White House Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo resigned on Saturday, one day after being suspended without pay for harassing a female Politico reporter earlier this year.
“No words can express my regret, my embarrassment and my disgust for my behavior,” he said in a statement on Twitter. “I used language that no one ever needs to hear from anyone, especially in a situation where she’s just trying to do her job.”
He said the language he used was ‘abominable, disrespectful and unacceptable’.
Ducklo added that his decision to resign came after a meeting with the White House communications leadership.
“I know it was terrible. I know I can not take it back,” Ducklo said in his statement.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a separate statement that the government ‘is committed to striving every day to meet the standard set by the president to treat others with dignity and respect, with civility and with a value to others through our words and our actions. “
Psaki announced Ducklo’s suspension on Friday after an article appeared in Vanity Fair, in which it was alleged that Ducklo threatened a journalist in January when he heard that Politico was telling a story about his relationship with Axios reporter Alexi McCammond.
According to Vanity Fair, Ducklo called Politico’s reporter Tara Palmeri and ‘made derogatory and misogynistic comments’ and threatened to ‘destroy’ her.
A day later, Politico’s newsletter mentions Ducklo’s attacks in the Playbook morning.
“There’s a serious question in our minds this morning: ‘Does this standard apply to how middle-class journalists treat reporters?'” The authors wrote, referring to President Joe Biden’s commitment to eradicate discomfort among his staff.
Ducklo is a former member of the NBC News communications team and McCammond is an NBC News and MSNBC contributor.
Biden, during an actual swearing-in of new appointments on his first day in office, said he would implement a rule of no tolerance for this kind of behavior, a common occurrence during the previous government.
‘I’m not kidding when I say this: if you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with respect, then talk to someone, I promise you I’ll fire you right away. No ifs, ands, or buts, ”Biden said.
On Friday, after news broke that Ducklo had been suspended for one week without pay, the White House received a backlash on social media from people asking why Biden’s government apparently responded to his word.
Psaki admitted on Friday that she had known for weeks about the incident in which Ducklo and Palmeri were involved, but that it had been handled in a ‘private way’.
“TJ Ducklo apologized to the reporter, with whom he had a heated conversation about his personal life. He is the first to admit that this is not the standard set out by the president,” Psaki said in a statement. said. tweet. “In addition to his initial apology, he sent a personal letter to the reporter in which he expressed his deep regret.”