Ed Klein, former editor-in-chief of the New York Times Magazine and author of Guilty as Sin: Uncovering New Evidence of Corruption and How Hillary Clinton and the Democrats Derailed the FBI Investigation, was a guest of Breitbart News Daily on Election Day.
SiriusXM host Alex Marlow recalled many interesting conversations with Klein about the insularity, and increasing thuggishness, of the Left, a bad omen for a possible Hillary Clinton presidency. Klein said:
Let me give you an example of what you’re talking about. After I left the New York Times in 1988 – that’s a long time ago – I started writing books. I wrote a lot of books about the Kennedys. And I was on ABC, CBS, NBC, Charlie Rose, CNN. They loved me. They invited me back. I was the toast of the town, quote-unquote. And then I wrote a book called The Truth About Hillary. One night, shortly after I wrote that book, I got a phone call as my wife and I were dressing to go to a dinner party, and it was from the host of the dinner party – a guy whose name I will not mention on air.
Klein recalled how his friend rescinded his invitation to the party at the guest of honor’s request, explicitly because he had written a book critical of the Clintons.
“He said, ‘Well, I’m sorry.’ and so we were disinvited to that party, and from then on, I have been the guy who the mainstream media types in this city will have nothing to do with,” Klein concluded. “In fact, people whom I’ve know for all my professional life, when I see them in a restaurant or run into them on the street, often will pass by without saying ‘Hi.’”
“Now, I don’t know any conservative or Republican who behaves that way. When somebody disagrees with those of us who are quote ‘on the right’ unquote, we say, ‘OK, you’ve got a different opinion from us, but I still like you because you’re my friend of many, many years standing. That is not the case with the Left. The Left has no room for disagreement. The Left is so self-righteous and smug that they think they have a complete monopoly on righteousness and goodness, and the rest of us are actually, in their view, evil,” Klein warned.
Marlow noted the irony of Hillary Clinton making an entirely emotional appeal as her closing argument, while Donald Trump offers a more “visionary, aggressive approach”— when the media rap on Trump throughout the campaign is that he’s the one lacking in ideas, issues, and policy proposals.
“How do they get away with it, in the media? You’re a media guy. How do they get away with this lie?” Marlow asked.
“Well, they get away with it for a variety of reasons,” Klein replied. “But I think the most important one is that if you look at what underlies, or the basis, the foundation of the so-called progressive Left, it is if I am for women, minorities, homosexuals, the put-upon of the world – well, I’m a good guy, and you should vote for me. So therefore this gives them the power. It’s all about power. Because they use this so-called ideology of the put-upons in order to get votes.”
“This is exactly what Donald was talking about when he started talking to the inner-city African-Americans, and he said, ‘Listen, you guys. For the last, what, since the 1960s you’ve been voting for Democrats in the inner city, and look where you are today. You’ve been voting for them because they’ve been promising you that they love you, that they care about you, that you’re their brother, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s all about getting your vote. It has nothing to do with producing results for you people,’” Klein said.
He agreed with Marlow that Democrats in power tend to “look down their nose at their own constituency.”
“What we should also admit here, as we discuss this issue, is that in addition to the smugness, self-righteousness, et cetera of the Left, they’re also in cahoots with a lot of people in Washington who are so-called conservatives, Republicans, because one hand is washing the other in Washington, Klein contended. “If you look at what is motivating both sides in Washington—this is what Donald’s been talking about—it’s the perpetuation of their power, of their position, of their status. To get re-elected, and re-elected, and re-elected is their first priority, not to produce results for the American people.”
Klein thought it was important to stress that no matter what happens in the election, issues of concern to voters will remain, and the fight will go on. Klein told Marlow:
We of course hope and pray that Donald Trump is going to win this election, but given the possibility that he doesn’t, Donald Trump and what he stands for, as you just said, is not going away. This is the important point. Something has changed here in America. He has tapped into the upsurge throughout the country that enough is enough. This movement that Breitbart has been leading, and Donald has been part of, is a powerful movement with tens of millions of people behind it. It’s going to affect and influence American policy going forward – even if, God forbid, Hillary Clinton becomes President of the United States.
He hoped the Trump movement might inject some much-needed “self-confidence” into the Republican Party, which tends to begin important policy debates on defense, sounding faintly ashamed of their own positions—or, in the case of candidates like 2012 presidential contender Mitt Romney, ashamed of even their own personal success.
“He didn’t use his success, as Donald has, as a paradigm or example of what other people can do in this country, which is the old American Dream: if you work hard, play by the rules, go to work on time, that you will get ahead, and your children will do even better than you. That’s Donald. Mitt Romney was, ‘Oh, uh, well, I’m ashamed I’ve got all this money, and I’m building a garage for all my cars with it, an elevator, and blah blah blah,’” Klein said.
On the occasion of his first Breitbart News Daily interview since FBI Director James Comey reopened the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server, and then stood by his original decision not to recommend indictments, Klein said his sources told him “Valerie Jarrett has convinced Obama that he should fire James Comey.”
“This took a while, because Obama didn’t want to look like he was interfering in the democratic process, and so forth and so on, but he has agreed to do so after the election, according to my sources,” said Klein.
He said that after he published this news at the Daily Mail Online, the White House was contacted for a comment, and the response was “a twenty-page screed from the deputy White House press secretary, who had put together every single website knock on me, absolute low-level ‘Ed Klein is the Devil, the Evil.’” He found some amusement in the White House investing so much time compiling such a dossier of criticism.
Klein expressed sympathy for Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer, who also received shabby treatment from an “absolutely corrupt” media establishment after writing a book strongly critical of the Clintons. He went on to say:
I feel for Peter Schweizer because he worked so hard, and he put his finger on what I think a lot of people have forgotten: now that the FBI Director, James Comey, has said in his absolutely herky-jerky that he’s – you know, investigating, he’s not investigating, he’s investigating again, and now he’s not investigating – what we’ve forgotten is that the FBI still has an ongoing investigation, and it has for almost two years, of the Clinton Foundation, and that’s still ongoing. They have been looking into the Haiti connection, in which as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton sent millions of dollars of American taxpayer money to Haiti after the earthquake there, and it went to her cronies, her donors, her brother, people who were Clinton backers. And you go to Haiti and you discover that that money disappeared somehow. This is still on the docket of the FBI.
I wonder if, before this investigation of the Clinton Foundation by the FBI is finished, if James Comey will still be around as Director of the FBI,” he mused. “Because in addition to the White House wanting to see him go, I’m told also by my sources that within the FBI, there’s a sense of almost near-mutiny over the fact that this guy, this director, has brought disgrace to the institution.
Klein dismissed rumors of a behind-the-scenes conspiracy thwarting the FBI’s investigation of the Clintons, citing Director Comey’s devout religious faith to suggest he feels “he is doing God’s work on Earth, and that he knows better than everybody else how to do it.”
“I know this sounds very radical, but I do believe that this is what motivates him,” said Klein. “And I think it’s made him erratic, made him unpredictable, made him do very, very stupid things—to, for instance, reopen this investigation 11 days before the election without any basis for doing so, thereby really harming Hillary Clinton’s chances, and then two days before the election saying, ‘Oh, sorry, I was mistaken, there’s nothing there.’”
“I mean, this is not the behavior of somebody who’s sane—who really knows what he’s doing,” Klein complained.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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