The “alt-right” website Breitbart News is reportedly set to announce that they have hired former ESPN analyst Curt Schilling to host a conservative talk radio show. Schilling was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League on Friday for “positioning Israel as a partisan issue” after he pushed the anti-Semitic trope that American Jewish people should all support Republicans because that party is supposedly more supportive of Israel.

New York magazine reported Sunday that Schilling, a Donald Trump supporter and former MLB pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Boston Red Sox, “will begin hosting a daily online radio show featuring political commentary and calls from listeners” for Breitbart News. New York quoted Breitbart News editor in chief Alex Marlow explaining, “He got kicked off ESPN for his conservative views. He’s a really talented broadcaster.”

In fact, Schilling was fired from ESPN after he shared an anti-transgender image on Facebook; he had previously been suspended for comparing Muslims to Nazis on Twitter. In other social media postings, Schilling has repeatedly demonized Muslims as killers, shared a picture calling Hillary Clinton a drunk murderer, and suggested civil rights leaders like Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) aren't patriotic.

The announcement that Schilling will join Breitbart News comes just days after the retired pitcher, failed businessman, and would-be Senate candidate drew criticism for asking CNN anchor Jake Tapper “as a person who is practicing the Jewish faith” how he explains “how people of Jewish faith can back the Democratic Party” given that the party has supposedly been “so clearly anti-Jewish Israel.” Tapper responded that while he doesn’t “speak for Jews,” he believes that Jewish Americans prioritize what they see as the interests of their own country over those of Israel.

After I posted video of the exchange on Twitter, ADL National Director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt responded, “I liked Curt Schilling more when he was winning World Series for my #RedSox rather than positioning #Israel as a partisan issue.”

The Democratic Party is not anti-Israel; the 2016 party platform states that “a strong and secure Israel is vital to the United States because we share overarching strategic interests and the common values of democracy, equality, tolerance, and pluralism.” Moreover, the notion that Jewish people prioritize the state of Israel and Jews collectively over the countries in which they reside is a classic anti-Semitic trope.

Breitbart News has been repeatedly criticized for publishing anti-Semitic discourse. Stephen Bannon, who has taken a leave of absence as chairman of the outlet to serve as CEO of Trump’s presidential campaign, has played a leading role in mainstreaming the anti-Semitic “alt-right” movement.

Conservative media and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s presidential campaign are revisiting the debunked right-wing media pseudo-scandal of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party to defend Trump’s assertion that “large scale voter fraud” will affect the election.

After the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, a video went viral of two members of the New Black Panther Party standing outside a Philadelphia polling station on Election Day. One was a registered Democratic poll watcher; the other held a nightstick. Under President George W. Bush, the Department of Justice (DOJ) opened an investigation into the incident after Republican poll watchers complained (no voters ever alleged that they were intimidated by the men). Later, under Obama’s administration, the DOJ obtained a default judgment against the member carrying the nightstick and dropped the case against the poll watcher, the organization, and its leader.

Bush’s U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which at the time was packed with conservative activists, responded to the conclusion of the case by opening an investigation, even though the Republican vice chairwoman of the commission called the case “very small potatoes” and criticized the “overheated rhetoric filled with insinuations and unsubstantiated charges.” Nevertheless, J. Christian Adams, an activist Republican member of the commission, went on a lengthy crusade against Obama’s Justice Department for dropping the charges, resigning and claiming the decision showed unprecedented, racially charged corruption.

Adams found a friendly and eager platform for his position in Fox News, particularly with host Megyn Kelly. In 2010, Fox News devoted at least 95 segments and more than eight hours of airtime in two weeks to the phony scandal, including more than 3.5 hours on Kelly’s America Live. Adams admitted that he had no first-hand knowledge of the conversations leading to the decision.

One year later, an internal investigation at the Justice Department found that “politics played no role in the handling” of the case and that “department attorneys did not commit professional misconduct or exercise poor judgment.” Fox News spent only 88 seconds covering the debunking of a phony scandal of its own creation. Kelly spent only 20 seconds of her show covering the report.

But the damage was already done, and the obsessive coverage of the non-event has bubbled back up in the 2016 presidential election.

On October 17, Trump tweeted, “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day.” As they tried to play defense for their candidate, right-wing media figures invoked the faux New Black Panther scandal. CNN’s paid Trump surrogates Kayleigh McEnany and Scottie Nell Hughes got in on the action, with McEnany claiming that Trump “doesn’t want a scenario where there's New Black Panthers outside with guns, essentially like intimidating people from coming into the polls” and Hughes saying that “voter suppression happened when the Black Panthers stood outside the election room.” (CNN’s Kristen Powers retorted, “There was not a single complaint from a single voter.”)

Conservative radio hosts joined in, with Mike Gallagher asserting that “in Philadelphia we know all about the New Black Panther movement and what they did in Philadelphia at the polling places,” and Howie Carr accusing the Obama administration of “refus[ing] to prosecute” them for “roaming outside polling places, precincts in Philadelphia with baseball bats and threatening white people.”

Key figures in creating the scandal have also resurfaced to defend Trump’s voter fraud narrative. Fox & Friends hosted J. Christian Adams to push the myth that “dead people are voting … and it’s going to affect the election” (in reality, claims of dead voter fraud are “plagued by recurring methodological errors” and actual instances of this kind of fraud are exceedingly uncommon). The Trump campaign also hired Mike Roman as head of a “nationwide election protection operation.” Roman is a Republican political consultant who shopped the 2008 video to Fox News, worked with Adams to push the scandal, and offered to contact every Republican voter in the Philadelphia precinct to determine if any were intimidated at the polling location.

The New Black Panther Party pseudo-scandal’s resurgence is only the latest example of how obsessive right-wing coverage of a comprehensively debunked myth, followed by scant coverage of news that does not fit the narrative, can allow a myth to pass as truth for years. Fox’s infatuation with Benghazi still continues to this day and, like the New Black Panther Party issue and other myths, it is frequently revived to attack Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton or bolster ridiculous assertions by Trump. By bringing the overblown and debunked New Black Panther story back into the mainstream, Trump backers in the media are grasping at straws to defend his rigged election nonsense.

Longtime Donald Trump ally and adviser Roger Stone has repeatedly appeared on a radio program that is hosted by Sam Bushman. Bushman “proud[ly]” syndicates a leading white nationalist radio program, participated in a pro-Trump white nationalist radio ad, and said he agrees that “white people should be able to advocate for their race, for their cause.”

Stone appeared on the October 20 broadcast of Liberty RoundTable with host Bushman. Bushman is the owner of the Liberty News Radio Network, which syndicates The Political Cesspool with host James Edwards. Bushman is also a regular guest host for The Political Cesspool, including as recently as last weekend.

The Political Cesspool’s statement of principles says it represents "a philosophy that is pro-White." One of its principles reads, "We wish to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races." Edwards is an acolyte of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and he “has probably done more than any of his contemporaries on the American radical right to publicly promote neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, raging anti-Semites and other extremists," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Edwards has written: “For blacks in the Americas, slavery is the greatest thing that ever happened to them. Unfortunately, it's the worst thing that ever happened to white Americans”; “MLK's dream is our nightmare”; and “Interracial sex is white genocide.”

Bushman has defended Edwards from criticism, stating that “we are personal family friends and I will not back away from James Edwards no matter what they say. He is a personal dear friend. And I vouch for him a thousand percent.” He added of Edwards: “He will appear on Liberty RoundTable going forward. I will appear on his show going forward. I syndicate his show and absolutely am grateful and proud of doing so. And I will not back away one bit.”

Bushman also stated that he agrees with Edwards on his pro-white advocacy:

SAM BUSHMAN: One of the aspects of James Edwards, among a million other things, is that he believes that white people should be able to advocate for their race, for their cause, for their heritage as well. He does believe in protecting his heritage, preserving his people, if you will, European ancestry. And I think that I agree with him.

Bushman added that he doesn’t believe that Edwards is a white supremacist and that the media is smearing Edwards by labeling him as such. Bushman stated that while he doesn’t agree with Edwards on everything, “we agree on the fundamentals.” Bushman also claimed he has “never, ever promoted white supremacy in any way and I never will, because I don’t believe it” because all men are created equal.

Stone appeared on Bushman’s October 20 program to promote Trump’s candidacy and his performance during the third presidential debate. Stone also again claimed that Democrats may try to steal the election.

In between the multiple segments of Stone’s guest spot, the show aired a pro-Trump advertisement read by Edwards for the white nationalist American National Super PAC. Bushman participated in the ad, as he read the legal disclaimer at its conclusion. 

Back in March, Donald Trump Jr. was heavily criticized when he appeared on Bushman’s program because he was interviewed by Edwards, who was a guest and questioner on the show. Edwards separately interviewed several members of Congress and Trump campaign official Gary Berntsen at the Republican National Convention.

Bushman hosted Eric Trump on his October 6 program. Trump adviser Stephen Moore has also appeared on the program. The Trump campaign defended Eric Trump’s appearance on the program, telling CNN: "Liberty Roundtable is a conservative program heard on radio stations and online, and dedicated to promoting the principles of the American founding. We would never associate with any program that was even wrongly perceived to be affiliated with a message of hate."

Stone previously appeared on the October 3 edition of Liberty RoundTable.

Stone has a history of spewing racist commentary from his Twitter account. His book The Clintons' War on Women is dedicated to and repeatedly cites research from the late Victor Thorn, who wrote The Holocaust Hoax Exposed and blames a "Jewish plot" for the 9/11 attacks. Stone promoted the book in an interview with Thorn for the American Free Press, an anti-Semitic publication founded by "one of the most influential American anti-Semitic propagandists" who used his "publishing to denigrate Jews and other minorities and galvanize the movement to deny the Holocaust."

Members of the white nationalist/“alt-right” movement have been heavily supporting Trump’s campaign, and the candidate and his team have been courting members of the movement, including appearances in white nationalist media, refusing to denounce them, and retweeting their messages.

Fox News’ Chris Wallace, moderator of the last presidential debate, failed to generate a meaningful discussion on immigration, meaning audiences “learn[ed] nothing new,” according to Univision. Instead, the moderator provided another platform for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant bashing while failing to dig deeper into the serious consequences immigration policies have on millions of people in the United States.

Wallace initiated the discussion around immigration by stating the positions that both of the candidates have made known to the public throughout the campaign and then asking each, “Why are you right and your opponent wrong?”

During Univision’s post-debate analysis, commentators took issue with the immigration segment because audiences “learn[ed] nothing new” even though many had been clamoring for a meaningful discussion of the topic leading up to the final debate. As Univision legal contributor Ezequiel Hernandez pointed out, many questions on specifics still linger: “The executive action was not discussed, judges were talked about in the previous topic, but the thousands of children who get to the border and are left waiting and who are deported until something is done were not discussed.”

Wallace stuck to his promise of being nothing more than a timekeeper and failed to dig deeper on the topic, instead framing his next query around an illegally obtained excerpt of a speech Hillary Clinton gave to a Brazilian bank where she allegedly said, “My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.” Wallace asked Clinton, “Is that your dream? Open borders?” while ignoring both the context of Clinton’s words and Trump’s 2013 CNN op-ed in which he said, “We still have to leave borders behind and go for global unity when it comes to financial stability.” Trump had already attempted to capitalize on Clinton’s phrasing on the campaign trail, which prompted PolitiFact to analyze the claim and rate it “mostly false,” calling her immigration plan "a far cry from Trump's characterization." PolitiFact also explained that “the context of that sentence related to green energy -- and wasn’t about people immigrating to the United States.” As NBC News’ Suzanna Gamboa wrote,“The candidates seemed on the verge of a more insightful discussion” until Wallace directed the debate toward the “open borders” comment, which is when “things began to crumble.”

As predicted, Trump took advantage of Wallace’s inaction and vague immigration questioning, using it as a platform to once again smear immigrants as violent criminals, conjuring up a phrase offensive to Latino immigrants in particular: “bad hombres.”

Meanwhile, the pressing, life-altering questions many Latino immigrants have -- like the question 6-year-old Sophie Cruz suggested on OpenDebateCoalition.com, “What happens to me if you deport my parents?” -- remain unanswered.

Over the course of three general election presidential debates, moderators failed to ask candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump a single question on LGBT equality. In the third and final debate, both candidates independently brought up LGBT people, though in drastically different terms, highlighting the need for a question to specifically parse policy positions on LGBT equality.

The third presidential debate concluded without Fox News host Chris Wallace asking a question pertaining to LGBT equality. Prior to the debate, the National Center for Transgender Equality had urged Wallace to address the “critical issue” of transgender equality. This year saw an unprecedented number of anti-LGBT bills introduced in state legislatures, high-profile lawsuits from several states against federal policy guidance over transgender student equality, and the adoption of North Carolina's widely condemned HB 2, which, among other things, requires transgender people to use the bathroom that matches the gender on their birth certificates.

While Wallace failed to ask the candidates about their differing positions on LGBT equality, both Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump brought up LGBT people in the course of the debate. In answering a question on Supreme Court nominees, Clinton said that “we need a Supreme Court that will stand up … on behalf of the rights of the LGBT community” and that it is “important that we not reverse marriage equality.” In the second debate, Clinton had similarly said, “I want a Supreme Court that will stick with marriage equality” and pointed out that Trump has suggested that he would nominate justices who would “reverse marriage equality.”

Trump didn’t bring up LGBT equality in the discussion of domestic policy. Instead, he mentioned LGBT people in an attack on the Clinton Foundation, calling the organization a “criminal enterprise” because it accepts donations from countries with anti-LGBT policies, saying “these are people that push gays off business -- off buildings.” This talking point is ripped straight from right-wing media pundits like Fox’s Sean Hannity, who have attempted to attack the Clinton Foundation by scandalizing donations from countries that have a history of discriminating against women and LGBT people. This line of attack ignores Trump’s business dealings in the exact same countries that donate to the Clinton Foundation. 

Given that media have previously ignored Trump’s anti-LGBT record to falsely tout him as LGBT-friendly, the debates would have been the perfect chance for journalists to correct the mischaracterization of Trump as a “champion” of LGBT equality. 

Methodology: Media Matters searched transcripts of the three presidential debates in The Washington Post for the terms “LGBT,” "gay," “lesbian,” “bisexual,” "transgender," "sexual orientation," "gender identity,” and “marriage.”