Why Is Good Morning America Hosting Ann Coulter?

Written by Hardeep Dhillon

Published

Today, Ann Coulter appeared on ABC's Good Morning America to promote her new book, Demonic. According to the Nexis database, Coulter was last interviewed on Good Morning America in 2009. And with her history of offensive and inflammatory rhetoric, it is disappointing to see that ABC chose to give her a platform to promote her book.

In 2007, Coulter's inflammatory commentary led CNN's Howard Kurtz, host of Reliable Sources, to question why news networks continue to host the conservative author. Kurtz stated: "[S]he can say whatever she wants, but there's no constitutional right to appear on a television show." At the time, Coulter had recently said: “we” Christians “just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.”

And Coulter has not changed her tune since then. Here are some examples of what she has said since then:

  • Just yesterday, Coulter described the Kent State massacre as “what you do with a mob.” She also stated: “The whole country was embarrassed [about Kent State], well I'm not embarrassed.”
  • In February 2011, Coulter labeled current U.S. President Barack Obama “a crazy Muslim.”
  • In February 2011, Coulter also attacked the “INS” for choosing “illiterate Pakistanis” rather than “Swiss scientists” for immigration “because we need more New York City valets.” In the same episode of Hannity, Coulter also stated that “liberals have been using one special interest group after another” like “the gays” “for their attacks on the family.”
  • In November 2009, Coulter advocated for racial profiling stating: “The one thing we won't look at is who is doing this.” She then added, terrorists “all look alike. They're all foreign-born...they're all Muslim.”
  • In October 2009, the conservative author compared Jennings writing the forward of a book to Polanski “anally raping a 13-year-old.”
  • In August 2009, Coulter stated: “Zeke Emanuel is on my death list.”

On Good Morning America today, Coulter did what she always does. She continued to say things that are inflammatory without in any way being informative or even interesting.

Today, she suggested that because Southern Democrats opposed civil rights, the people opposed to civil rights were liberals. She also made the laughably false claim that the Klan was “never Republican.” In addition, she appeared to demonize the Civil Rights Movement as akin to a “mob” and to the violent anti-abortion movement.

From the June 7 edition of Good Morning America:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (host): You say, basically, Republicans are the party of peaceful order; Democrats are the party of noisy, violent mobs and you say that it's rooted in Democrats following the French Revolution and Republicans following the American Revolution. Explain that.

COULTER: Yes. Well, the first part is sort of a psychological profile of the left. So even liberals who are wondering why they behave the way they behave might want to read it because it explain it, and it's all mob psychology from this French psychologist, or social psychologist Gustave Le Bon who is the father of group think. And Hitler and Mussolini studied him to learn how to incite mobs and as I was reading him and I read a lot about mobs and group think. I mean, everything it just describes the behavioral patterns of the left.

And then the middle section, I go through, well, the American tradition, which is to write arguments like the Declaration of Independence, that's what we celebrate. What do the French celebrate? Bastille Day where a bunch of lunatics storm an empty prison because they thought it was unsightly and it was based on rumors. And If you look at the history of left in this country, including the Klan in the south which was Democratic, contrary to revisionist history --

STEPHANOPOULOS: It started out Democratic but turned very quickly. But you know you

COULTER: Not to Republican. It was never Republican.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You take on the civil rights movement, and that's where you seem you fall into some contradictions. You seem to suggest that that is part of the mob but this was a peaceful mob, almost entirely. Yet you seem to express some type of understanding for anti-abortion protestors who use violence.

COULTER: No, no, no, I'm comparing the two actually. I think they are very similar, and the reason I raise the civil rights movement is that gave mobs a halo. Because that was the first time mobs were being deployed --

STEPHANOPOULOS: Because it was peaceful, civil disobedience.

COULTER: No, it was because the cause behind it. Up until then from the beginning of the revolution to the Shay's Rebellion to the draft riots here in New York City by Democrats lynching blacks, it was always the left. It was Democrats, the SDS, the Weathermen. Mobs have always been a bad thing. Civil rights movement was the first time in this country it started to give street protests -- I mean, not all street protests are going to be a mob but my point on this -- well, two different things, one is comparing Martin Luther King to Thurgood Marshall, who sort of surprising to me became a hero of this book. Because when I was in law school he was just signing onto all the opinions with Justice Brennan and I just thought of him as a liberal. But his history, I mean it is the tradition of the American Revolution. He's making arguments. He's bringing court cases. He's winning them. In 1954 he won Brown v. Board of Education. If there had been Republican presidents for that eight years, nine years from 60 to 68, you never would have had the civil rights movement.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I wish we had more time. I think Marshall and King would see themselves as allies but -

COULTER: They do not, I quote Thurgood Marshall criticizing Martin Luther King.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Ann Coulter, thank you very much.

COULTER: Thank you.