It's a rare thing for former MSNBC anchor and current RT America host Ed Schultz to defend Republicans – especially GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump -- but that's what he did on Friday, when he released a video criticizing Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign for never granting interviews to the Russian network.
“Give me a minute,” the liberal anchor stated before noting that the Cable News Network “just ran a big, big, long segment on how Donald Trump is unpatriotic because he did an interview with Larry King on Russian-funded television. That's right, RT America.”
The Republican candidate had spoken with King on Thursday's edition of PoliticKing, when they discussed everything from Iraq to Hillary Clinton and even baseball.
Another unusual aspect of the situation was that many pundits have accused Russian agents of hacking into the computers of the Democratic National Committee.
According to an article from Ken Meyer of the Mediaite.com website posted the following day, the Republican's appearance was “intriguing to some because it meant that Trump was following his most recent Vladimir Putin sweet-talk by appearing on the Kremlin’s own network.”
“These factors have caused both Hillary Clinton and numerous media figures to alternatively question and highlight Trump’s cozy relationship with the Russian president,” Meyer claimed.
However, Schultz continued:
It should be pointed out that the Clinton campaign has refused interviews on RT America, that the Center for American Progress has “blackballed” the Ed Schultz news on RT America, so you're not getting the straight questions, you're not getting the straight answers, you get manufactured information.
Vladimir Putin did not hack the DNC, and if they had, they would have found out that the DNC was supporting Hillary Clinton and not Bernie Sanders.
“I have an open invitation to anyone in the Clinton campaign to go face-to-face with me,” he noted, “and answer questions about foreign policy, answer questions about taxes, answer questions about things the American people care about.”
“But of course, they won't do that because this is manufactured news by the Clinton campaign to vilify Donald Trump and connect him to Vladimir Putin, and that's their strategy to win the election,” Schultz added.
“It is so sad and so small and so elementary, and I think it's hurting Hillary Clinton, which I think is even more than sad,” he concluded.
As NewsBusters previously reported, King joined Ora TV in May of 2013 to host what he called a “mold-breaking” political program that is carried by the Russian television channel.
One year later, after King and Piers Morgan had both left CNN, the long-time interviewer told radio “shock jock” Howard Stern that CNN had made a mistake by putting a “Britisher in prime time.”
Morgan quickly snarled back in a series of tweets that King had been “a constant poisonous twerp towards me for three years, and I'm bored with it.”
He added that there is no such word as "Britisher'” before growling that “research and facts were never your strong point, were they, Brooklyner?”
It should have come as no surprise that Trump agreed to appear on Larry King's program since the two men have been friends for several years, and this interview was an opportunity for the GOP candidate to reach a different audience than the people who watch shows on America's “mainstream media.”
Of course, Schultz might merely be using this controversy in an attempt to draw back some of the viewers he had on his MSNBC programs. Only time will tell if this tactic is successful.
