Beckel’s Parking Lot Punch-Out
Democratic consultant and Fox News commentator Bob Beckel is sporting a big shiner from a fistfight Tuesday afternoon in the parking lot of a Giant supermarket in Bethesda.
Waiting to pick up his kids at a school nearby, Beckel — best known for using the “Where’s the Beef?” catchphrase in Walter Mondale ’s1984 presidential campaign — was sitting inside his Jeep Grand Cherokee, which is covered with anti-George W. Bush bumper stickers. “I put them all on just to irritate my Fox colleagues,” he told us yesterday. Beckel, 55, said he was reading the newspaper when two men in their 30s, who appeared to be workers from a nearby construction site, approached the rear of his car. Apparently unaware Beckel was sitting behind the tinted windows, they began peeling off “Support Bush’s War . . . Draft Young Republicans” and “No One Died When Clinton Lied!”
Beckel said he jumped out and confronted the men: “Boys, get away from the bumper stickers.”
“You got no respect for the presidency,” answered one.
“I certainly do,” Beckel says he told him. “It’s this president that I have very little respect for.”
When one of the men reached back down to rip off a sticker, Beckel says, he “gently” put his hand on the man’s chest and pushed him back — and the man reached over and sucker-punched the pundit in the face. But — as they always tell us — you shoulda seen the other guy. “I put him away,” said the 235-pound, 6-foot-1 Beckel, who reports that he hit the man in the stomach and the side as the friend ran off. After sending the guy to the asphalt, Beckel says, he got in the Jeep and drove off to get his kids.
A Giant manager reached yesterday said he had no knowledge of the dust-up. Beckel said he didn’t get the names of the two men and didn’t call the police. And yes, he acknowledged, the bumper stickers might set some people off: “I’m sort of asking for trouble.” But, he adds, “they’ll stay exactly where they are — proudly.”
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