Fact Check: Breitbart EIC Marlow Debunks ‘Absurd Smear’ Pushed by National Review, David French

Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow blasted top National Review NeverTrumper David French on Friday for falsely alleging that Breitbart News deliberately withheld information about Roy Moore’s accusers to protect President Donald Trump.

“This is an absurd smear. I deny it entirely,” Marlow said on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125. He blasted NeverTrump rag National Review for its “libelous” smear, adding that it was a “disgrace” for the “once respectable” publication to publish it.

Marlow told his listeners that French falsely accused Marlow and Breitbart News of “covering up allegations against Judge Moore to protect Donald Trump” after reading an interview Marlow did with CNN.

“This is libelous,” Marlow said. “This is a total disgrace to National Review.”

Marlow said that he had to go on the record to defend himself against the lies and smears.

In a recent interview with CNN about the Alabama Senate race, Marlow said one Moore accuser, Leigh Corfman, “had a lot of credibility” and the legacy media were “motivated by the desire to protect Donald Trump.”

“I never said… Breitbart’s coverage was motivated by protecting Trump,” Marlow said. “I said the establishment media’s attacks on Judge Moore were motivated by the desire to attack Trump.”

But those remarks were not news to SiriusXM listeners. Marlow pointed out that he hosts a national radio show for three hours a day and, if French had done his due diligence and listened to some of his shows, he would have known that Marlow repeatedly said on his SiriusXM programs that Corfman’s allegations had not been “fully debunked” and “people should take this seriously.” Marlow also said on his shows that he believed the other accusers were “not credible” for a variety of reasons and the legacy media “failed to establish a pattern” with them.

Marlow pointed out that he has said that Moore’s five other accusers were not credible because they had conflicts of interests, were legally consensual, or presented forged yearbooks as evidence.

Marlow spoke to CNN about the establishment media’s playbook, and CNN, while omitting some of Marlow’s words, wrote:

“I think that’s the playbook here,” he added. “And I think it’s part of the reason why it was so important for Breitbart to continue our coverage of the way we covered it … and for Steve in particular to hold the line the way he did for — I think part of it is because it’s not just about Judge Moore, it is not even just about establishment, anti-establishment. It’s about what’s coming next for President Trump.”

French quoted the above from CNN’s story and jumped to his convenient conclusion that Marlow was speaking about the Breitbart playbook when he was not.

“Why would I volunteer to CNN that Breitbart withheld information to protect Trump? It’s just ridiculous on its face,” Marlow said, emphasizing that he wanted to be “crystal clear” that he never said that Breitbart News’ coverage “was motivated by protecting Trump.”

Yet, French accused Marlow of withholding “from readers the judgment that an accuser ‘had a lot of credibility’ as part of an effort to protect an entirely different politician from the possibility of future claims.” French then went further, alleging that “Breitbart facilitated the continued persecution of a credible childhood assault victim for purely political purposes.”

“Where does he get this lie from?” Marlow asked. “I am talking about the media’s playbook, not the Breitbart playbook.”

Marlow added that though “essential context” is missing, his comments have been “taken out of context” and “sliced and diced” nevertheless for political purposes.

While discussing Breitbart’s coverage of the Alabama Senate race, Marlow pointed out that the website splashed Corfman’s allegations multiple times on the top of the page.

“We didn’t cover anything up,” he said. “We put it on the front page in the lead headline.”

Marlow said Breitbart News reporters went to Alabama to “separate fact from fiction and we withheld nothing.”

He said though it felt so good for NeverTrumpers and the legacy media “to simply just announce we believe all the victims without doing any of the actual work,” Breitbart News went and investigated and ultimately found “holes and inconsistencies” in Corfman’s story “but not enough to dismiss her outright.”

“Are we supposed to believe the Washington Post at face value? Are we supposed to be believe Gloria Allred at face value?” Marlow asked, pointing out “it takes weeks of investigation that the media did not want to do” to find out if all of the claims against Moore were indeed fully credible.

Marlow said that five of the stories didn’t fully wash, but “one of them mostly did and we presented that … we withheld nothing.”

Marlow called French a “hysteric” and reminded listeners that fellow NeverTrumper Bill Kristol once tried to convince French to run as a NeverTrump third-party presidential candidate against Trump in 2016. He also noted that, as various reports in even the legacy media have noted, the NeverTrump GOP establishment helped the legacy media roll out the allegations against Moore “very close to the election” to “inflict maximum damage.”

Marlow, pointing out that CNN’s Jake Tapper and the “Obama bros” were also gleefully spreading the smears, called out the “greater pattern in the media” of trying to smear people without having even taken the time to listen to their actual words.

“It’s all so dishonest. It’s all so out of context,” Marlow said of the smears.

“They just publish these smears about me,” Marlow said of National Review, which has shown nothing but contempt for grassroots conservatives and working-class Americans. “They don’t listen to the three hours a day I was on radio during this process walking through every nuance of my thinking and our reporting on Breitbart. It doesn’t stop them from trying to put a smear out against me.”

Marlow continued: “This is a pattern of what the desperate establishment media has done. And it is so crucial what Breitbart is doing because we are providing not just an alternative to the establishment press, but to the Washington establishment elite who have such a high opinion of themselves and yet they have zero influence and they are never correct anymore. They are always wrong. And it’s just important to see the pattern of taking things out of context, smears. It gets amplified on Twitter, and then, before you know it, you have someone trying to destroy people while claiming the moral high ground, which is the most absurd part of it all.”