‘Journolist’ Email Victim Hugh Hewitt On Dave Weigel: ‘He Got Screwed Here’

On today’s America Live, Megyn Kelly interviewed a real-life victim of MSNBC contributor Dave Weigel‘s furious private emails, radio host Hugh Hewitt. Hewitt, who Weigel called “buffoonish” in one of the emails leaked last week, fielded questions on Weigel, media bias, and the personal insults towards him, but while Kelly was consistently incensed at Weigel throughout the interview, Hewitt’s response was, at best, tepid.

Kelly opened the interview with a question attacking Weigel for being a “huge fan of the f-word” and noting that “it was clear from the emails he sent that he hates Republicans, he hates conservatives, or at least has a lot of really negative things to say about them.” Giving Hewitt the floor, he quickly directed the conversation away from attacking Weigel, who he called “a very talented, passionate, very good reporter, and I’ve been receiving his darts for years. In my business, if you’re not getting the darts from people on the left… you’re not doing your job.” And instead of attacking Weigel for his partisanship, he chalked up the scandal to his naivete:

“The problem is not Dave Weigel. He got screwed here. Someone on this Journolist thing, this private email server of 400 different lefty journalists, stabbed him in the back, and I think maybe his youth led him to believe that you could trust journalists, and you and I both know, you can’t trust journalists. Even if they are the same ideological bent, they are looking for a story.”

After letting Hewitt get a few jabs in at MSNBC (“he’s going to have to slow down, use small words with Keith [Olbermann]”), Kelly tried to bring back the blame to Weigel. “I think it’s great that you can take a punch,” she noted, but later pointed out that, to her, “the problem comes when the opinion crosses into what is supposed to be straight journalism,” and that Weigel wasn’t exactly open about his opinions. Except that didn’t get Hewitt to attack Weigel, either. “I’ve been reading Dave for a long time… so I knew he was not a conservative.” He also put the blame on the Washington Post, who did not tell viewers they were going to get “iconoclastic journalism– he’s not really a left-winger.”

The discussion from today’s America Live below:

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