September 07, 2018 01:40 PM UTC

Media Matters Unearths Brauchler's Ugly Talk Radio Past

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• by: Colorado Pols

A decade ago, national media accountability organization Media Matters For America operated a short-lived state affiliate test project known as Colorado Media Matters. Though only in operation for a few years, CMM documented a tremendous volume of right-wing nuttery on local talk radio–enough to provide a window into a fringe culture that many Americans are unaware of.

After Arapahoe County DA George Brauchler announced his plans for higher office, first for governor and then stepping down to the attorney general’s race, Colorado Media Matters’ monitoring of local talk radio once again proved its worth, with a hard-hitting report out today on the national Media Matters homepage recapping CMM write-ups on Brauchler’s radio appearances while in relative obscurity back in 2007.

And it’s bad stuff, folks. Very, very bad stuff:

District Attorney George Brauchler, who announced his campaign for attorney general in November 2017 after withdrawing from the state’s gubernatorial race, was a frequent guest host on 630 KHOW-AM’s The Caplis & Silverman Show over a decade ago. Brauchler has repeatedly promised to be an attorney general “for all of Colorado,” but he made repeated discriminatory comments in his appearances on the show.

While guest hosting in 2007, Brauchler defended right-wing radio host Ann Coulter’s use of the slur “faggot” to refer to former U.S. Sen. John Edwards (D-NC). According to Brauchler, Coulter was simply “trying to be funny.” Later in the program, Brauchler likened a request from Elizabeth Edwards that Coulter halt personal attacks against her husband to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. He also launched a sexist attack against then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, proclaiming that Clinton has “got some big ol’ legs.” But don’t worry — Brauchler clarified that he didn’t “mean to disrespect.”

On another 2007 edition of the show, Brauchler asked guest Jason Knight, an openly gay former naval petty officer, if being a gay person in the Navy is like “putting a kid in a candy shop.” Later in the show, Brauchler attempted to downplay the comments by saying that he was “insinuat[ing]” that “the Navy are the light-in-the-loafers service.” Weeks later, Brauchler again demonstrated his homophobia by defending the U.S. military’s former policy of barring openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from service. Brauchler maintained that the policy was acceptable because the military “discriminate[s] against people coming into the military based on height, weight, eyes, a whole list of medical things.” He also claimed that because the military does not accommodate service members’ religious needs (which, in fact, it did and does), it does not have to accept their sexual orientation: “The military asks everybody that’s a part of it to make a sacrifice.”

Again, what we have here is not new information–all of it was documented by Colorado Media Matters’ Bill Menezes 11 years ago, and the reports slipped out of view in Media Matters’ archive pages over time. But of course it’s relevant once again today, now that Brauchler is seeking a promotion to be the state’s chief law enforcement officer. In fact there was never a chance in hell that this material would remain in the dustbin of history while Brauchler ran for statewide office, and if he thought it would he’s even more politically naïve than we could have anticipated.

Brauchler has never been made to answer for any of these comments, but with ugly transcripts now gracing the homepage of a national liberal media site, he’s going to have to. And for at least some of this, it’ll need to take the form of a heartfelt apology–or else Brauchler has a serious problem heading into the general election.