Fox News Sunday host continues misquoting Obama
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Four days after Dana Milbank’s first misquoted Democratic Presidential candidate Obama in a Washington Post report, and also four days after his assertion was repudiated by various people who actually attended the meeting, Fox News Channel host Chris Wallace continued to “quote” Obama with the incorrect one on his Fox News Sunday program. The quote in question is what Dana Milbank first reported Obama as saying - “This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for… I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.” while speaking to a closed door meeting with House Democrats on July 29th.
However, a democratic staffer clarifies that Washington Post left out one very important part of the quote. The actual quote was something like - It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It’s about America. I have just become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., who was in the room, pointed out to Fox News that the line was taken completely out of context and Dana also made it clear in his story that he is relying on the recollection of someone who was in the room.
However, on Sunday the “Fair and Balanced” channels Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace had this question for his guest senate majority leader Tom Daschle -
WALLACE: … if I may, McCain, it seemed to me and, I think, to a lot of people, tapped into a growing issue, and that is the issue of whether Obama is arrogant and acting as if he’s already president.
I want to show you what he said to House Democrats in a closed caucus this week. Let’s put it up on the screen. This is Obama talking to them, according to someone who was in the meeting. “This is the moment the world is waiting for. I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.”
Senator Daschle, wouldn’t a little modesty serve Obama well?
DASCHLE: Chris, first of all, that’s a third-hand report. And I’ve never heard Barack Obama used word “I,” never. In all the time I’ve been with him, he has not used the word “I.” He uses “we.”
WALLACE: “I am a citizen of America, I’m a citizen of the world?”
DASCHLE: That’s not what he said. I doubt very much…
WALLACE: Well, that’s what he said in Berlin. I mean, we can get the tape of that, sir.
DASCHLE: He has basically — what he is saying is that, “Look, this is an opportunity for us to take this country and this generation on a new course,” that we really have to recognize that unless we change, unless we put this country back on a higher level, unless we address the issues of real interest to the American people — the economy, the environment, the energy crisis we’re facing, our precipitous fall from grace around the world — unless we address that, we’re never going to be the kind of American — never have the kind of American future we need so badly. That was the message of Barack Obama.
It is getting clear that Fox News and McCain campaign would continue to rely on a lie to attack Obama. The McCain campaign is also using this misquote on a web based ad.
