As former Breitbart News spokesman Kurt Bardella appeared as a guest on Sunday's Reliable Sources on CNN, he again demonstrated why he is the kind of Republican that both CNN and MSNBC like to have on as a recurring guest. Again trashing his former business associate, Bardella claimed that Breitbart News is "supporting the KKK" as he contended that many Donald Trump voters are not necessarily interested in reading the right-leaning website in spite of its history of supporting Trump.
After Brian Stelter noted that Breitbart's online traffic has declined since Trump became President, the CNN host asked if the media "make too much of Breitbart's power." Bardella began by arguing that there was a heightened interest in the site during the presidential campaign and immediately up to Inauguration Day:
I always felt that Breitbart was never going to be more read and broadly appealing than on the day that President Trump was inaugurated, that it was going to be all downhill from there. Because their lens and their editorial bent only appeals to a very specific segment of the population -- the so-called clinical Alt-Right universe.
Bardella -- who a couple of weeks ago claimed that the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville "is the Republican Party" -- took another incendiary crack at conservatives as he tried to link Breitbart News to the KKK:
Anybody else who voted for Trump because of other reasons -- whether not liking Hillary Clinton, not liking Congress, just wanting to have, you know, kind of that protest vote they're not necessarily going to be aligned with supporting the KKK.
Stelter had a delayed reaction as he first reflexively injected, "Right," but then winced and mildly pushed back: "Well, I don't know who's -- I don't know who's actually supporting the KKK, but I hear your point about audience that the site's more powerful for its D.C. readers perhaps?"
Bardella continued:
Well, and that's the thing. It's about -- it's an influence play. If Donald Trump is reading Breitbart, supports Breitbart, and re-tweets things that come from Breitbart, regurgitates stories that come from Breitbart, then it's incredibly impactful because it's a window into what's shaping President Trump's policies or rhetoric, and that's very impactful.
