Former daytime TV talk show host Montel Williams debuted on Air America Radio on Monday, a network so desperate they’re hiring a man who boasts of how he was a long-time Republican, and now says he can’t stomach either party. But Air America’s trying to draw attention to Montel as he begins his (perhaps short-lived) talk-radio run with a demand that former Speaker Newt Gingrich "Shut up" before he starts a nuclear war. Montel played audio of Newt Gingrich on Greta Van Susteren’s show on April 1, saying he would do whatever it takes to take out North Korean missiles, and offered his own fractured rebuttal:

When you come out that ignorantly and try to threaten to put America in a position that we are now riling people towards nuclear war, I gotta tell you, shut up!...

[Gingrich] said, 'I'd bribe someone' [to prevent a missile launch]. This is the leader of the Republican party...Here is your leader telling you that he wants to do business the way he knows how to do it, and that's bribe, break the law by entering another country's airspace, start another war on his own....

If you're a Republican and you are proud of Newt Gingrich and what he just said, you need to go check yourself in, right now, to a hospital...and figure out whether or not you can get put on something...Newt, shut up!

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Right before the "shut up," Montel said he needed to take a break and "calm my booty down." He called Gingrich the GOP's "poster child." But does Air America really want Montel to be the public face of their network? Will he be radical enough to please the typical Air America listener?

Air America's promoting some of these remarks on its YouTube channel.

Here’s the actual Newt-and-Greta exchange:

VAN SUSTEREN: We have one minute left. If you were president, what would you do about this North Korea problem?

GINGRICH: I would use whatever methods were necessary for the missile never to be launched. And I think you could do it probably with unconventional methods.

VAN SUSTEREN: So that's military. Are you saying military?

GINGRICH: If necessary. If I can't find a way to bribe somebody to blow it up, I'd find a way to have either a small team go in, or a way to deliver either a laser or another kind of device. This is a missile that is sitting there on that launch pad, and I think you could take it out with very, very minimal risk to anybody.

As Air America prepared to publicize the show, they gave potential listeners a wacky video hors d'oeuvre of Montel suggesting "Make Mexico the 51st State!" Montel suggested Americans are "still fighting the Battle of the Alamo," when we should be creating an A.U. (or American Union) to match the E.U. (European Union).

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.