Larry Elder sounds off on media coverage following campaign launch: 'They care about calling me a sellout'

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Media top headlines July 15

A Lincoln Project member saying that failing to pass Dem voting bills will lead to another 9/11, a BBC reporter getting fired after sending a 'Hitler was right' tweet, and the founder of a liberal news site saying the right to own firearms is 'made up' round out today's top media headlines

Conservative radio host Larry Elder ripped the media both for how they've portrayed him and how they've covered some of the policies that have led him to run against California Gov. Gavin Newsom, D., in September's recall election. 

In an interview with Fox News, Elder took particular issue with the media narrative on crime and the push for critical race theory in schools. Some, including popular pundits at MSNBC, have lectured or shamed CRT critics. But Elder argued that, in light of some alarming statistics that show students struggling in key subjects, parents are more concerned about improving their children's test scores than having them be taught U.S. institutions are inherently racist.

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"Parents are concerned that the kids cannot read and write at grade level, they're concerned about violence in the schools, and they want to have an option out," Elder said. Those same parents, he argued, "want to make sure their kids come out of school and are able to compete for a job."

Schools need to purge bad teachers, he urged, arguing that the "worst teachers are inflicting damage on the kids that need good teachers the most."

He later sounded off on the crime wave across the country. The media has been accused of downplaying the uptick in crime in major, mostly Democrat-led cities.

"You have this assault on police officers, they're pulling back," he said. "It's called the Ferguson Effect, or the George Floyd effect, and that is cops are afraid of being called racist and therefore they're pulling back."

"Kids lost a whole year of education, crime is going up, homelessness is going up, the cost of living is insane, for the first time in the state’s history more people have left California than have come," Elder said on "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday as he summarized his decision to run.

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Asked how he believed the media would treat his campaign in the coming weeks, particularly following a less-than-flattering column in the Los Angeles Times, Elder did not mince words. 

Columnist Jean Guerrero published a piece on Elder on Wednesday following his announcement, in which she argued, in part, that Elder’s campaign "builds on the fantasy that it’s not racist to deny the threat of white supremacy." She also charged him with having "repeatedly twisted crime statistics to portray Black people as more violent than whites."

Guerrero had previously interviewed Elder while writing a book on former Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller, called "Hatemonger." After reading the book, Elder suggested she had not listened to him. 

"She's a bigot and she's one of those who feels that I'm an Uncle Tom and a sellout because I don't buy into the victim mentality, and she's representative of what's wrong with the media, the LA Times, in general," Elder said.

"My book about Stephen Miller was independently fact-checked and my reporting speaks for itself," Guerrero said in response in a statement to Fox News. "Mr. Elder had the opportunity to speak to me for my column but his press secretary canceled on the morning of our appointment. I believe my column paints a nuanced and fair portrait of Mr. Elder, including a look at his moving relationship with his father."

In her piece, Guerrero offers that Elder's 2012 memoir, "Dear Father, Dear Son" is "surprisingly moving."

But Elder continued to blast the LA Times for not publishing reviews of any of his six books, nor his documentary "Uncle Tom."

"I'm born and raised here I have published six books, two of them were on the LA Times bestseller list, how many of my books have the LA Times reviewed?" he asked. "Answer: none." 

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"They never reviewed the book, they've never reviewed the movie, my first book, 'The 10 Things You Can't Say in America' made the LA Times bestseller list, as I mentioned," he said. But, he charged, the outlet "couldn't care less" about his success.

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"Hell, I was on the Jay Leno Show about the book, and the LA Times couldn't care less," he said. "By any standards, I'm a success story, come from the inner city … I defy anybody to follow my father's past: eighth grade drop out, buying a house that cost $600,000 by working two jobs. You could never do it. They don't care about that, but they care about calling me a sellout, and Uncle Tom, and Jean Guerrero and the LA Times should be ashamed of themselves."