MSNBC host Krystal Ball refuses to talk about her participation in the “Stop Rush” campaign targeting conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers.
Ball secretly participated in the Stop Rush movement since becoming affiliated with MSNBC, emails reveal. But Ball did not respond to The Daily Caller’s emailed request for comment on her participation in the activist effort.
“Stop Rush” is a campaign principally organized by Angelo Carusone, who is now a Media Matters executive vice president embroiled in controversy after TheDC published racist and anti-Semitic blog posts that he wrote. TheDC recently exposed the latest incarnation of the Stop Rush movement as a small group driven primarily by ten activists using technology to robotically harass Limbaugh’s advertisers on social media. (RELATED: The Conspiracy To Destroy Rush Limbaugh)
Ball was involved in trying to smoke out a suspected mole in the Stop Rush movement in the spring of 2012, months after she joined MSNBC as a contributor and shortly before she debuted as co-host of the network’s 3 p.m. talk show “The Cycle.”
“That recording only went to a few of us. So who is talking too much?” wrote liberal activist “Shoq” in a May 16, 2012 email to Stop Rush ringleaders, including Ball, which was provided to TheDC. “Even Randy didn’t know he was being recorded. Someone that one of you is talking to cannot be trusted. I am not pleased by that. At all. Please think carefully.”
Blogger Brooks Bayne first published transcripts of a string of 2012 emails showing Ball actively participating in trying to find the mole, who they believed was a man named Randy.
“What he doesn’t know is that Laffy already inquired with Krystal last week, and Krystal said ‘we don’t like or trust this guy,’ or words to that effect,” Shoq wrote in another email. “Gottaff and I have had our issues in the past, but she’s a good progressive, and not a fool. She will probably see through this, based on what Krystal already forewarned her of (when Laffy wisely reached out to ask Krystal of clarification about Randy last week), and Julie explaining how we’ve already checked him out and virtually nothing he says is true. Julie’s instinct was always that this guy was a right wing disrupter.”
Ball’s involvement in the the Stop Rush movement, just prior to her rise to national fame on “The Cycle,” was noted by bloggers including Robert Stacy McCain and William Jacobson. But Ball has never spoken publicly about her involvement in the now unraveling movement. It is not known at this time whether Ball is still involved with the group.