Whenever you hear about a right-wing conspiracy theory somehow making
its way into the mainstream of political dialogue, there's a good chance
that Breitbart News had something to do with it.
Never heard of Breitbart News? It's a fringe website where there's no opinion too ugly, too divisive, or too outright crazy to be worth breathless promotion.
The one about President Obama being a secret Muslim born in Kenya? Breitbart was all over that "story."
Or
maybe you heard about the time they attacked an opponent -- a
conservative Republican, no less -- by calling him a "renegade Jew."
Why does this matter?
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.
It goes without saying that we have to beat these
people. But I want to beat them so decisively that their kind never
rises again.
Doing that is going to take hard work, moral
clarity, unshakeable determination, and enough resources to make sure
that every last voter in America hears from us every single day about
the choice in this election.
