Obama Accuses Brian Williams of Getting Memos from Clinton

February 5th, 2008 8:35 PM

Maybe it was a joke.

However, when a presidential candidate accuses one of the leading broadcast anchors of "getting too many memos from the Clinton camp," we at NewsBusters have to take notice...while we chuckle, of course.

Here's the setup: Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama was Brian Williams' guest on NBC's "Nightly News" Monday, and was asked: "Let's talk about the Latino vote. Could you admit now, as we are one day away from super Tuesday, you perhaps didn't take it -- the shot at it seriously enough?"

Obama offered viewers the following absolutely delicious response (video available here, relevant section at minute 1:29):

Brian, you're getting too many memos from the Clinton camp. We've been constantly going after the Latino vote. And that's why I got 75 percent of the Latino vote when I ran for the United States Senate. We won the Latino vote in Iowa. What is true is that the Clintons are a much more familiar name in a Latino community. We are seeing the gap that existed close rapidly. And, you know, I think this myth that somehow Latinos are different from other folks and won't vote for an African-American candidate, I think that's the kind of, you know, old race-based politics that our campaign has rejected and I think the American people are rejecting.

Sometimes, there's more truth in comedy than anything else, wouldn't you agree?