In part two of “The Daily Beast‘s Howard Kurtz features part II of his interview with Fox News founder and chairman Roger Ailes today. In it, Ailes talks about NPR’s dismissal of Juan Williams: “A guy who gets fired and humiliated in the press can lose a lot of confidence.” Ailes told Kurtz that he wanted to help the pundit out. So he signed him to a new, bigger deal. “I didn’t want him to have to call his wife and say we lost money,” Ailes said.
Then there was NPR. Alies said to Kurtz about the company:
“They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view. They don’t even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive.”
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Ailes’ views of Jon Stewart, after the jump…
“The Daily Show”‘s Jon Stewart stopped by Ailes’ office after his recent “The O’Reilly Factor” appearance. “He’s obviously really, really smart,” the Fox News chairman told Kurtz. “He openly admits he’s sort of an atheist and a socialist. He once told me he would’ve voted for Norman Thomas.”
Then the tone turned sour when Kurtz asked Ailes about Stewart’s obsession with poking fun at cable news, which lead to this Ailes rant:
“He hates conservative views. He hates conservative thoughts. He hates conservative verbiage. He hates conservatives. He’s crazy. If it wasn’t polarized, he couldn’t make a living. He makes a living by attacking conservatives and stirring up a liberal base against it. He loves polarization. He depends on it. If liberals and conservatives are all getting along, how good would that show be? It’d be a bomb.”