In an interview with St. Louis radio host Jamie Allman today, anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller claimed that Hillary Clinton has declared that she will “shut down” Breitbart.com if she becomes president, a nonexistent declaration that Geller said represented “the Sharia” and “totalitarianism.”
Geller started out by attacking Secretary of State John Kerry’s remark at a press conference in Bangladesh in which he said that “[p]erhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover [terrorist acts] quite as much” because aspiring terrorists know that they’ll be able to “make some noise.” This, Geller declared, “is the language of the conquered.”
“And partner this,” she added, “with last week’s declaration in an email from Hillary Clinton that she’s going to shut down, for example, the number one conservative website, Breitbart, which as you know I write for, I mean, this is the Sharia, this is totalitarianism, this is very frightening. And what’s even more frightening is that the media’s not talking about it because they’re marching in lockstep, Jamie.”
Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton has not declared that she will “shut down” Breitbart. Instead, Clinton’s campaign sent an email on August 18, shortly after Donald Trump brought on Breitbart CEO Steven Bannon as his campaign chair, noting that the conservative media has a “right to exist” but pointing out that Breitbart is an extreme example of the conservative media. At no point does the email suggest shutting down Breitbart or any other conservative outlet:
Donald Trump just hired Breitbart's executive director to be his new campaign CEO.
Now, we've had a conservative media in this country for a while. I don't always like what they have to say, but I respect their role and their right to exist.
Breitbart is something different. They make Fox News look like a Democratic Party pamphlet. They're a different breed altogether -- not just conservative but radical, bigoted, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic conspiracy peddlers who never have been and never should be anywhere near the levers of power in this country.
But Donald Trump just gave them a broad new mandate to shape his campaign, his message, the future of the Republican Party, and quite possibly the country.
Trump, on the other hand, has actually threatened to “open up” libel laws so that he can sue media outlets whose coverage he doesn’t like out of existence.
