Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large and In-house Counsel Joel B. Pollak told Canadan journalist Evan Solomon that Howard Dean’s best defense against a defamation lawsuit for calling Stephen K. Bannon a “Nazi” would be that no one takes Dean seriously.
“The best defense that Howard Dean would have in an American court against defamation would be that the claim is so ludicrous on its face that nobody would take it seriously.”
On Sunday, while being interviewed by Solomon for CTV’s Question Period, Dean called Bannon a “Nazi.”
Bannon, who has served as Breitbart News Executive Chairman for several years, has been on leave from Breitbart since August, when he accepted a post as Donald Trump’s campaign manager. Since Trump’s victory, Bannon has been appointed Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor by the President-elect.
Speaking to Solomon on Ottawa’s Newstalk 580 CFRA, Pollak called Dean a “liar” and said that his comment was “a complete lie … a defamatory lie.”
“The idea that Steve Bannon is a Nazi is so ridiculous that we actually made fun of it,” Pollak said, noting that Breitbart had reported the story underneath a photograph of Dean “screaming in demonic passion after he lost the Iowa caucuses in 2004 and tanked his own presidential ambitions.”
As for the accusations against Breitbart News, Pollak said:
“I’m an Orthodox Jewish person. I’m sitting here in an office. As I look outside my door, there’s two Jews in the conference room, and an Hispanic woman in her office. Now, would you see that at [an] antisemitic, racist — oh, and an African-American employee has just walked in.
“Now, I never look at my colleagues that way, but because of the idiocy of Howard Dean and people like him, now we have to count up all the minorities — which, by the way, is everybody in the [Los Angeles] office today — and explain that we’re not a white nationalist or racist website.”
Pollak added: “We are more diverse, at Breitbart News, than the entire traveling press corps” that covered Donald Trump on the campaign trail.
“That’s diversity based on merit, based on ability to write, based on ability to do the job, and we’re proud of it. But we don’t make a big deal out of it, because we don’t see race the way everybody else does.”
Asked whether Bannon would sue Dean, Pollak said he did not know, but that Dean would only have one defense.
“What I was saying was so ridiculous nobody on earth would possibly take me seriously. I am, after all, Howard Dean.”
Pollak summed up Dean’s chances to win his upcoming election as Democratic National Committee chair: “The only reason he might have a chance at DNC chair is his opponent [Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN)] is even more radical than he is.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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