Turning Point USA is demanding that “defamatory statements” made on ABC’s The View be retracted, or it will bring legal action.
The nation’s leading advocacy group for conservative values in high schools and colleges sent a cease-and-desist letter to ABC News Tuesday.
“The false statements of fact intentionally made during The View’s July 25th segment were unquestionably harmful to TPUSA’s reputation and brought the organization and its student affiliates into disrepute with the public, potential donors, and current and future business partners, posing a significant financial loss to the organization,” the letter stated.
The letter, written by TPUSA in-house counsel Veronica Peterson, was addressed to ABC News New York Bureau Chief Joshua Hoyos and ABC Assistant Chief Counsel Ian Rosenberg, accusing The View of making “false, derogatory, and defamatory statements,” per Fox News.
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The View co-host Joy Behar mockingly compared TPUSA to neo-Nazis.
“Neo-Nazis were out there in front of the conference with antisemitic slurs and, you know, the Nazi swastika and a picture of a so-called Jewish person with exaggerated features, just like Goebbels did during the Third Reich. It’s the same thing, right out of that same playbook,” Behar said.
After a commercial break, co-host Whoopi Goldberg attempted to walk back the comparison, saying neo-Nazi protesters had “nothing to do” with TPUSA.
“I want to make a quick clarification about the neo-Nazis at the Turning Point event,” Goldberg said. “They were outside protesters. My point was more metaphorical, that you embraced them at your thing, I felt.”
TPUSA was not satisfied, however.
“The View hosts intentionally and falsely associated TPUSA with neo-Nazi protestors outside the event placing TPUSA in denigrating and false light and negatively impacting its public perception. Such action will not be tolerated,” the letter said.
“Specifically, the View hosts insidiously and cavalierly stated that TPUSA ‘let [neo-Nazis] in’ to its SAS event, metaphorically ‘embrace[d] them’ and that neo-Nazis were ‘in the mix of people.’ The assertion that TPUSA is complicit or affiliated in any way with the neo-Nazi protesters outside the event is outlandish, false, defamatory, and disgraceful,” the letter went on to say. “Even after Ms. Haines reluctantly read the TPUSA statement that it condemns the group of neo-Nazis and that the group had nothing to do with TPUSA, its event, or its student attendees, Ms. Goldberg continues the false tirade against TPUSA, asserting that somehow the organization and its attendees were ‘complicit’ and/or associated with the outside protest.”
TPUSA’s letter then demanded that the comments be retracted with an apology no later than July 27.
“In cases where the communication is of such a nature that the court can presume as a matter of law that the communication will tend to degrade or disgrace the party defamed, special damages are presumed,” the letter said. “Therefore, TPUSA demands that ABC immediately cease and desist from further unlawfully defaming TPUSA, retract the defamatory statements identified above, and issue a public statement apologizing for and correcting the above defamatory and false statements.”
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The letter noted that TPUSA is prepared to take legal action should ABC News not comply.
ABC News did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
