Brazilian journalist gets into slapping fight during live interview

Glenn Greenwald — who won numerous awards for his coverage on Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing — had a dust-up with a fellow journalist.

Glenn Greenwald got into a comical slapfest with a right-wing fellow journalist during the live taping of a radio show in Brazil.

Greenwald and Brazilian Augusto Nunes had a heated exchange over Nunes’ earlier comments about Mr Greenwald’s children with his husband, Brazilian politician David Miranda, BuzzFeed News reported on Thursday.

“I was thinking of this couple: Glenn Greenwald spends the day on Twitter or working as a recipient of stolen messages; David is in Brasilia. Who takes care of the children they adopted? That’s what the Juvenile Court should investigate,” Nunes had said in a comment he later described as a joke.

Here’s Glenn Greenwald coming to blows during an interview on Brazilian radio. (The man attacking Greenwald, journalist Augusto Nunes, accused him of neglecting the two adopted children he has w/ his husband, Brazilian lawmaker David Miranda.) pic.twitter.com/kF4OOKZIjQ

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 7, 2019

The “stolen messages” was an apparent reference to leaked messages from law enforcement authorities about Brazil’s vast corruption investigation — which were published by the Intercept, the news site that Greenwald co-founded.

Greenwald then brought up Nunes’ comments on the radio show Pânico.

“We have a lot of political differences, I have no problem being criticised for my work. I criticise him too, but what he did was the ugliest and dirtiest thing I’ve ever seen in my career as a journalist,” Greenwald said on the show, as the pair grew heated and began pointing at one another.

Greenwald took offence to comments made about his family.

The debate got heated.

The New York-born Greenwald, 52, added that accusing him and Miranda of neglecting their kids was the “most disgusting thing I’ve seen in my life”.

Greenwald — who made his bones by reporting on US surveillance policies based on classified data stolen by Edward Snowden — then got in Nunes’ face.

“I want to know if you still believe that a judge should investigate our family, with the possibility of taking our children away from home and returning with them to the shelter, without a mother, without a father, without a family,” he said.

Nunes replied: “He still can’t identify ironies. He can’t identify a humorous attack. I invite him to prove when I asked some court to do it. I just said that his companion spends time in Brasilia and he spends all his time dealing with stolen material, so who will take care of the children?”

Greenwald then repeatedly called Nunes a coward, prompting Nunes to try to slap him.

The pair then squared off and continued trying to slap one another as the station’s staffers separated them.

Regarding the physical attack I received from the far-right, pro-Bolsonaro journalist @augustosnunes, and how Brazil's movement is *cheering* it because they crave violence in lieu of politics and debate: pic.twitter.com/doq9iBR66T

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 7, 2019

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission