MARTY MOSS-COANE (HOST): This is something Media Matters has been covering. This Roger Stone, he doesn’t work directly with the campaign, but he has been known to be a friend and ally of Donald Trump for some time now. And this is Roger Stone appearing on WNYM’s The John Gambling Show. And this happened yesterday.
[BEGIN CLIP]
ROGER STONE:If you look at Mr. Khan’s background, he is an advocate for Sharia. Sharia law oppresses women, oppresses gays, kills Christians. This is a violent, oppressive ideology, which Mr. Khan very clearly shares. He is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. He is tied to the same sect of the Muslim Brotherhood as [Clinton aide] Huma Abedin. I’m suggesting that he has an agenda.
[END CLIP]
MOSS-COANE: Eric, who believes this stuff?
ERIC BOEHLERT: A very small sect, right? And so, I said everybody’s shocked, and the caveat here is there are small pockets within the far, far-right media that will do anything for Donald Trump. And for most of the conservative media, The Weekly Standard, the National Review, places like that -- which have, in the past, been completely engaged in the Republican campaign and defending the Republican candidate -- that part of the conservative media has completely disengaged. And this week, they are so thankful they did that months ago. What’s left are what I would sort of call the bottom-feeders, like Roger Stone and some other kind of previously unknown surrogates who have shown up on the cable news shows in the last couple days to continue to smear the Khan family.
And the sad part is, I just did a piece for Media Matters this morning, there’s an unfortunate, long history in the conservative movement and the conservative press of kind of waging war against ordinary, everyday Americans who happen to -- usually in a time of crisis -- sort of appear as obstacles to Republican messaging. I wrote about Michael Schiavo, I wrote about Sandra Fluke, I wrote about Robert Bergdahl, Bowe Bergdahl’s father. All of these people at times of kind of loss or trauma and things like that, Trayvon Martin’s family, they were immediately seized upon by portions of the conservative press as the enemy. And instead of showing any sort of sympathy or restraint, they were piled on. And so that’s what we’re seeing now with the Khan family.
There is a portion of the far, far-right media, particularly during a campaign season, all the guardrails are down. There are no rules. So you have people like Roger Stone going on, spreading lies about the Khan family.
