Radio Host Pranks DNC Delegates With Question About Banning Corporate Profits -- And Many Agree With Him

Radio talk show host and erstwhile Senate candidate Peter Schiff has a long track record of trying to reason with his opponents, or at least engage with them fairly. The Connecticut based libertarian has taken on Lawrence O'Donnell on his home turf at MSNBC and most recently, even tried to engage with members of Occupy Wall Street in an 18 minute video that went viral last year.

Now, Schiff is back with a video from the DNC. Except this time, he's taken on a rather different approach to engaging with his opponents. That is, rather than advocate his own views, he has shot video of himself playing devil's advocate for what many would consider to be a completely ridiculous extension of his opponents' philosophy.

Schiff's target in this case is the Democrats' seeming antipathy to corporate profits, which he attacks by pretending to be a radical Leftist who wants to ban corporate profits altogether, just to see if he can get any Democrats to agree with this economically absurd idea.

So while there's not nearly universal agreement on the idea, and some people in the video force Schiff to moderate his position and others simply nod along politely, the video certainly shows a high degree of sympathy with the goal. And the immediate positive (and enthusiastic) reactions of several delegates, including one who enthusiastically calls for "corporate losses," may strike some readers as either entertaining or disturbing.

However, it should be noted that Schiff's tactic is highly questionable from a journalistic perspective (tactics we've criticized in the past), and we would warn against taking his results as representative of the entire convention, or as some kind of titanic revelation about what all Democrats believe. It is revealing (and funny) but still based on a false premise. And information gleaned from false premises can sometimes come back to haunt you.

This story has been updated.