Referring to Media Matters for America's documentation of his July 16 comments in which he called autism "[a] fraud, a racket," Michael Savage said on the July 28 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program: “They're very happy that they were able to use the poor parents of autistic children to attack me when I in fact have been more supportive of the most vulnerable children in our population than anybody else in the history of radio. That's correct, me, Michael Savage.” Savage went on to falsely claim that his comments about autism were taken of context, stating: “So what they did was they took a sound bite out of context and they used the poor parents of autistic children to attack me. That's very clever. I must admit that [Media Matters CEO] David Brock and the others who are funded by these far-left radical groups are very clever devils indeed, in my opinion.” Savage later stated, “In the short run, they think they're counting their shekels, but in the long run, they're going to find out they're actually going to be not counting their shekels, they may be counting their time behind bars for what they're doing today.”

As Media Matters noted, on July 21, Savage recast comments he made about autism in order to claim that he was “take[n] out of context,” falsely suggesting that his July 16 comments -- which have generated widespread media attention and sparked protests -- distinguished between “the truly autistic” and those he described on July 21 as “the misdiagnosed, the falsely diagnosed, and the outright fakers in the autism field.” In fact, in his July 16 comments -- the relevant portions of which Media Matters documented with transcript and audio -- Savage said: “Now, you want me to tell you my opinion on autism, since I'm not talking about autism? A fraud, a racket. ... You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is.”

In the wake of widespread criticism over his July 16 comments, Savage said on July 21 that “true autism is extremely heartbreaking” and later said: "[I]t's ironic that people who hate families and children -- a group called Media Matters, filled with anti-family individuals who do not marry; they're men who like men -- would take out of context comments that I made last week directed at the misdiagnosed, the falsely diagnosed, and the outright fakers in the autism field and try to make you, the parents of the truly autistic, attack me."

Moreover, as Media Matters also documented, a broadcast of The Savage Nation that re-aired on July 9 further undermines Savage's claim that his July 16 comments were referring only to misdiagnoses of autism, and not to the disease itself, when he characterized autism as "[a] fraud, a racket." During the July 9 rebroadcast, portions of which previously were included in a YouTube clip posted on June 30 -- more than two weeks before Savage made the “fraud” comments that he now claims were taken “out of context” -- Savage acknowledged having called autism “a phony disease.”

This is not the first time Savage has attacked Media Matters and Brock, its founder and CEO.

From the July 28 edition of Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation:

SAVAGE: What liberals don't understand who are attacking me right now is that today it's Michael Savage, and they're -- they're gloating, oh they're happy. They're very happy that they were able to use the poor parents of autistic children to attack me when I in fact have been more supportive of the most vulnerable children in our population than anybody else in the history of radio. That's correct, me, Michael Savage.

So what they did was they took a sound bite out of context and they used the poor parents of autistic children to attack me. That's very clever. I must admit that David Brock and the others who are funded by these far-left radical groups are very clever devils indeed, in my opinion. By using poor children like this to advance their socialist communist one-world agenda. They're very clever fellows. But you know they're clever by a half, and as a matter of fact, they're too clever for their own good, which they'll find out in the long run.

In the short run, they think they're counting their shekels, but in the long run, they're going to find out they're actually going to be not counting their shekels, they may be counting their time behind bars for what they're doing today. You say it's impossible? When you bend the laws of a free society as they're bending the laws of a free society, in my opinion, to act as Stalinist agents. The day may come that we get a legitimate government in this country, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people that actually protects free speech instead of using groups like this to destroy free speech.

Zachary Aronow is an intern at Media Matters for America