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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

ABC's Tapper Hits Obama For 'Misleading' Statements About Campaign's Ugly Tone

Above and beyond partisan politics, as an American, it's been more than a little disturbing to watch the media readily accept being lied to by the President of the United States and his top campaign staffers.

The media knows he's lying.
He knows he's lying.
He knows they know he's lying. And yet, he also knows he's going to get away with it, because the media is willing to do just about anything to win his reelection.
But not all of the media. ABC's Jake Tapper -- the eternal asterisk in my use of the term "corrupt media" -- didn't let yesterday's fibs go:
“I’m not sure all those characterizations that you laid out there were accurate,” the president said. “For example, nobody accused Mr. Romney of being a felon.”
But what Cordes said was that the Obama campaign “suggested that Mr. Romney might be a felon,” and she had it exactly right.
Last month, referring to documents filed with the Security and Exchange Commission by Bain Capital that consistently listed Romney as the CEO even though he had relinquished that power, Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said, “Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony. Or, he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments.”
As for Cordes noting that the Obama campaign and the White House “have declined to condemn an ad by one of your top supporters that links Mr. Romney to a woman’s death from cancer,” the president said “I don’t think that Governor Romney is somehow responsible for the death of the woman that was portrayed in that ad. But keep in mind this is an ad that I didn’t approve, I did not produce and, as far as I can tell, has barely run.["] ...
But it’s not just the pro-Obama super-PAC, Priorities USA Action (run by two former Obama White House officials), that has cited Missouri steelworker Joe Soptic’s story – it’s also the Obama campaign.
On its website right now is a slideshow about the closure of GST Steel in which Soptic is quoted saying, “I worked hard all my life and played by the rules, and they allowed this to happen.”
Soptic is described as an “employee for 28 years, whose wife died of lung cancer after he lost his GST health plan.”
Moreover, the Obama campaign held a conference call in May during which Soptic told his story.
If the president doesn’t “think that Governor Romney is somehow responsible for the death of the woman that was portrayed in that ad,” his campaign sure seems to be suggesting otherwise.
In short, the president’s responses were at best less than candid and at worse downright misleading.
There's just no question Obama isn't telling the truth here, and there's just no question that almost all of the media is allowing him to get away with it.
You expect presidents to spin and parse and try to sneak one past. That's what politicians do. But for a sitting president to know he can brazenly lie and no one will hold him accountable -- that's not good for democracy.

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