Paul LePage may be losing it. Yesterday, while Maine's governor was trying out a Pratt and Whitney flight simulator in North Berwick, near Portland, he claimed to have fantasies about blowing up Maine's two largest newspapers.
As he strapped into the F-35 Lightning II demonstrator machine, set up for attendees of Pratt & Whitney’s annual employee appreciation day, Maine’s Republican governor joked to a nearby Lockheed Martin Corp. guide: “I want to find the Press Herald building and blow it up.”
The demonstrator allowed the Republican governor to engage in a dogfight with digitized enemy jets soaring across the monitor screens in front of him, but LePage was not able to follow through with a simulated strike on the Portland Press Herald’s One City Center offices.
Television station WMTW reporter Paul Merrill later asked LePage if he had any targets. The governor said: The Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News.
LePage later took to Twitter to say he was only joking.
He may have been joking, but the publisher of the Press Herald doesn't find it at all funny.
“Unfortunately our governor has a misguided sense of humor,” Press Herald Publisher Lisa DeSisto said in a story on the paper’s website. “That kind of a joke is irresponsible in this day and age, especially when it comes from the leader of our state.”
LePage has a frigid relationship with most of Maine's major newspapers, particularly the
Press Herald. That paper is owned by S. Donald Susman, husband of Congresswoman Chellie Pingree. But even allowing for that, this incident has to make one wonder if LePage is losing it.