Jeffrey Kuhner has hurled an impressive amount of hateful rhetoric over the past few years -- for instance, as editor of the now-defunct Insightmag.com website, he forwarded the false claim in 2007 that Barack Obama attended a Muslim madrassa as a child in Indonesia. But rarely has Kuhner gone as far as he did yesterday, when he claimed on a nationally syndicated radio show that Obama secretly wants “the Jews to be wiped off the face of the Earth.”
To return to Kuhner's history of bizarre smears against Obama: Kuhner absurdly stood by the madrassa claim even as it was discredited. When Insight folded, Kuhner somehow was allowed to move over to its sister operation, The Washington Times, where he was given a weekly space to do things like falsely smear Elena Kagan and wildly claim that Obama represents “liberal fascism.”
Kuhner also has a side gig as a radio host, appearing not only on a small radio station in Washington, D.C. (clips of which are posted on the Times' website), but also as a substitute host for Michael Savage (a man who has also spewed an impressive amount of hateful rhetoric). Kuhner has used that national platform to declare that Sonia Sotomayor believes “America is a racist, sexist, homophobic and misogynist society” and that “The pill and the condom have been the hammer and sickle of cultural Marxism, and in its path, it is now destroying American culture."
Which brings us to Savage's June 14 show, which Kuhner guest-hosted. After a caller declared that Obama “pays deference to terrorists like Ahmadinejad and other fascists,” Kuhner agreed that Obama “secretly admires Ahmadinejad,” declared that the caller “stumbled onto something that most people are overlooking,” then launched into his idea of a history lesson:
KUHNER: Look, let's put our cards on the table, as the Germans would say. As I said, I'm a student of the 1930s, I'm a historian. I'm not some right-wing entertainer like some other talk show hosts. I know what I'm talking about. FDR admired Hitler. This is what the liberals don't want you to know. Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister of Britain, admired Hitler.
Really? Franklin Roosevelt admired the guy he went to war against?
But Kuhner wasn't done. After ranting about Woody Allen and Tom Friedman's alleged enthusiasm for dictatorships, Kuhner again claimed that Obama admires Ahmadinejad -- then expanded his attack further:
KUHNER: And if you want to know why he is now practicing appeasement against Iran -- I'm going to say it because I'm the only one in Washington to have the guts to say it. I believe deep down, he wants the Jewish state to be extinct. I believe that secretly he wants the Israelis and the Jews to be wiped off the face of the Earth. Because in his warped, leftist, academic mind, the two great evils of the world, the two great Satans of the world, are Israel and America. He honestly believes in his heart of hearts -- that's what Bill Ayers taught him. That's what Reverend Jeremiah Wright taught him. That's what all of his Marxist academic cronies taught him, was that the key to peace in the Middle East, and by extension peace in the world, is to stop Israel. If you can get rid of Israel, you can have peace. And then you bury the United States. You make it a part of the international system. You make it one of many powers. In other words, you de-nationalize America. You make it into something it's never been. And then you have a leftist utopia on earth. That's what he truly believes.
Anytime someone declares that only they “have the guts to say” something, it's often followed by hateful, extremist twaddle, and darn if Kuhner didn't deliver on that in spades.
While such twaddle may be what's expected when you're filling in for Michael Savage, it doesn't explain why Kuhner still has a job with The Washington Times, even as the paper is in its death throes.
And Kuhner's rant certainly doesn't seem to fit in with another of his side jobs, as president of the Edmund Burke Institute. This organization “aspires to engage and mobilize the millions of African Americans, Hispanics, women and other minorities in this country who share conservative values.” It's doubtful that Kuhner's pile of hateful screeds is attracting anyone -- let alone minorities -- to conservatism.