After it was exposed that the Huffington Post hired former NFL player, convicted manslaughterer and 9/11 truther Donté Stallworth to cover national security, Arianna and the gang have been in damage control mode.
Ryan Grim, HuffPo’s Washington bureau chief, told Politico, “That doesn’t represent how he (Stallworth) thinks today. You know, that was five years ago, and people say dumb things, but that shouldn’t define him.”
Sure, yes, mistakes made years ago should be an anchor around your neck your whole life (unless you’re George W. Bush and you got a DUI 30 years before an election, then it’s fair game). But just last November, Stallworth tweeted this gem, “Oops, I sent that tweet a little too early like the young lady from @BBCNews on the collapse of building 7 on 9/11…”
Not five years ago.
Even still, if Stallworth hadn’t tweeted any idiotic truther garbage in five years, he still tweeted it eight years after 9/11. That means Huffington Post’s new national security reporter had eight years to digest the facts surrounding the terrorist attacks that day and STILL went with the crazy side of the ledger. Eight years of reality didn’t sway his stupidity. Neither, apparently, did an additional four years, since his latest truther tweet was just last year.
But Ryan Grim assures us, “That doesn’t represent how he thinks today.” Just yesterday, and possibly tomorrow. But today? Today he wants a job, so…
UPDATE: HuffPo contacted me and asked me to update the news on Stallworth. Rather than do that, I wrote a new post responding to them. Read it here.