Breitbart editor in private: ‘This is straight up collusion’

According to a transcript obtained by CNN, the editor-in-chief for Breitbart London seemed to suggest that Donald Trump Jr’s email exchange with the intermediary who set up his meeting with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign was indicative of “collusion.”

The remarks made by Raheem Kassam were made in Breitbart’s internal messaging app Slack, where he said, “So like, this is straight up collusion. Right?”

CNN framed the remarks as being unexpected from someone who runs a “far-right outfit.” But Kassam took to Twitter and said his remarks were being taken out of context.

Kassam’s comments came just after Trump Jr. posted his email exchange from June 2016 on Twitter, in which he agreed to meet with someone he’d been told was a “Russian government attorney” about “very high level and sensitive information” that would “incriminate” Hillary Clinton.

The transcript reveals that not everyone in the Breitbart newsroom agreed with how to process the revelations. Senior editor Rebecca Mansour reacted by only saying, “Wow,” while Amanda House, Breitbart’s deputy politics editor, simply wrote, “???????” But according to the right-wing outlet’s Washington editor Matthew Boyle, the revelations were much ado about nothing. “I mean I don’t take this as a smoking gun at all. This is silly,” he wrote.

From CNN:

The debate inside Breitbart, was emblematic of a larger sense of confusion that appeared to grip much of the pro-Trump media following the bombshell release of the Donald Trump Jr. emails. Typically, people and outlets that support Trump will coalesce around a message relatively quickly; not this time, though.

Kassam, along with some of his supporters on Twitter, maintain that the private comments were meant as a joke.

https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/885214342521786368

Featured image: Gage Skidmore (Flickr)

Sky Palma

Before launching DeadState back in 2012, Sky Palma has been blogging about politics, social issues and religion for over a decade. He lives in Los Angeles and also enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, chess, music and art.