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Hugh Hewitt | Getty Hugh Hewitt: ‘I don’t trust Breitbart’

Conservative radio show host Hugh Hewitt said in an interview Monday that he does not trust or read Breitbart, the far-right news site with ties to the white nationalist movement known as the “alt-right.”

“I don’t read Breitbart because I don’t trust Breitbart,” he told conservative commentator Jamie Weinstein in an interview on Weinstein’s podcast, The Jamie Weinstein Show. “I trust Jeff Poor — who I knew before Breitbart, and if I see one of his articles tweeted out I’ll read it — but I don’t know many of the people who work there. They’re exceptionally young.”

“The alt-right deeply concerns me,” Hewitt added, saying that he prefers to call the loose ideological group "white supremacy." “So I don’t like anything that provides a platform for the amplification of a very small sliver of America. But I do believe [Breitbart is] growing in influence, and I’m open to it being changed. I’m open to it being changed into a vehicle of responsible journalism. But I still don’t read it. But I read Drudge … I read the Daily Caller, I read the Daily Beast, I read the Huffington [Post] – I read everything about which I can be certain there is some standard.”

Hewitt said that he has been unsuccessful in interviewing Steve Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart who has since become Trump’s senior counselor and once described Breitbart as being a platform of the “alt-right.” He said he will continue to try to meet with Bannon.

“I’ll take people on their word that they can change – if it becomes good, it doesn’t — but it doesn’t concern me that Bannon is there, because I don’t know him,” Hewitt said about Bannon’s position in the new administration. “I focus on what people do.”

Hewitt also expressed concern about Buzzfeed’s decision to publish a salacious and unverified dossier reportedly about information that Russian intelligence has about Trump — the publication of which drew ire from some news organizations and politicians.

“I’m a little leery of Buzzfeed now,” Hewitt told Weinstein. “[Buzzfeed editor in chief Ben Smith] was an old colleague and he has been on my show a number of times. The publication of the Russian dossier was extremely irresponsible beyond – I don’t use the term fake news because it doesn’t mean anything anymore – it was bad journalism. It was bad journalism.”

