Bill Kristol says Breitbart News should change names as the news website no longer embodies its founder’s vision.
“I hate the fact that it’s called Breitbart News,” he said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “It’s unfortunate we’re all sitting around talking about Breitbart.”
{mosads}“It’s a disservice to Andrew’s memory,” Kristol added of Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart. “I knew Andrew well, and he was a trouble-maker but he was a good-hearted person.
“I honestly think if they change the name and call it, you know, ‘right-wing intolerant mean-spirited news,’ that would be fine. That wasn’t Andrew.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday announced Breitbart News Chairman Stephen Bannon as his campaign’s new chief executive.
Bannon lacks past campaign experience, Politico said Wednesday, but has been advising Trump for several months.
Kristol said Bannon’s addition to Trump’s team would not help him win the White House.
“I don’t think it matters because the problem is Donald Trump, you know?” said Kristol, the founder and editor of the Weekly Standard. “His unfavorable rating has been consistently too high to win a presidential election.”
“Hillary Clinton’s, you would normally say, is too high, but it’s about 10 points lower than Trump’s,” he added, referencing the Democratic presidential nominee. “That’s what it’s about.”
Kristol added Breitbart News’s coverage this election cycle may come back to haunt Trump’s campaign following Bannon’s addition.
“Mr. Bannon has run his website, I guess it’s been pretty successful from a business point of view, but someone should go look at all the things they’ve said,” he said.
“I’m not a big ‘oh, it’s terrible anti-Semitism’ kind of guy, but that’s a little creepy,” Kristol added of Breitbart News calling him a “renegade Jew” in May. “Why was I a renegade Jew? Because I don’t support Donald Trump. Really?”
Jewish Breitbart writer David Horowitz ripped Kristol as a “renegade Jew” on May 15 over his calls for a third-party presidential candidate.
“To weaken the only party that stands between the Jews and their annihilation, and between America and the forces intent on destroying her, is a political miscalculation so great and a betrayal so profound as to not be easily forgiven,” Horowitz wrote of Kristol’s opposition to Trump’s bid.