Stephen Colbert condemned Breitbart News on Tuesday for initially sticking by a story that falsely identified President Obama’s nominee for attorney general as an lawyer who defended the Clintons during the Whitewater probe in 1992.
“Folks, the fact is that [Loretta] Lynch simply is not qualified for the job,” Mr. Colbert said on his show, Raw Story reported. “I read all about it over the weekend when Breitbart journalist and Wilford Brimley-tribute head, Warner Todd Huston, blew the lid off the scandal that Lynch was ’part of Bill Clinton’s Whitewater probe defense team in 1992.’”
“This bombshell destroys Loretta Lynch’s credibility to be attorney general,” he continued, “if it were true. But it turns out, [Mr. Huston] had the wrong Loretta Lynch.”
“This is the attorney general nominee,” he said, pointing to an image of Ms. Lynch, who is black.
“And this is the one who defended Clinton during Whitewater,” he said, pointing to an image of a white woman. “There is just no way to tell these two women apart!”
But that wasn’t the worst of it, Mr. Colbert continued.
“Breitbart issued a correction by leaving up the same headline and adding the word, ’corrected.’ From there, it’s the exact same article about how Obama’s Loretta Lynch defended the Clintons, until you get to the very bottom of the article, where it reads, ’Correction: the Loretta Lynch identified earlier as the Whitewater attorney was, in fact, a different attorney,’” he said.
“So I’m giving a tip of the hat to Breitbart for breaking this news, finding out it’s broken, but sticking with the story anyway,” he continued. “So I salute Breitbart for not taking down a headline that you know is false. You are craven political hatchet men.’”
Breitbart News did eventually take down Mr. Huston’s story, replacing it with an article by Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak that briefly addressed the mix-up in an amendment at the bottom of the page.
“Oh, they eventually took it down? My apologies,” Mr. Colbert concluded. “They are craven political hatchet men (corrected).’”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.