 'Listen, I'm a little soft on this issue, I'm millennial. I was traumatized on the way here. So I feel for the guy. Listen, people snap, weird things happen. I don't know. Here's the thing. Going on that main character syndrome thing — there's this big reward for emoting, for going on and being like, 'Let me tell you about my feelings',' on Chuck Todd's podcast audience, about how I felt' … and it's like, I'm an editor. A reporter comes to me and is like, 'Let me tell you about my feelings,' and I'm like, 'No, the story is the president got his ear shot off — not how you felt, how people gave you dirty looks.''
Watch the entire exchange in the video above.
The post 'Gutfeld!' Gangs Up on CBS Reporter for 'PTSD' Diagnosis From Trump Rally Shooting: 'Main Character Syndrome' | Video appeared first on TheWrap.
