Lawyers can come in handy. Just ask Charlie Kirk and his colleagues at Turning Point USA.
Turning Point held its Student Action Summit in Tampa last Friday through Sunday. The SAS is a huge event, attended by thousands of young people. On Saturday, a tiny handful of apparent neo-Nazi demonstrators showed up on the sidewalk outside the SAS venue. Who they were and why they were there is anyone’s guess, but the despicable crew on The View used the occasion to denounce Turning Point on Monday’s show. Per Fox news:
On Monday, the daytime gabfest kicked off its program discussing the TPUSA Student Action Summit that occurred last weekend in Tampa, Florida. “The View” co-hosts mocked the elaborate event for taking “a page from the WWE” simply because of special effects, inaccurately portrayed the group as being officially tied to the GOP and Joy Behar criticized the group because neo-Nazi protestors were outside the venue.
“Neo-Nazis were out there in the front of the conference with anti-Semitic slurs and, you know, the Nazi swastika and a picture of a so-called Jewish person with exaggerated features, just like Goebbels did during the Third Reich. It’s the same thing, right out of that same playbook,” Behar said.
She then said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “did nothing,” but failed to mention the Republican governor attended the event the day before neo-Nazis appeared.
Apparently someone got through to The View while the show was still in progress:
Later on the program, “The View” read an on-air legal disclaimer to inform viewers that Turning Point USA condemned the neo-Nazis protestors who had “nothing to do” with the organization.
“But you let them in, and you knew what they were,” Whoopi Goldberg inaccurately said before the panelists were forced to read another disclaimer and explain the neo-Nazis were “outside protestors” and TPUSA didn’t let them in. “My point was metaphorical,” Goldberg said.
Tell it to the jury. Turning Point followed up with a letter from its lawyer:
“The View hosts intentionally and falsely associated TPUSA with neo-Nazi protestors outside the event placing TPUSA in denigrating and false light and negatively impacting its public perception. Such action will not be tolerated,” the letter said.
“Specifically, The View hosts insidiously and cavalierly stated that TPUSA ‘let [neo-Nazis] in’ to its SAS event, metaphorically ‘embrase[d] them’ and that neo-Nazis were ‘in the mix of people.’ The assertion that TPUSA is complicit or affiliated in any way with the neo-Nazi protesters outside the event is outlandish, false, defamatory, and disgraceful,” the letter continued. “Even after Ms. Haines reluctantly read the TPUSA statement that it condemns the group of neo-Nazis and that the group had nothing to do with TPUSA, its event, or its student attendees, Ms. Goldberg continued the false tirade against TPUSA, asserting that somehow the organization and its attendees were ‘complicit’ and/or associated with the outside protest.”
The letter went on to demand an on-air retraction and apology. Today, Turning Point got its apology, more or less:
The View apologizes for wrongly linking neo-Nazi protestors to Turning Point USA. pic.twitter.com/uVUo7Cfykr
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 27, 2022
Of course, the problem with the View hosts’ statements isn’t that they were unclear. They were perfectly clear, the problem is that they were false and defamatory. Still, the apology, while grudging, will probably be enough to forestall litigation. It is remarkable how much can often be achieved through the credible threat of a lawsuit.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.