CNBC's John Harwood has been hard at work on Twitter today, not reporting news, of course, but defending former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's left-wing applause line last week that businesses don't create jobs.
"flapdoodle about HRC job-creation remarks about as close to nothing as 'much ado about nothing' gets," Harwood huffed in a tweet shortly before noon Eastern on Monday.
That set off pushback from conservatives on Twitter, and, not one to backpedal, Harwood doubled down on his dopey defense of the former first lady.
Asked "why?" by a Twitter user, Harwood insisted it was because Clinton is saying nothing she hasn't been saying for 20-some years:
she's said it in various ways ("It Takes a Village") for 20 years. Dem saying corporate tax cuts won't create jobs hardly new
That was ludicrous spin to Fox News Channel's Brit Hume who shot back:
Please. She flatly said businesses don't create jobs. Went on to argue against business tax cuts. Nothing? Hardly.
But Harwood was having none of it, insisting the gaffe was "word games" that are unworthy of media coverage:
by all means, criticize her as lib D who favors higher taxes/more regs than Rs. but this flap = word games
Last week, you may recall, Harwood furiously spun to defend the liberal media's all-but-ignoring the 2014 midterms:
The business network's chief Washington correspondent John Harwood quickly tried to dismiss the finding and excuse the press for not doing its job: "Well, look, I don't know what data they were using for that....2006 was an election where you had a dominant overriding issue, and that was the Iraq war. Which was extremely controversial, in everybody's face. This is an election where there isn't a dominant issue. You've got a whole bunch of little issues."
Kernen pushed back: "It seems pretty big all of a sudden, though....even Iraq is back, right? ISIS." Harwood replied: "Yeah, but it's not back the way it was in 2006."
Harwood grasped for more spin to defend NBC, ABC, and CBS:
"The other thing that I think it doesn't account for necessarily is that I think all of the net – much of the media is less interested in Washington at this moment because Washington has been stuck for a couple of years. You've got an election with a diffuse agenda. And also, a lot of resources have moved online to digital reporting rather than a broadcast. So that could account for some of it."
Circling the wagons. If you're a liberal journalist like John Harwood, it's what you do. Well, that and admiring President Obama's mad fly-swatting skills.
