Weekly Standard Co-Founder Calls Steve King 'Foul, Disgusting Liar'
White supremacist congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) tweeted over the weekend that the recently shuttered magazine The Weekly Standard “deserved” to shut down and was met with major pushback from magazine co-founder John Podhoretz.
The 23-year-old conservative publication known for being critical of President Donald Trump released its final issue on Monday after announcing last week that it would be folding. Trump addressed the closure, referring to the publication as “pathetic and dishonest” and lambasting the editor-at-large, Bill Kristol.
The pathetic and dishonest Weekly Standard, run by failed prognosticator Bill Kristol (who, like many others, never had a clue), is flat broke and out of business. Too bad. May it rest in peace!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2018
In response, King doubled down on those sentiments and referenced the magazine’s “deserved demise.”
.@RealDonaldTrump is right on The Weekly Standard’s deserved demise (“pathetic and dishonest”). If the articles targeting me were redacted until only truth remained, there would not be much left to read. https://t.co/lnqnU5orBx
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) December 16, 2018
Podhoretz, who both co-founded the magazine alongside Kristol and Fred Barnes in 1995 and served as a contributing editor, did not take the criticisms lightly. He then jabbed King by calling him “a foul, disgusting liar and a stain on American public life.”
“The stench of your deceit and your views pollutes your district, your state, your party, and the United States,” he wrote on Sunday.
The problem with this tweet is that you are a foul, disgusting liar and a stain on American public life. The stench of your deceit and your views pollutes your district, your state, your party, and the United States. https://t.co/6Aate5nHSb
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) December 16, 2018
Podhoretz has long been a critic of King, criticizing everything from his ability to play checkers to calling him a moron and a “troglodyte buffoon.”
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I drink your tears, you troglodyte buffoon. https://t.co/i6kS3Cx6Xg
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) September 14, 2017
Prior to this weekend, he most recently tweeted about King the day after the Iowa congressman was re-elected in November, remarking that King is “great news” for people who love “a psychotic piece of filth.”
Steve King is great news for everyone who loves a psychotic piece of filth back bencher
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) November 7, 2018
In regards to The Weekly Standard, Podhoretz previously shared his thoughts about the magazine’s end in an impassioned thread earlier in the weekend.
“We knew we had been a part of something spectacular and important, and had taken the kind of pride in it unknown to the untalented suits who did it in,” he wrote of the magazine and his colleagues.
“The Standard didn’t review books to do favors. It didn’t write back-scratching pieces about politicians to which it wished to suck up. It didn’t trim its sails to have an easier ride in a company town or in a party or movement whose loyalty tests became ever more demanding,” he tweeted, before adding: “It just published 48 (I think) issues a year in which it sought to tell the truth about what was happening, to develop policy arguments consistent with conservative principles as we saw them, and to be unapologetic about the moral basis of any practical politics.”
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
