-By Warner Todd Huston
NBC’s David Gregory hosted the President on Sunday’s Meet the Press but compared to his last notable interview, when he verbally attacked his guest at every turn, Gregory was virtually asleep this weekend. Unfortunately, Gregory’s mostly timid questions and Obama’s rambling answers gave us nothing new.
The only real pointed question that Gregory asked Obama was over Susan Rice. But even there he asked the question in the meekest manner possible.
Gregory asked, “Do you feel like you let your friend Susan Rice hang out there to dry a little bit?”
The equivocation of “A little bit” was far more consideration than the badgering Gregory offered Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association last week.
But all of Obama’s answers were mere talking points. Take his line about what he thinks Republicans priority is.
“They say that their biggest priority is making sure that we deal with the deficit in a serious way but the way they’re behaving is that their only priority is making sure that tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are protected. That seems to be their only, overriding, unifying theme.”
This is simply a talking point lie. Tax breaks for the rich are not the Republicans’ “only, overriding, unifying theme.” Not one Republican anywhere has said that his goal is to “protect” tax cuts for the wealthy. Not one. The single unifying theme has been spending cuts as well as tax cuts for everyone. But the President does not want to discuss spending cuts at all.
And of course the most idiotic line of the interview was when Gregory gushingly bestowed the mantle of Abraham Lincoln on Obama saying that this budget fight is Obama’s “Lincoln moment.”
Seriously? We are going to compare a president that ended slavery, fought a civil war and was murdered right on the verge of his greatest victory to a guy that just wants to soak “the rich” with confiscatory taxes?
At least the President demurred from Gregory’s fawning.
When we reported that the President was going to grace David Gregory with a one-on-one for Meet the Press we noted that the suddenness of the scheduling seemed more like it was meant to shore up David Gregory’s standing to help quash the investigation into his Dec. 23 violation of Washington’s gun banning laws than it was to make any news. After the interview was all said and done, there is no reason to reassess that assumption.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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