Posted 12:07 PM by Scoobie Davis

I Almost Confront Christopher Ruddy on Talk Radio
Scaife-paid operative Christopher Ruddy was on Al Rantel's radio show in Los Angeles today. Ruddy and Rantel expressed dismay over the upcoming CBS mini-series on Ronald Reagan that gives Reagan the following dialogue regarding homosexuals who had AIDS: "They that live in sin shall die in sin." I found it a bit hypocritical considering Ruddy's own smears of the Clintons so I called up and was put on hold. Unfortunately, Ruddy left before I got on the air but I was able to address Ruddy's hypocrisy with Rantel.

RANTEL: Here is Troy on the Al Rantel Show on KABC. Hi.

SCOOBIE: Hi. It’s too bad Chris Ruddy is not there because I’d really like to talk to him. I think it is wrong that if dialogue in a CBS docudrama is given to Reagan that’s not characteristic of his views, but for Ruddy to say that the politics of personal destruction are the politics of the left, I really have to laugh. These criticisms are coming from a Scaife-paid hit man like Ruddy whose paranoid conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Vince Foster were so slipshod that even a wing nut like Ann Coulter called Ruddy’s book on the subject “a conservative hoax book.” [chuckling] I really have to laugh about that. I’d like to talk to Ruddy at the six o’clock—

[Note: I was about to say that I wanted to talk to Ruddy on the six O’clock portion of Rantel’s show. Tuesday is Newsmax day for Rantel’s show and he had a Newsmax writer on his show at both 11:00 and 6:00.]

RANTEL: Well, first of all, there were many people who raised a lot of questions about the death of Vince Foster, not just Christopher Ruddy and--

SCOOBIE: The wing nuts.

RANTEL: Well, you may want to describe them as wing nuts but the fact is that many people raised questions about these kinds of things. Just because you ask questions doesn’t make you a nut.

SCOOBIE: He raised questions and he concocted all of these ludicrous conspiracy theories and he dared 60 Minutes to cover the story and 60 Minutes looked into what Ruddy had said and they showed that he was a complete idiot, that his—

RANTEL: They didn’t show that he was an idiot. They showed that they didn’t believe that there was anything there. And, by the way, I didn’t really—I thought there were some questions that should be answered and once the authorities answered them, I was happy to agree with what the authorities concluded. And so what? What’s wrong with people answering questions?

SCOOBIE: He was being paid—he and people like Joseph Farah were being paid by Richard Mellon Scaife—just a sick, paranoid old man with a billion dollars—to smear the Clintons and I think that’s wrong and I--

RANTEL: That’s very funny. You refer to a guy who you don’t agree with politically as a sick paranoid old man and then you complain that somebody tried to smear the Clintons. When you call someone a sick paranoid old man, is that smearing them? [chuckling]

SCOOBIE: When it’s true—

RANTEL: When it’s true. [chuckling]

SCOOBIE: When it’s true, it’s not smearing him. Scaife believes in the Clinton Body Count, the belief that Bill Clinton is responsible for the murders of dozens of people.

RANTEL: Now, look, I don’t believe any of that stuff. Most mainstream conservatives don’t.

SCOOBIE: Why are you giving credibility to Ruddy?

After that, Rantel changed topics and went back to the Reagan miniseries. I reiterated my agreement that putting those kinds of words in Reagan’s mouth was wrong but I also criticized Reagan for befriending Jerry Falwell who said that AIDS was God’s way of “spanking” homosexuals (yes, Falwell said it).