A 78-year-old Maine man faces an assault charge after a viral video appeared to show him shoving and elbowing a journalist covering an anti-Trump protest in Bangor, Maine. The Bangor Police Department confirmed the charge against Ronald Staples of nearby Holden to Fox News Digital, which first reported the incident.
Joe Sokol, a journalist for The Maine Wire, was conducting interviews at the protest when the confrontation occurred. Video posted to Facebook on Tuesday captured two separate alleged incidents, one in which Staples appeared to shove Sokol and his cameraman, and another in which Staples appeared to elbow the journalist.
The footage has drawn attention to a pattern that conservative reporters know well: covering left-wing demonstrations can come with physical risk, and the people doing the shoving rarely face the same scrutiny that would follow if the political roles were reversed.
In the first clip, Staples appeared to shove Sokol and the cameraman accompanying him. In a separate clip from the same protest, Staples appeared to elbow the journalist. Sokol responded immediately on camera.
"Whoa, whoa, that's assault," Sokol said in the video.
He then confronted Staples directly.
"Excuse me, sir, would you like to tell me why you just assaulted me?"
Staples' reply, captured on camera, was brief: "I didn't see you."
That explanation is difficult to square with the footage. The video shows Sokol standing in plain view. The shove and the elbow appear deliberate. And the claim of not seeing someone you've just made physical contact with, twice, strains credibility on its face.
Sokol pressed the point: "Why would you just do that?"
One unidentified woman at the protest approached Sokol after the incident and offered an apology of sorts.
"I'm sorry, we don't do that," she told him.
That line is worth pausing on. "We don't do that" implies a group identity, and a recognition that what Staples did fell outside the bounds of acceptable conduct, even by the protest's own standards. It also raises the question of why no one intervened before the journalist had to confront Staples himself.
Another woman, carrying a sign depicting an upside-down American flag, offered Sokol a different kind of commentary: "When we find out that somebody is not a good person, we don't vote for them."
Whatever point she intended, it had nothing to do with the physical assault that had just occurred in front of her.
Sokol reported the incident to the Bangor Police Department. The department confirmed Ronald Staples' identity to Fox News Digital and stated he faces one charge of assault.
Authorities have not yet released details about what led up to the confrontation or what happened immediately after. It remains unclear whether Staples was physically arrested or whether the charge was filed without a custodial arrest. No injuries to Sokol or his cameraman have been publicly described, though the charge itself confirms law enforcement took the incident seriously enough to act.
Fox News Digital reached out to both Staples and The Maine Wire for comment. Neither responded before publication.
The Bangor incident did not happen in a vacuum. Fox News host Laura Ingraham recently discussed reports of journalists being attacked by left-wing activists during protests in Los Angeles and Minneapolis. Jorge Ventura, a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation, was described as having fallen victim to an attack and appeared on Ingraham's segment to discuss the trend.
Separately, TPUSA reporter Savanah Hernandez has been referenced in connection with an alleged assault during a Minneapolis ICE protest, as well as in reports about restraining orders tied to similar confrontations.
These are not isolated episodes. They form a pattern: conservative and independent journalists show up to cover left-wing protests, and some protesters respond not with words but with physical force. The ideological movement that claims to champion press freedom and democratic norms has a recurring problem with people in its ranks who treat a camera and a microphone as a provocation.
Several key details remain unresolved. The exact date of the protest has not been publicly confirmed. The specific venue within Bangor where demonstrators gathered has not been identified. The identity of the person who posted the Facebook video, and their affiliation, if any, is unknown.
The protest itself was described as challenging President Donald Trump, among other political flashpoints, but the specific causes or organizations involved have not been detailed. Whether The Maine Wire published its own account of the incident, and what additional details it might contain, is also unclear.
Most importantly, the current status of the assault charge, whether an arraignment date has been set, which court has jurisdiction, and whether Staples has retained counsel, remains unreported.
One charge of assault against a 78-year-old man at a protest may not seem like a major legal matter. But the principle it tests is not small. Journalists have a right to cover public demonstrations without being shoved, elbowed, or intimidated, regardless of whether the protesters agree with their outlet's editorial perspective.
That principle gets tested most often when the journalist works for a conservative or right-leaning publication and the crowd leans left. The physical aggression tends to flow in one direction. The media outrage tends to flow in the other, or not at all.
If a conservative protester had shoved an NPR reporter on camera, the footage would have led every network newscast by sundown. The editorial boards would have drafted their condemnations before the police report was filed. Members of Congress would have issued statements about the sacred role of the free press.
A Maine Wire journalist gets shoved at an anti-Trump rally, and the story travels mainly through conservative media. The double standard is not new, but it never stops being instructive.
Ronald Staples said he didn't see the journalist he shoved. A lot of people seem to have the same problem, they only see threats to press freedom when the reporter carries credentials they approve of.
