Earlier this week, Andrew Breitbart said he "can prove" that Shirley Sherrod was fired from her job as a U.S. Department of Agriculture official because of her participation as a successful claimant in the Pigford black farmer discrimination lawsuit rather than because of the deceptively-edited video he released that painted Sherrod as racist.
Yesterday, he backtracked from the claim. In an interview with Media Matters for America's Joe Strupp, Breitbart instead said that it was his “theory” that Sherrod was fired because of Pigford and that he had “made a very strong case for that.”
Watch the exclusive video of Strupp's interview with Breitbart in which he backtracks from the claim that he “can prove” Shirley Sherrod was fired because of Pigford:
STRUPP: Why make it seem like she was fired for that case, when it clearly --
BREITBART: That is my theory.
STRUPP: Right.
BREITBART: And I have made a very strong case for that, that you are at Media Matters, and you by default disagree with everything that I say. It's not my burden that you don't find that to be a compelling argument. MSNBC thought it was a compelling argument when they accused me in a segment that said “conservative activist 1, black farmers 0” the week that Shirley Sherrod was fired.
It's not surprising that Breitbart is backtracking. As we've mentioned before, Breitbart's conspiracy theory about Sherrod's firing is flatly contradicted by contemporaneous administration emails showing that Sherrod was fired because of the deceptively-edited videos.