NBC 'Today' Show Panel Rushes to Obama's Defense After Santorum 'Cheap Shot'
On Tuesday, following Rick Santorum's call for politicians, like President Obama, to stop relying on Teleprompters for their public remarks, NBC Today co-host Matt Lauer allowed a liberal panel to rip into the Republican candidate for daring to criticize Obama.
Attorney Star Jones contemptuously proclaimed: "Doesn't he have anything else to talk about?...You're running for the presidency of the United States and you're going to whine because he's a better Teleprompter reader than you are? Oh, please." Correspondent Savannah Guthrie chimed in: "It's silly....It's a cheap shot, it's an easy laugh."
Guthrie was puzzled by the critique: "I don't know what they're trying to say about Barack Obama. Are they saying he uses the Teleprompter because he's not intelligent and can't articulate himself without a prompter? I don't think there's any evidence of that. Even his critics would say it."
Advertising executive Donny Deutsch observed: "The problem Santorum has is look, throughout history there are some times you speak great extemporaneously and sometimes from a script and it's not – by the way, there would be no Today show if you guys were not reading from the script." Lauer joked: "That's not unnecessarily true."
Here is a transcript of the March 13 exchange:
8:13AM ET
(...)
MATT LAUER: This weekend at a campaign appearance, Rick Santorum, one of the GOP presidential candidates, said he would like to see – and I'm paraphrasing here – it to be illegal for anyone running for president to use a Teleprompter. Basically, saying that if you're running for president, people should hear your words, not words that have been run through a focus group or written by someone else. How do we feel about this?
STAR JONES: Doesn't he have anything else to talk about?
LAUER: Well, how do we feel about what he's calling for?
JONES: Oh, please. I mean-
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: It's silly.
JONES: It really is silly. And like I said, doesn't he have anything else to talk about? You're running for the presidency of the United States and you're going to whine...
GUTHRIE: It's a cheap shot...
JONES: ...because he's a better Teleprompter reader than you are? Oh, please.
LAUER: He's going after Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, both have been use – known to use Teleprompters, as have almost all politicians.
GUTHRIE: It's a cheap shot, it's an easy laugh. Both sides do it, okay? The Democrats love to make hay of Romney tying his dog to the top of the car back in the day. But I don't know what they're trying to say about Barack Obama. Are they saying he uses the Teleprompter because he's not intelligent and can't articulate himself without a prompter?
JONES: I don't think so.
GUTHRIE: I don't think there's any evidence of that. Even his critics would say it.
LAUER: Go ahead, Donny.
DEUTSCH: It's very simple. He's trying to play to his strength. The thing that's made him appealing – it sometimes gets in his way – is that he's from shoot from the hip, he's real, he's genuine, and he's basically saying, "Hey, the other guys are not smart enough to do it without it." The problem Santorum has is look, throughout history there are some times you speak great extemporaneously and sometimes from a script and it's not – by the way, there would be no Today show if you guys were not reading from the script.
LAUER: That's not unnecessarily true.
[LAUGHTER]
(...)
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Comments
Pot calling the kettle 'black'
Submitted by Galvanic on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 4:51pm.
MATT LAUER: This weekend at a campaign appearance, Rick Santorum, one of the GOP presidential candidates, said he would like to see – and I'm paraphrasing here – it to be illegal for anyone running for president to use a Teleprompter. Basically, saying that if you're running for president, people should hear your words, not words that have been run through a focus group or written by someone else. How do we feel about this?
STAR JONES: Doesn't he have anything else to talk about?
No, Ms. Jones, the sad thing is that you don't have anything else to talk about.
Hundreds of you make actually make a living off of the day to day utterances, activities, and polls of a handful of politicians.
...editing can be fun, esp. when it's about the pResident!
Submitted by vrwc13 on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 4:57pm.
GUTHRIE:It's a cheap shot, it's an easy laugh ...Barack Obama... uses the Teleprompter because he's not intelligent and can't articulate himself without a prompter
v
The burden of life is from ourselves, its lightness from the grace of Christ and the love of God. - William Bernard Ullanthorne
The country has witnessed the times the teleprompter goes down
Submitted by nonncom on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 5:05pm.
and obama just stands there, dumbfounded, like a deer in the headlights....seems if he were all that intelligent, he could continue in the context....of course, his handlers have most likely told him not to say a word they haven't prepared for him.....don't want to piss off Soros....
This is actually something
Submitted by balboa on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 5:12pm.
This is actually something Santorum took the time to bother with? Really? What's the point?
Bal, Why does the smartest
Submitted by LAM SON 719 on Wed, 03/14/2012 - 12:20am.
Bal,
Why does the smartest man in the room need a teleprompter and why does he need someone to write his material?
Why does the obama White House feel the need to raise a petition aganist Rush? They have nothing bettter to do?
Santorum has nothing besides
Submitted by tombaker on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 5:15pm.
Santorum has nothing besides claiming he is the true conservative, which his record as Senator does not support. He tosses out dumb insults out as if it means something, insulting the standing President on whether he uses a teleprompter for speeches is what I expect from a teenager.
Its not that Santorum dared to challenge the President, it the sheer weakness of what Santorum is offering to go after Obama.
1. He used a teleprompter.....so what....Rick why don't you talk about the content of what he said.
2. He wants kids to go to College just like your own mother did.....you call him a snob for that, zero traction with voters.
Next thing out of the mouth of Rick is how he keeps on loosing because the other guy has more money, which won't change, and Rick would lose to Obama.
I fully expect Rick to start insulting Romney because he knows football owners from his work with Staples, the Staples Center, and other ties that Staples has to professional sports.
Meanwhile Rick can not explain for a second, why he lost his race in a landslide for Senator. All he has said is "everybody lost that year"
Rick is such a professional victim whiner, he is not complaining that his former employer Fox News, is in the tank for Romney, as he goes onto the Fox News every day, between Oreilly, Greta, and Hannity.
Sorry Rick, it was your lame attack Obama's prompter, it was a great comedian joke back in the first 2 years, it just pathetic for someone attempting to be POTUS. 2nd rate.
Two points
Submitted by DontFeedTheTrolls on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 5:33pm.
1. Obama 'uses a teleprompter' almost exclusively. Off teleprompter, he is a bumbling buffoon.
2. No, everyone doesn't need to go to college. Like an excellent plumber, for example.
How true
Submitted by Tugboat Phil on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 8:06pm.
Anyone that believes a person can't make a great living without a college degree has never called a plumber at midnight, on a weekend.
Or the Heating and Air
Submitted by MichaelPaladin on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 10:35pm.
Or the Heating and Air Conditioning Service Technician.
Wow!
Submitted by DontFeedTheTrolls on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 5:29pm.
I looked up sycophant in the dictionary and, lo and behold, there was a picture of the Today Show panel!!
It's hysterical
Submitted by bobsmom on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 5:40pm.
to me that these boobs are having a hissing conniption because suddenly, lots of people are going after their Boy Blunder. Folks kept quiet for a couple of years, to avoid being called racist, but what I'm seeing is most are fed up and about 3 yrs past give a sh!t and are going after him like a pack of Jack Russel's. Death by a thousand cuts here, and they don't have enough fingers to poke in the holes and stem the bleeding. I agree with a poster above, all the crap we're dealing with in this country today, and THIS is news? He who laughs last, laughs best, and I'm on my way to a mighty chucklin' snortin' bar burner of a belly laugh come this November.
you ain't seen nothing
Submitted by fivestring_assassin on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 5:40pm.
yet,,,the mainstream media has yet to go full force for obama
Full Force?
Submitted by Free Stinker on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 7:43pm.
This isn't "Full Force"?
What's next ?
/// Sarah Palin Fan since July 11, 2007 /// خال
Santorum sort of. . .
Submitted by rickbren on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 6:48pm.
. . . struck a nerve, didn't he?? Barry even has trouble reading a teleprompter. How do you say corpsman (corpse man)???!!!
They're kidding right?
Submitted by hbnolikeee on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 9:45pm.
While the bumbler handicaps college sports they have the stones to criticize Santorum for pointing out yet another failure of leadership?
Well since the media elites want to push contraception as the
Submitted by gmaniac1 on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 11:12pm.
talking point instead of the economy, Santorum must have questioned if reading a teleprompter is all the president could do well since he has yet to do much else. Oh, but he killed bin Laden, my mistake, outside of that!
Here's a Script You'll Never See Star Jones Talk About . . .
Submitted by jdhawk on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 11:53pm.
Obama's Impressive list of firsts:
First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.
First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office.
First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.
First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.
First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States .
First President to violate the War Powers Act.
First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico .
First President to defy a Federal Judge’s court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.
First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.
First President to spend a trillion dollars on ‘shovel-ready’ jobs when there was no such thing as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs.
First President to abrogate bankruptcy law and turn over control of major companies to his union supporters.
First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.
First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S. , including those with criminal convictions.
First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
First President to terminate America ’s ability to put a man in space.
First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
First President to arbitrarily usurp congress, declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke-out on the reasons for their rate increases.
First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which State they are allowed to locate a factory.
First President to join with a foreign country and file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.
First President to go on multiple global ‘apology tours’.
First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends; paid for by the taxpayer.
First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.
First President to repeat the Holy Qur'an and tell us the Islamic call to worship is the most beautiful sound on earth.
First President able to break all these laws, be openly corrupt and get by with treason, simply because he's black.
WAKE UP AMERICA ! Send this list to your Democrat friends- they will all be so proud of all these firsts ! Just think- this list could really grow if he just has four more years now that taxpayers have paid for his on the job training!
Thank Goodness for Fox News- let’s hope that Obama doesn’t shut this network down to maintain control of what we think!
Just how much more will this man get away with?
I don’t want to know!
great job jdhawk, a must read for all...
Submitted by vrwc13 on Wed, 03/14/2012 - 1:03pm.
...kudos
v
The burden of life is from ourselves, its lightness from the grace of Christ and the love of God. - William Bernard Ullanthorne
I think his overal point is that the .........
Submitted by Qtaug on Wed, 03/14/2012 - 5:04am.
"Demander in Chief" doesn't have an original thought in his head. So being a good reader is presidential? My daughter is going to run next time!
Clarification
Submitted by djaymick on Wed, 03/14/2012 - 11:29am.
Maybe Santorum needs to clarify his statement. He should come out and say the President needs the teleprompter to keep his lies straight. He has "played the fence" for the past three years. Every issue (pipeline, fat-cat bankers, the 99%) that he has faced, he has said one thing but did something else.
"He has "played the fence" for the past three years."
Submitted by vrwc13 on Wed, 03/14/2012 - 1:01pm.
...kind of hard for the pResident not to, after voting 'present' for so many times as a Senator. He doesn't really know how to / want to commit, except to free golf for him and vacations for the wife.
v
The burden of life is from ourselves, its lightness from the grace of Christ and the love of God. - William Bernard Ullanthorne