According to a report from the Arizona Republic, convicted criminal and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Arpaio has given at least five interviews since 2014 to the "American Free Press,” a site described by the Anti-Defamation League as "an anti-Semitic and conspiracy-oriented newspaper published by longtime white supremacist Willis Carto,” a Holocaust denier. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate activity nationwide, once dubbed it an "anti-Semitic weekly." Among the site’s headlines is, "Jewish Fingerprints All Over 9-11”:
Willis Carto, the "American Free Press" creator, in the 1950s founded the extreme-right Liberty Lobby and in 1978 started the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review.
Conservative National Review founder William F. Buckley once said Carto, who died in 2015, was representative of "the fever swamps of the crazed right."
In 1995, then-freshman U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., faced some heat after he gave an interview to a shortwave radio show sponsored by Carto's Liberty Lobby.
The Anti-Defamation League said the program, "Radio Free America," spread anti-Semitic propaganda.
Another Republican candidate, Pennsylvania’s Lou Barletta, is also under fire for giving the site an interview in 2006. Arpaio, a noted racist who was finally voted out of office by Maricopa County voters in 2016, has returned to the site numerous times but claims he knows nothing about the site’s history because, according to the Arizona Republic, “he has never read a print version of the ‘American Free Press’ and doesn't have a computer to read it online.” Seriously.
"I'm not going to criticize the news media like you," Arpaio moaned to reporter Dan Nowicki. "I can't believe another news outlet is criticizing a newspaper." Joe, you can call a garbage site that peddles in conspiracy theories and bigoted lies “news media” all you like, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a garbage site that peddles in conspiracy theories and bigoted lies, and you keep going back because you continue to peddle conspiracy theories and bigoted lies as well. The SPLC:
Today, the Press carries stories on Zionism, secret "New World Order" conspiracies, American Jews and Israel. Mixed in are advertisements for outfits like Pete Peter's Scriptures for America and Kingdom Identity Ministries — practitioners of Christian Identity, a theology that claims that Jews are the biological descendants of Satan.
Joe Arpaio, a man who ignored or under-investigated hundreds of sex crimes because he was too busy racially profiling brown drivers, should be locked up. But thanks to Donald Trump’s pardon, he’s free, giving interviews to a garbage site founded by a Holocaust denier, and again running for public office. Help do your part to keep him out of there. Can you give $3 to the Democratic nominee funds in Arizona and Nevada?