Maine’s governor says he was joking about blowing up newspaper’s building

Portland Press Herald

“I want to find the Press Herald building and blow it up,” Maine Gov. Paul LePage said during a demonstration of a fighter plane Friday.

LePage spokesperson Adrienne Bennett told the newspaper the governor “was clearly joking,” Eric Russell writes.

In February LePage told schoolchildren “My greatest fear in the state of Maine: newspapers.” And in June, he ordered state employees to stop talking to the Portland Press Herald, the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel after an investigation by the Press Herald looked at a “a reign of terror” at Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection.

“The LePage administration never really enforced that ban, though,” Russell writes.

@PressHerald Threatened? It was a joke, folks!

— Paul R. LePage (@Governor_LePage) August 9, 2013

Related: Portland Press Herald investigation leads governor to issue gag order