As a guest on the September 28 edition of FOX News Channel's FOX & Friends, conservative commentator David Horowitz claimed that Senator John Kerry's election would “vastly encourage the terrorist forces” and that civil rights organizations are “in bed with the terrorists.” Co-host Brian Kilmeade identified Horowitz as “author of the new book Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left” (Regnery, September 2004), and onscreen text described him as “a lifelong civil rights activist and ”a New York Times bestselling author."

Horowitz is also the author of How to Beat the Democrats and Other Subversive Ideas (Spence, 2002) and Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes (Spence, 1999), and is editor in chief of the right-wing website FrontPageMag.com.

During the interview, the “lifelong civil rights activist” rejected concerns raised by “the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union]” regarding the USA PATRIOT Act, saying those groups “are in bed with the terrorists. They are defending them. Their own members ... are indicted for terrorism. We're taking a much too complacent attitude towards the enemy at home.”

Horowitz's derision of civil rights and liberties organizations echoed recent comments from right-wing radio host Michael Savage, who said of the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and the National Lawyers Guild, “There is no greater friend of Al Qaeda,” and FOX News Channel host and radio host Bill O'Reilly, who said that the ACLU is America's “most dangerous organization ... second next to Al Qaeda.” Media Matters for America has previously documented both remarks.

Horowitz then went on to bash Kerry, saying his election would “vastly encourage the terrorist forces.” MMFA has documented numerous instances of media figures adopting the Republican claim that terrorists would prefer a Kerry victory in November, despite a conspicuous lack of evidence to support it.