"Gunny" Bob: YearlyKos Convention "bigger than any KKK, Nazi, or Muslim terrorist gathering"

Echoing Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, Newsradio 850 KOA host "Gunny" Bob Newman on his August 2 broadcast called the 2007 YearlyKos Convention a "convention of hatred and intolerance," adding, "If you want to see hate, urged violence, bigotry, racism, and intolerance in general, and anti-American speech, this is the event." Newman then called the convention, organized by the Daily Kos blog, "bigger than any KKK, Nazi, or Muslim terrorist gathering ... that has ever occurred" and criticized several Democratic presidential candidates and other Democratic officials who were scheduled to attend.

From the August 2 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Gunny Bob Show:

NEWMAN: You know, many liberal extremists from the far left of the Democratic Party, including [Sen. Hillary Rodham] Clinton [D-NY], [party chairman Howard] Dean, [Sen. Barack] Obama [D-IL], [Sen. Harry] Reid [D-NV], [Sen. Dick] Durbin [D-IL], [Rep. Nancy] Pelosi [D-CA], and others, are scheduled to be speakers at the annual YearlyKos -- which is part of the Daily Kos website -- convention of hatred and intolerance in Chicago, which is now under way. If you want to see hate, urged violence, bigotry, racism, and intolerance in general, and anti-American speech, this is the event. The YearlyKos Convention going on right now. This is a -- this is bigger than any KKK, Nazi, or Muslim terrorist gathering that's, that has ever occurred. Why do so many liberal politicians support hate? You, the taxpayer, and me are paying for Hillary Clinton, Dr. Dean, Barack Obama, Dirty Harry Reid, Little Dickie Durbin, Nancy Pelosi, and others to go to Chicago and speak at a hate convention. Not to shoot the convention down and to speak out against hate, but to speak in favor of this organization. And we are paying for it.

As Media Matters for America noted, during the July 30 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly similarly criticized the decision by several Democratic presidential candidates to attend the YearlyKos convention, calling the decision "beyond shameful" and claiming that "a group of far-left bloggers has succeeded in frightening most of the Democratic presidential candidates and moving the party significantly to the left."

Additionally, Media Matters repeatedly has documented (here, here, here, here, and here) in recent weeks O'Reilly's attacks on Daily Kos, including his comparisons of the site to the Nazi Party, the Ku Klux Klan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, white supremacist David Duke, and gangster Al Capone.

—C.H.