It wasn’t just the body slam that felled a reporter covering a congressional race in Montana. And it wasn’t just the fact that the Republican candidate — now charged with misdemeanor assault — won the election the very next day.

No, it was the reaction among many on the right that somehow this was OK, that reporters are fair game, that is truly scary. The idea that this was just “Montana justice,” as one voter called it, was vaguely reminiscent of the kind of everyday thuggery against journalists in Russia that invariably goes unpunished.

Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian, had the temerity to ask Greg Gianforte about the GOP’s health care bill and the Congressional Budget Office report on it released earlier that day. For his trouble he got yelled at, his glasses broken and thrown to the floor. The only good news was all of this was witnessed by a Fox News reporter, who herself has been criticized from the more lunatic fringe of the alt-right media for sticking by a reporter for a “liberal” news outlet.

Yes, it has come to this — having been declared “enemies of the people” by no less than the president himself, reporters trying to do their jobs must, therefore, be fair game.

Gianforte himself at least did the right thing during his acceptance speech, saying, “Last night, I made a mistake. I took an action I can’t take back and I am not proud of what happened.”

He was perhaps mindful that this was only a special election and he gets to run all over again in 2018 when voters (many of whom had cast early ballots before the altercation) get to decide all over again.