LOS ANGELES — Even if Mitt Romney makes good on his vow to “vigorously” prosecute pornographers if elected President, Hustler founder Larry Flynt said he’d fail to make it happen.
Flynt responded to a Daily Caller story about the meeting between Morality in Media President Patrick Trueman and the Romney campaign where Trueman said a Romney aide pledged that the presumptive GOP candidate would help bring back federal porn prosecutions if elected.
Earlier this year, Trueman speaheaded a coalition of anit-porn groups that asked Romney to discuss the enforcement of obscenity laws.
“Romney can have all the plans he wants to about prosecuting pornography, but that train has already left the station,” Flynt said. “I’m not saying that he isn’t serious about it, but it’s doubtful that he’d follow through if he’s in office because his advisers will tell him that he can’t win.”
Trueman, the former head of the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section during the Reagan and Bush years, told the Daily Caller that he had an hour-long meeting with Romney’s foreign and legal policy director Alex Wong earlier this year about the “untreated pandemic” of Internet porn and that the Romney team immediately responded.
Along with Trueman was Bob Flores, another former Justice Department official who prosecuted pornographers.
“Wong assured us that Romney is very concerned with this, and that if he’s elected these laws will be enforced,” Trueman told the Daily Caller. ”They promised to vigorously enforce federal adult obscenity laws.”
Trueman maintained that the obscenity laws on the books are still good and Romney would enforce them.
But Flynt disagreed and said that Romney’s primary campaign promises to ensure “strict enforcement of our nation’s obscenity laws” was “an idle threat made for political reasons.” “I don’t give it much thought at all,” Flynt said.
The Hustler chief added that he thinks prosecutions would probably go forward if Romney appointed some Justice Department pit bull, anti-porn types “but they have nothing to do with the success of the prosecution.”
Flynt pointed out that the Internet has homogenized the country so much when it comes to porn that it wouldn’t be easy to prosecute major city pornographers in the more socially conservative parts of the country.
“Most of these prosecutors are idiots,” Flynt said. ”You know: ‘screw the public.’” “Pornography is a buzzword to enhance their political profile.”
Flynt maintained that a Romney threat to porn would probably fall flat.
“I’m not saying it’s empty,” Flynt said, “but it’s definitely for political reasons. I’m not saying he won’t try to appease the religious sects in this country, primarily the evangelical groups, that are always trying to push for these prosecutions.”