"Radical liberals" have descended into a "snake pit" of anger and bitterness – and are betraying the very tenets of "tolerance and open-mindedness" they once lived by, veteran political journalist Edward Klein told Newsmax TV.
Klein – bestselling author of of "Guilty as Sin: Uncovering New Evidence of Corruption and How Hillary Clinton and the Democrats Derailed the FBI Investigation" – said Tuesday he has been the target of radical liberals.
"Like [White House Press Secretary] Sean Spicer, I've been accosted and harangued in public as well," Klein told host Miranda Khan on Tuesday's "America Talks Live."
Important: Newsmax TV is available on DirecTV Ch. 349, U-Verse 1220, and FiOS 615. If your cable operator does not have Newsmax TV just call and ask them to put us on – Call toll-free 1-844-500-6397 and we will connect you right away to your cable operator!
For more places to Find Newsmax TV – Click Here Now
"I've been at restaurants in New York City where people would come up to me and say, 'aren't you ashamed of yourself for writing those critical books about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama,' and 'do you do it all for money,' and these are people who work for money . . . in finance and marketing and PR.
"It's hypocrisy. It reminds me of what Thomas Jefferson said – a famous saying which is 'I disagree with what you're saying, but I will defend till the death your right to say it.' That's what liberals used to say. Liberals used to be the party of tolerance and open-mindedness. No more."
Klein said recent riots in Berkeley, California, where the free speech movement began in the 1960s, "were against allowing people and culture and others from speaking."
"There have been other examples of that kind of thing but not only just mere words. We have ['Late Show' host Stephen] Colbert on TV saying disgusting things about the president's sex acts with Vladimir Putin," he told Khan.
"We have Kathy Griffin, the comedian, holding up a severed head of the president and, in a sense, saying this is what we should do to the president. We have the New York Theater putting on a play Julius Caesar in which Caesar is depicted as Donald Trump being assassinated.
"Now, all of this is what I would call radical liberalism. . . . This is kind of a like religious war in which one side, the liberals, who think they're on the side of goodness and right, are going to decimate the other side, that's us, who they say are wicked – and in fact only one side is going to win."
He added the radical liberalism "sounds very much to me" like radical Islam in the Middle East.
What does Klein suggest Republicans do?
"I think the best way is for conservatives and Republicans not to descend into the same kind of snake pit that the liberals have, because if we don't, if our side doesn't, then the other side looks terrible and bad in the eyes of the American public," Klein said.
"I have great faith in commonsense pragmatism of Americans and their decency. The kind of stuff that's going on with radical liberalism these days is not decent. I think it's going to rebound to the Democrats.
"They're going to be very sorry that they've done this, because come the midterm elections, I think they're going to have a lot of trouble explaining why they're only against Donald Trump, only against Republicans, and not in favor of anything."