Les Kinsolving

Les Kinsolving is a radio host on Baltimore station WCBM and White House correspondent for the conservative website WorldNetDaily, where he also writes a column.

Kinsolving formerly wrote a syndicated column. He co-wrote the first major stories on the Peoples Temple of the Rev. Jim Jones.

Kinsolving's style
Kinsolving attends the daily White House briefings, where he is considered a gadfly, asking questions that range from the unusual to the provocative, and typically leaning rightward.

Controversies
In July 2007, Kinsolving engaged in a skirmish with then-White House press secretary Tony Snow after Kinsolving asked a misleading question that Snow objected to, resulting in WND editor Joseph Farah declaring that Kinsolving "will no longer attend" White House press briefings because Snow was not being "fair" to Kinsolving. WND then ran on its website "questions that WND wishes the White House would have answered at its presidential press briefing." On August 5, 2007, WND announced that Kinsolving "is returning to the presidential press briefings this week after a one-on-one conference with White House Press Secretary Tony Snow."

In an August 30, 2007, White House press briefing, Kinsolving falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama received an "endorsement" from Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. In fact, while Castro called a possible Clinton-Obama ticket "seemingly invincible," he also attributed to Clinton and Obama a pro-democratic view that he called an "error," and he said of Clinton and Obama, "They are not making politics: they are playing a game of cards on a Sunday afternoon." Kinsolving insisted that criticism of him for calling Castro's statement an endorsement (among them Media Matters for America and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann) was a "semantic mistake" because according to Webster's New World Dictionary, "endorse" can also mean "[t]o give approval to; support; [and] sanction," in addition to meaning "to endorse a candidate." Kinsolving then asserted that Castro "surely did fulfill more than one of those dictionary definitions of the word 'endorse' since he undeniably 'gave approval to' and 'support' as well as 'sanction.' "