KLAS reporter Nathan Baca asked Angle about a statement on her website that calls for "transitioning out" Social Security and Medicare programs.
"Why do you want to eliminate [Social Security] for younger folks," he asked.
Angle, who had just returned from a visit to Washington, fired back at him.
"You believe the Harry Reid lie," said Angle, who was campaigning at a Las Vegas restaurant. Angle said she does not believe in eliminating Social Security entirely, but instead transferring the money to private accounts that the government "can't raid."
"You're putting words into my mouth from Harry Reid," a frustrated Angle responded when Baca noted that the stock market downturn would have been devastating to seniors if their savings had been privatized.
"I want you to be very clear on this," she said. "I'm here to save Social Security. Harry Reid is here to bankrupt Social Security."
The former state lawmaker, once considered a long shot for the GOP nomination, easily defeated 12 other candidates in the June 8 primary, thanks in part to help from the Tea Party Express, a national Tea Party organization, and the fiscally conservative organization Club for Growth.
She now faces Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, believed to be among the must vulnerable Senate Democrats, in November.
Reid recently launched a campaign commercial, in which the announcer says, "Shockingly, Sharron Angle wants to wipe out Social Security." Angle's campaign called that ad a "deception, designed to divert attention from Harry Reid's own failures."
When the KLAS reporter asked about her stated opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency, Angle then replied, "Where are you getting these questions? The issues are not about the EPA. The issues are homes here in Nevada. He is trying to make this a campaign about me. But, where's Harry? Go ask him. Please go ask Harry about the EPA, and why they have failed."
Angle has criticized the EPA for proposing domestic energy regulations that she has said will be "harmful to most sectors of the domestic energy industry and eventually substantially raise the utility bill of every American."
Baca, who then repeatedly tried to ask Angle an additional question as she exited the restaurant, later said the Angle campaign aide called him "an idiot and another term that can't be repeated."
Campaign spokesman Jerry Stacy told CNN the comments did not come from an Angle aide.
"I reviewed the video," he said. "I do not recognize the person in the video that the reporter was talking to. It was not an employee of the campaign."
A Mason-Dixon poll conducted a week before Angle won the primary showed her and Reid statistically tied.
From CNN Politics
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I'm glad that Sharon Angle stood up for herself and fired back at the reporter who obviously has an agenda. The liberal media will try their best to make Angle look bad while giving Harry Reid the benefit of the doubt. But hopefully the people of Nevada will look at Harry's record and how he has helped to bankrupt our country and vote him out.
Angle wants to make SS vulnerable to the Madoffs of the world. Pure and simple.
Hey, Mitch. It's a little early to start your campaign for 2012.
He is trying to make this a campaign about me.
-------------------------------–
Well, the campaign is about YOU and how YOU will address these issues, otherwise we'd vote for ISSUES. Not too smart you are.
I'd like to know how you plan to enact the Second Ammendment to take the government back. Will you be issuing guns and bullets to everyone in your state? Will you have the White House in crosshairs on Arizona state-issued maps so that folks know where to aim?
How about Social Security? What do you propose to do with that? And, oh yeah, my government implanted micro-chip....I can't find mine.......
Honestly, I'd like her more if she wanted to get rid of Social Security.
Money from my paycheck I'll never see again, we need to stop this Ponzi scheme.
Get use to it Mrs. Angle. There's a gigantic difference between talkiing to your fantasyland sycophants and talking to the real world. The real world ask tough questions.
Lies Miss Angle? hmmm gee...i think that's the pot calling the kettle black...anger has NO place in politics! you're not in this for the american people..ur in it for those wing nuts on your side of the aisle and your pathetic career
It seems bizarre that some fellow Nevadans would actually vote out – a ranking senator, who can do more for Nevada – and replace him with a special interest, innefective follower of the Bush/Gibbons ideology. There are many out-of-staters who hope it happens. They gain. We lose. It will amount to – we get what we deserve. I hope we deserve better.
Just another example of the withering left bias of mainstream media.
with the strength of the unions in reno and vegas and all the retired people who depend on their social security and medicare – this woman is 'toast'.....
Are these the blatant idiots that we place on our national political scene. We are witnessing the demise of system of governance. Angle in the senate would be criminal!
The party of IDIOTS!!! It seems she would like to re-visit all of the Cheney/Bush failed policies. No news here!
Yes, she wants to keep senior's money out of the hands of the government – and put it in the greasy hands of private investors! If the republs only new that none of us are buying this crap! We didn't buy it when bush tried it, now Henserling and other repubs are slobbering all over themselves trying to buy future employment with the financial sector lobby on K-street. After all that's where the BIG money is. Elected representative is just a small potatoes stepping stone to big money! Aim high, Sharon! Keep at it, if you're successful, most regular americans will be even more broke, and the rich will be even fatter!
Save your social security...
...by giving it to the rich...
Republicans are so outrageously morally demented and sick, they have a huge problem with the rich paying a little extra so everyone can live a little more comfortably, but they have no problem with the rich taking everyone else's money, STEALING it, ruining thousands of peoples retirements, and getting away with it in the name of this thing called (predatory) "capitalism"
And now the liberal media is working for Harry Reid, as they try and discredit Angle and misrepresent her views.
Someday, when the liberals have overturned the 1st Amendment, the press may see how they helped with their own demise.
Go ahead and get rid of the EPA. Go ahead and stop the clean-ups of the downtown Las Vegas brownfields the Lyon, Storey, and Churchill Counties Carson River Mercury Site Superfund cleanup the Nye County brownfields cleanup, the Reno Sage Motel Parcel brownfields cleanup, the White Pine County Ely Shoshone Tribal land abandoned mines brownfields cleanup, the Yerington Anaconda Mine Superfund cleanup.
Say goodby to the local jobs created by these projects and the monies spent by the federal gov't in your state on these cleanups.
And one more thing...say hello to the cancers and illnesses that will plague the people of Nevada after the EPA is gone.
Keep telling the truth and soon Reid will be known as the ex-majority leader of the senate.
We're with you, Sharron... Hang in there!
Here we go again with that big bad lame stream media and their gotcha moments! How dare they ask about something you put on your own website!!!!!! Those liberals spreadin' those lies about good solid conservative women....whatever.....
Hint: Social Security isn't Social Security if it is in a 'private fund'. That private fund will be handed over to Wall Street investors and in the event of market crash it would gone - 'poof' just like in 2008.
Angle wants to hide her history of radical right wing beliefs, such as the '2nd Amendment solutions" to what she calls "the Harry Reid problem".
Sharon that's rich. Your statement about privatizing Social Security is on your own website. Quit trying to duck and cover from your own website and own statements. The right-wing lunatics can't admit to their own agenda? What a pack of lies!
Ya, she's right. Let's put Social Sucurity into the Stock Market, like
Bush wanted. It's just another way Republicans can make Slaves of us.
Just think where we would be now if Bush had gotten his way, and
now the Rupublicans want to do it again. Hooray for you, Sharron Angle. You've shown you true colors.
This woman is a real right wing "nut". She has said that abortion causes breast cancer! She not only wants to phase out Social Security and Medicare but wants to get rid of the Dept. of Education and the EPA. She actually believes that we are over regulating the oil industry! I guess, like the Texas congressman, she thinks we should apologize to BP. She also proposed a Church of Scientology recommendation that massages be provided to prison inmates. She also inferred that if people didn't agree with the government that might want to exercise their second amendment rights (take up arms!).
Many Republican elected officials and business leaders in Nevada have already begun distancing themselves from her. The more she talks I think more moderates and independents will be casting their votes for Sen. Reid come November.
Ms. Angle needs a new strategy. Simply repeating "Harry Reid sucks" over and over again probably won't work.
There you go Angle. Blame it all on Reid. We know there is nothing in it for you.
If she wants to be taken seriously, she is going to have to learn to answer this sort of questioning without getting belligerent about it.