A freelance reporter for the New York Times found herself asked to leave the Trump campaign rally in Freeland, Michigan on Thursday evening. A former political reporter for the Detroit Free Press, Kathleen Gray now works for the New York Times. It is a story told in tweets.

Gray admits she didn’t properly secure campaign-issued credentials to cover the event. She missed the deadline to get credentials so she wasn’t in the designated press area. She was doing her reporting from the general audience area. Gray began tweeting from her work account after claiming to do some interviews with rally participants. She said she was “standing off to the side of the tarmac.”

I first noticed this story developing Thursday when Gray tweeted that she had been told to leave the campaign rally – a first for her, she tweeted. So, I checked her Twitter timeline and it became pretty obvious what her agenda was from her tweets. The first tweet from the event mentioned that it looked as though only about 10% of those there were wearing face masks.

Trump rally in freeland attracts thousands . Maybe 10% have masks.

— Kathy Gray (@michpoligal) September 10, 2020

Then a second tweet was posted one minute later noting the lack of masks in the crowd of thousands of Trump supporters.

https://twitter.com/michpoligal/status/1304192444465123339

Next, she posted a tweet when Air Force One landed.

Air force one just landed

— Kathy Gray (@michpoligal) September 10, 2020

And continued with an odd tweet. “And so it begins.”

And so it begins pic.twitter.com/fuLY4oasjP

— Kathy Gray (@michpoligal) September 10, 2020

Her last two tweets were in reaction to being told to leave the rally.

https://twitter.com/michpoligal/status/1304197574577074179

https://twitter.com/michpoligal/status/1304202299896729600

There is really no better way to understand what happened than to look at the tweets. No doubt that someone with the Trump campaign noticed she was “reporting” from outside the press area via Twitter and using her work account to do so. It’s a pretty simple story.

Gray told Bridge Magazine that she had missed the deadline to get credentials but had tried multiple times to contact the campaign to get them after that and received no response.

She acknowledged that she entered the general admission section of the rally because she didn’t have the campaign-issued media credentials.

“They said because I was using my work Twitter account and since I didn’t have media credentials I couldn’t be working there, and I had to leave,” Gray told Bridge. Neither she nor Trump campaign officials immediately responded to requests for comment from the Free Press.

Gray said, “They tracked me down from the photos I had taken and tweeted, came over and kicked me out.” She complains that others were “recording everything”, implying she was unfairly singled out.

Gray said she has had difficulty getting responses from the Trump campaign in recent months. She noted other general admission attendees were tweeting and live streaming the rally from the crowd where she had stood.

“Everybody there was using a camera to record everything,” she said.

I assume “everybody” was capturing the event with a different perspective than the political reporter. She, essentially, was passing herself off as a regular person attending the campaign rally, not a reporter there to do the bidding of mask scolds. Then she acts indignant when she is held accountable. None of the reporters who went through the process of obtaining press credentials and covering the event in the appropriate area were asked to leave.

There were about 5,000 people in attendance. The event was at MBS International Airport, a rally held in an airport hangar venue. I’ve written in the past that these are excellent venues for Trump. The crowds are in a more outdoor kind of setting than cooped up indoors and Trump enjoys the interaction with the crowds. As far as face masks go, the press has an agenda to push. During Trump’s last rally, there was a photo released by a reporter who stated that no one was wearing a face mask. That narrative was quickly debunked, though, as photos of the crowd were published from a better camera lens. Almost the entire crowd was wearing a face mask.

In this case, the reporter looks to be doing the bidding of Governor Whitmer. Wearing a mask is required in Michigan in places where social distancing of six feet or more is impossible.

Gray covered politics for the Free Press for nearly 20 years before leaving earlier this year. Earlier in the week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told CNN it was “very distressing” that Trump might come to the state and encourage people, directly or indirectly, to not wear masks.

Trump did not wear a mask at the rally.

As this is the anniversary of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks, I’m not sure if this reporter’s story will get the kind of play she was obviously seeking by posting tweets about being asked to leave the rally. It’s unlikely that if the anti-Trump networks do report about it that they will be honest enough to note that this isn’t the first time a reporter has told a story about the limited access to a president. Heck, Barack Obama waged an all-out war against Fox News Channel while he was in office. And Joe Biden’s staff held a reporter in a storage closet during a fundraiser in 2011. This kind of back and forth with the press is not uncommon with either party. There is no denying, though, that Obama escalated the tension between the press and his administration. It wasn’t enough that the press took an eight-year nap during his administration, if any reporter dared to ask legitimate questions or professionally cover him, Obama moved to shut it down.

Naturally, the New York Times blames the Trump campaign for not credentialing their reporter.

Danielle Rhoades Ha, vice president of communications for the Times, said in a statement, “We’re disappointed that the Trump campaign refused to credential our freelancer and then, when she registered and attended as a member of the public, they ejected her from the event. Our goal is to cover these campaign events and talk to voters about the candidates, and that’s what Kathy was trying to do.”

Ms. Gray admits she didn’t follow standard procedure. Her tweets speak for themselves.