Tony Perkins, host of the Family Research Council’s Washington Watch radio show, discussed the #DumpKelloggs boycott with Breitbart News CEO Larry Solov on Monday.
“The Left has lost control of the government – at least, it’s about to – which they have used to basically punish dissenting thought, when it comes to their politically correct agenda. So now there is this, it appears to be [a] rapid move to consolidate their control of corporate America – to use them to be their tool or their weapon of choice,” Perkins said, putting the Kellogg’s boycott of Breitbart News into the context of the 2016 election.
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“So what’s happening now with this pushback?” he asked Solov. “Did they expect you to push back and have others join, or were they thinking they could just get away with this?”
“I think they were thinking they could just get away with this,” Solov replied. “I mean, they could have, if they wanted to, stop advertising on our site and frankly not made any announcement about it. But they came out and they made the announcement that they were blacklisting us because Breitbart.com and its readers – and by the way, we have 45 million readers…”
Perkins interjected, “I love to have our articles up there on Breitbart because we get a lot of feedback when they’re up there because a lot of our conservative Christian listeners, readers, go to Breitbart for information.”
“Yes, and we thank them, and we thank you very much for that,” said Solov. “Our 45 million readers, [Kellogg’s] said they do not share our values. I don’t know what values a cereal company should have, other than producing a great product and making shareholders happy. They of course did not specify what those values were, and they also didn’t specify how we don’t share those values – because frankly, Tony, they can’t point to anything.”
“This is a political hit,” Solov continued. “It is in part, as you mentioned, because Steve Bannon is now in the White House, and it is an effort to denigrate, I think, the mainstream American values that we hold dear. Breitbart is, as you know, the most pro-family, pro-traditional American values news brand in the English language.”
“It’s like a different version of Hillary Clinton’s ‘basket of deplorables,’” Perkins observed. “Kellogg’s has their bowl of deplorables, and they’re basically dumping this on half of America. I mean, it just doesn’t make sense from a corporate standpoint that you just want to insult people who are your customers or potential customers.”
“No, it doesn’t, and that’s why we think it took an extraordinary step by doing so, and why we’ve called for a boycott of Kellogg’s,” Solov agreed. “Because frankly this is an attack, not just on Breitbart, but this is an attack on your listeners and our readers, many of whom are the same.”
“You’re right, a lot of our material is published on Breitbart. When petitions that we do on religious liberty in the military get to Breitbart, they do extremely well – because you’re right, it’s God-fearing Americans who read Breitbart,” said Perkins.
“This label, and it’s part of this trump card they like to play – no pun intended there! – but they like to play this race card. That’s their trump card. They’re trying to say this [is] some kind of ‘white nationalist’ entity, Breitbart. I want you to address that,” he said to Solov.
“We are, as you know, and as your listeners know, we are not a white supremacist or white nationalist website,” Solov declared. “Never have been, are not, never will be. What that is, is an attempt – and we’ve seen it come from the Left many times – an attempt to shut down mainstream conservative thought, because they cannot compete in the realm of ideas. We know that we will win on that basis. They try to marginalize people so that you can’t get your ideas out there, and they marginalize you by calling you racist, sexist, and terms like that.”
Perkins proposed that Donald Trump’s success was partly due to the way “he just bowled right through that.”
“He did, and there’s some signs because of that, that maybe this long-held, long-gone-to playbook of calling conservatives racist is maybe beginning to lose some of its effectiveness,” Solov said. “You made a great point that they tried to do it with President-elect Trump and it did not work. Frankly, they cannot point to a single fact, a single article on Breitbart that is white nationalist, because it has never existed.”
Solov invited Washington Watch listeners to visit Breitbart.com and sign the petition that appears on the right-hand side of the page, to “let Kellogg’s know that this is not acceptable, and that we are traditional values people, and we’re not going to take it.”
Perkins concluded by repeating his warning that the Left would “try to use corporate America to marginalize and bash conservative thought,” now that they are out of power.
You can listen to the complete audio of the interview above.
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