Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is changing the story about how he sustained those gruesome New Year’s Day injuries that have left him blind in one eye.
Previously, Reid claimed that an exercise band he was using “broke.”
“I was doing exercises that I’ve been doing for many years with those large rubber bands and one of them broke and spun me around and I crashed into these cabinets and injured my eye,” (emphasis added) Reid said at a press conference on January 22.
(You can see the video of that press conference here.)
But now, in an interview conducted by Fusion (a joint venture between ABC and Univision), excerpts of which have been released today, Reid tells Univision anchor Jorge Ramos that the exercise band “slipped,” rather than “broke.”
“[T]he [elastic band] strap had no handle on it, slipped, spun me around, uh, about, oh I guess four feet (Reid points with his right hand to the wall of the interview room) and so I smashed my face into a cabinet,” Reid tells Ramos.
Reid’s latest version of the incident, as told to Ramos, differs from previous versions advanced by his team in another very significant way.
“Sources familiar with the incident said Reid was exercising in his bathroom, with the exercise band attached to the shower door,” Politico reported on January 22. (emphasis added)
As Breitbart News reported previously, that version of the story, almost certainly told to Politico by Reid’s staffers with his approval, is not credible.
Now, however, Reid tells Ramos a different story. The exercise band was not attached to the shower door in his bathroom, Reid says, but was instead attached to “a big metal hook that came out from the wall” in an unspecified room in his new Nevada home.
Here’s a partial transcript of the excerpt of the interview released by Fusion:
Ramos: You said recently that the accident had nothing to do with your decision to retire.
However, we are seeing the consequences of what happened.
What really happened?
Was it really with an elastic band?
Reid: Yeah, I had a big, that thick (Reid gestures with his hands), that I had been using for about four years and I was, you know, trying to maintain my, uh, firmness, and, uh, that was my weight training. I was doing that in my new home here in Nevada and a big metal hook that came out from the wall that was hooked there that the strap had no handle on it, slipped, spun me around, uh, about, oh I guess four feet (Reid points with his right hand to the wall of the interview room) and so I smashed my face into a cabinet so hard that uh…
Ramos: It looked like somebody had hit you.
Reid: I am so fortunate that, um, it wasn’t over just a fraction of this way and hit me in the temple.
Ramos: How’s your eye?
Reid: I am sightless in my right eye.
Watch the full video of the excerpts of the Fusion interview here:
Ramos then switched gears and asked Reid about “the most difficult moments of [his] 28 years in the Senate.”
Ramos failed to ask some key follow up questions about Reid’s New Year’s Day injury incident.
For instance, Ramos failed to ask Reid if the accident took place in his bathroom, as Reid’s office had previously claimed. According to Reid’s latest version of the story, we do not know in which room of his house he now claims he sustained these injuries.
Breitbart News has asked Senator Reid’s office, which has carefully controlled the release of information about his New Year’s Day injuries, to comment on his changed version of the story of his New Year’s Day injuries, but has received no reply.
