I don’t really have a problem with the Daily Caller or anyone who works there. In fact, I have very friendly relationships with several people who work there, and I’ve had them on #BATF before. Good people make mistakes.

For instance, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the Daily Caller decided to run an opinion piece by Trump ally Roger Stone that attacks a number of people, including RedState. For those who don’t know, when Roger Stone is not busy inciting violence on behalf of Donald Trump, he is busy on twitter calling every black person who disagrees with him “negro.” Or perhaps calling women he dislikes the c-word. Nor were these twitter indiscretions a secret; in fact, they were the reason for Stone’s high-profile dismissal by CNN.

If it were me, I would not give such a person column space for literally anything, even if he had the smoking gun that would end Hillary’s candidacy – but hey, I guess everyone has a different tolerance level for racists.

I would especially not give a racist and known liar like Stone a platform to attack other conservative media outlets, because of the high probability that he would say things that were a) provably false and b) stupid. And in this case, Stone does not disappoint. The basic allegation raised by Stone (at least with respect to RedState) – which is sourced by an extremely stupid article at the Trump stooge website Conservative Treehouse – is that our anti-Trump commentary is bought and paid for by Koch money, because Erick Erickson’s new website took advertising money from an anti-Trump PAC. Seriously.

The next time you hear Mark Levin on the radio, or watch Glenn Beck on TV, or read Erick Erickson, RedState.com on the Internet, you might just ask yourself who is paying for the message?  And why is it so stridently anti-Trump?

Don’t fool yourself. They’re doing it for the money.

* * *

Levin and Beck can speak for themselves. Here’s the sum total of what Stone alleges about RedState:

Yet even these political whores do not top “conservative” Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.com, who funds his media venture “The Resurgent” with Super-PAC money from the Ricketts family of Wisconsin, big backers of Gov. Scott Walker (who incidentally endorsed Cruz).

ConservativeTreeHouse.com documented that the Ricketts family funded Our Principles PAC to the tune of $3 million in February alone.  We should not be surprised when FEC filings show money from Our Principles PAC flowing to Resurgent Media, with the box “Oppose Trump” checked off as the Erickson media group’s purpose.

More or less every statement in these two paragraphs is an absolute falsehood. First, Erick did not found RedState, as he himself has said on numerous, numerous occasions. Second, as Stone himself notes, Erick doesn’t write here anymore. He hasn’t for months. Resurgent Media and RedState.com are different things and have nothing to do with one another. So the suggestion that RedState’s commentary is bought and paid for because a former employee who now writes for a different website has taken advertising money from an anti-Trump PAC after he left is pretty… well, pretty much what you’d expect from someone who still uses the word “negro” in 2014.

But even the allegations, as applied to Erick and The Resurgent, are moronic. The FEC filing referenced by Stone shows that on February 1, 2016, an anti-Trump Super PAC (Our Principles PAC) paid for $10,300 in advertising on The Resurgent (not $3 million as the factually challenged Stone implies).

Imagine the scandal – that an anti-Trump Super PAC would purchase advertising in a potentially friendly venue like The Resurgent.

If only there were some way to determine whether the sweet, sweet Rickett’s money began flowing before or after Erick was anti-Trump. Well, the FEC report that Roger Stone is waving around like some damning document is clearly dated February 1, 2016. The Resurgent has been around since January 1st. Anyone with Google and the ability to use it can tell pretty easily that Erick was very anti-Trump before that rolled around (and for that matter, so was I).

But, then again, Erick is a big boy and can deal with these absurd insinuations if he wants to for himself. The bottom line here is that none of anything Stone alleges has a damn thing to do with RedState, and if I were a garbage human being like him or Trump I would sue him for falsely claiming to the contrary. I don’t even know if RedState has taken money from OPP or any other anti-Trump PAC (or any other PAC of any kind recently) because I don’t even know who most of our advertisers are, and if I did, I wouldn’t allow it to affect my editorial judgement.

Instead, I’m an adult, so I’ll just post this here and let people make their own decisions.

So, to summarize: a) Erick doesn’t work here anymore, b) even if he did, your accusations are both false and absurd.