Former MSNBC host Ed Schultz passed away on Thursday at the age of 64.

His last gig was working for RT, once known as Russia Today, which is officially registered as an agent of the Russian government. He began his broadcasting career in talk radio in Fargo, North Dakota.

But he became a national figure as a bare-knuckled advocate for the left, bringing a working-class persona to prime time cable news, fighting for unions, rooting for Democrats, and jeering Republicans and conservative media.

Ed Schultz was no fan of Breitbart News, and the feeling, generally, was mutual. He once referred to Andrew Breitbart as a “hate merchant.”

Schultz provided plenty of fodder for counter-attack: in 2011, he called conservative pundit Laura Ingraham a “slut,” prompting Breitbart News to comment: “The M in MSNBC stands for Misogyny, apparently.”

And it was with particular relish that we watched his election-night broadcasts from the Wisconsin recalls in 2011 and 2012 — only to watch his Democrats fall flat.

But Ed Schultz stood out from his peers on the left in one crucial way: he understood why Donald Trump won the 2016 election.

It was not because of former FBI director James Comey’s decision to re-open the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails less than two weeks before Election Day. It was not because the Trump campaign somehow colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his hackers. And it was not because Trump’s supporters were racists, rednecks, religious zealots, or a “basket of deplorables.”

Ed Schultz understood that Trump won partly because he had grappled with issues that were important to working-class voters but which the leadership of both parties had pushed to the sidelines. Chief among those, for Schultz, was trade.

While the “Washington Consensus” touted the economic benefits of free trade for American consumers, Republicans and Democrats both looked the other way as competition from China and other foreign partners decimated American manufacturing and destroyed many communities.

Last year, I had the privilege of speaking on a panel at the 2017 Conservative Political Actions Conference (CPAC) on the subject of trade. Schultz shocked the media by agreeing to speak on the same panel — at a gathering that, in 2009, he had compared to a Nazi rally.

CNN reported on the panel discussion:

Schultz opened the panel by dismissing Democratic complaints about the Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election.

“Full disclosure: the Russians did not tell Hillary Clinton don’t go to Wisconsin,” Schultz said.

He applauded Donald Trump, saying the president isn’t “bought and paid by anybody.” Schultz said Trump used “a different vernacular” when communicating with voters and simply “outworked” Clinton on the campaign trail.

“He would do five events a day, she would do two,” Schultz said.

In a video on his own website cited by CNN, Schultz commented: “If you’re going to have an exchange of ideas, the only thing you can do is to meet people face-to-face in front of a crowd who may think differently than you do. I mean, that’s what democracy is about, isn’t it?”

On the panel itself, Schultz was cordial, if a bit distant. He made no effort to glad-hand or to appease the audience. What he wanted to do was to make sure they understood what he did about Donald Trump: namely, that Trump won because he had connected with a working-class constituency that he cared about and that the Democrats had ignored.

He saw an opening for new discussions within the conservative movement about trade policy– and if there were allies to be had, he was going to reach out to them, even at the risk of ridicule from his own side.

Whatever else one thinks of Ed Schultz as a character, or of his policies, it took tremendous courage, in this divided age, to speak to people from the opposing side. In an era where the thought leaders of the Democratic Party are so frustrated with Trump that they are trashing the very founding of the country, to participate in a forum with one’s opponents — especially on “hostile” turf — is almost a revolutionary act in itself.

He was a bomb-thrower and a brawler, but in the final analysis, Ed Schultz was a patriot.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.