Fox Business' Dobbs Fawns Over Terror-Inspiring Blogger

Lou Dobbs last night conducted a fawning interview with Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea, two bloggers who recently filed a complaint against Attorney General Eric Holder with the District of Columbia's Office of Bar Counsel. At no point did Dobbs note that Vanderboegh is an ex-militia conspiracist who has urged his readers to commit vandalism against Democrats and allegedly inspired a terrorist plot to kill federal employees.

On his Fox Business show, Dobbs said to Vanderboegh, “You guys are considered in some quarters rather dangerous. You're fans of the Constitution, you seek truth, what has been the reaction to your activism?”

Vanderboegh's record of extremism includes:

  • Making headlines in 2010 after urging his readers to respond to the passage of health care reform by breaking the windows of Democratic offices, then taking credit when such vandalism occurred.
  • Having his novel cited by prosecutors in November 2011 as the inspiration for an alleged plot by four Georgia militia members to use firearms, explosives, and the biological agent ricin to target for assassination judges and other government employees. In Vanderboegh's novel, which he refers to as a “cautionary tale” for law enfocement, underground militia fighters declare war on the federal government over gun control laws and same-sex marriage, leading to a second American revolution.
  • Predicting last month that if health care reform were found to be constitutional, it would trigger a violent insurrection against “government tyranny,” stating, “You may call tyranny a mandate or you may call it a tax, but it still is tyranny and invites the same response.”
  • Suggesting that a proposed United Nations treaty regulating the trade of small arms would similarly lead to a “civil war.”
  • Participating in the militia and Minutemen movements, and serving as the leader of the Three Percenters, a group which claims to represent the three percent of gun owners who “who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act” but will instead, “if forced by any would-be oppressor, ... kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution.”
  • Promoting a number of conspiracy theories, including the notion that Operation Fast and Furious was initiated at the highest levels of the Obama administration to deliberately pass guns to Mexican drug cartels in order to make a case for stricter gun violence prevention regulations.

Dobbs repeatedly praised Vanderboegh and Codrea throughout the interview, lauding their “outstanding” coverage of Operation Fast and Furious, and closed the interview by telling them, “stay dangerous.”

The Fox Business host is no stranger to conspiracy theories. In November 2009 Dobbs announced his departure from CNN, his cable news home for nearly 30 years, following a firestorm over his repeated on-air promotion of false conspiracies regarding President Obama's birth certificate.