Alec Baldwin speaks out after he's arrested for allegedly punching man over NYC parking spot
Ah — there’s the Alec Baldwin we remember.
Although the 60-year-old actor’s temperament has mellowed a bit in recent years — perhaps due to the zen of his yogi wife, Hilaria — Mount Alec erupted on Friday during a dispute over a parking spot in New York City. If you’ve ever tried to park in the Big Apple, you likely feel his pain, but Baldwin is accused of taking things to the next level — fisticuffs with a stranger — and has been arrested, the New York Police Dept. confirms.
The dispute played out in Greenwich Village — near where Baldwin lives — and he’s accused of punching a 49-year-old man.
Now, the actor is speaking out about the alleged altercation. He took to Twitter on Friday evening to deny that he punched anyone over a parking spot, saying the story is being reported “for the purposes of clickbait entertainment.”
“Normally, I would not comment on something as egregiously misstated as today’s story. However, the assertion that I punched anyone over a parking spot is false. I wanted to go on the record stating as much,” he tweeted from the Hilaria and Alec Baldwin Foundation Twitter account.
Baldwin goes on to say he realizes “that it has become a sport to tag people” with “negative charges and defaming allegations.”
The actor was charged with assault and harassment, and was given a desk-appearance ticket, which means he’ll get to go home but is due back in court at a future date.
He was photographed leaving the 6th Precinct at a little after 4 p.m. ET on Friday and didn’t take questions from the long line of reporters outside.
According to a TMZ report, Baldwin had a friend holding the street spot for him. However, someone else pulled in and took the spot. At that point, Baldwin reportedly became “irate” and allegedly punched the vehicle’s driver in the jaw.
A rep for the star, who has been getting a lot of attention for playing Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live the last two years, has not yet responded to Yahoo’s request for comment. However, the president himself did comment, saying to reporters, “I wish him luck,” before smirking and shrugging. Trump’s son Don Jr. wasn’t as shy, taking to Twitter to call Baldwin a “piece of garbage.”
Baldwin has a notoriously bad temper. If you look on YouTube, there are video compilations of his most famous public outbursts. He infamously left a voicemail for his then-11-year-old daughter Ireland, calling her a “thoughtless little pig.” He was accused of using a gay slur in another NYC street spat, leading to his losing a show he had at the time on MSNBC. We could go on, but you get the point.
Will Baldwin, who also has four young children with his second wife, lose his new ABC show, The Alec Baldwin Show, over this? No such decision has been made just yet, with the show’s publicist telling Yahoo that the next one “will air as scheduled on Sunday, Nov. 4, at 10 p.m.”
However, Baldwin himself did respond to Gothamist‘s request for comment with a plug for his show: “My comment is that my show airs Sunday at 10 pm on ABC, with Mike Myers and Cecile Richards as my guests.”
Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: