Four days after her nationally syndicated column calling Senator John Kerry a “communist apologist” appeared in newspapers and on The Heritage Foundation's website Townhall.com, Linda Chavez, in a May 2 interview with FOX & Friends host Mike Jerrick, claimed that she had not called Kerry a “communist apologist”:

HOST: But isn't it too strong to call him a communist apologist?

CHAVEZ: Well, I didn't call him that actually.

HOST: But others have.

CHAVEZ: Others have.

In her April 27 column, Chavez referred to Kerry's “role” as that of “an apologist for the communists we were fighting in Vietnam”; later in the column, she wrote, “The young Kerry seems to have fallen in the latter category, communist apologist.”

Linda Chavez is a FOX news analyst and syndicated columnist. In addition to Townhall.com, her columns have appeared in The New York Post, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, Chicago Sun-Times, and other newspapers nationwide. Chavez has supported or worked for the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank; and the Independent Women's Forum, an anti-feminist organization. She is president of Center for Equal Opportunity, a think tank devoted exclusively to opposing affirmative action and bilingual education, and to promoting immigrant assimilation. Chavez withdrew her name as President George W. Bush's nominee for secretary of Labor amid controversy surrounding her allowing an illegal immigrant to live and work in her home in the early 1990s.