ON JANUARY 3, 2017, HUSTLER’S FOUNDER CALLED OUT THE PRESS BY PUBLISHING THE FULL-PAGE AD FEATURED AT LEFT IN VARIETY MAGAZINE.
HERE, IN AN INTERVIEW WITH RADIO HOST AND POLITICAL COLUMNIST/ BLOGGER BRAD FRIEDMAN, LARRY FLYNT EXPLAINS WHAT LED HIM TO THIS BOLD PROCLAMATION.
BRAD FRIEDMAN: Throughout the Presidential campaign and even since the election, Donald Trump has threatened the media. He has literally placed them in pens at rallies. He has targeted them as “despicable” and “disgusting,” and has said he hoped to change libel laws to make it easier to sue the media and to put them out of business altogether—never mind the First Amendment. At the same time the media has served as Donald Trump’s biggest champion. Even while being targeted, the mainstream press has given him billions of dollars of free air time in exchange for huge boosts to their ratings in the run-up to the election. But in doing so, many have argued, as I have, that they have failed in their job of adequately informing the American electorate about who this guy is, how he has lied and how he remains the most wildly underqualified—and I think I’m putting it nicely—underqualified person ever to run for, much less win, the Presidency of the United States. And that doesn’t even get us to all of his historic conflicts of interest.
In a recent full-page ad taken out in Variety, Larry Flynt, the First Amendment champion and publisher of HUSTLER Magazine, posted an open letter, headlined, “Wake Up Media.” It starts this way: “Dear Mainstream Press, you’ve done it again. Your lack of responsible reporting has betrayed this great nation. You have helped create this monster we now call President-elect Trump. It is up to you to bring him down, providing you have the backbone to do so.”
I’m happy to be joined by Larry Flynt to discuss his letter and his fears and concerns about both the mainstream corporate media and what may lie ahead for all of us in the Donald Trump Administration. Larry Flynt is a free-speech activist, a First Amendment champion and longtime publisher. Welcome, sir.
LARRY FLYNT: I’m glad to be with you. Thank you.
