Message to Ed Schultz -- if you are going to weigh in on the news, and in braying, scorched-earth fashion, it helps to pay attention to the news.
Case in point -- Schultz's fantasy-based claim on his radio show Monday about US relations with Israel since President Obama took office. (audio and video clips after page break)
Schultz was complaining about GOP Senator Lindsey Graham's criticism of Obama on "Fox News Sunday" when he said this (audio) --
SCHULTZ: Lindsey Graham says President Obama has made dangerous decisions. Listen to this one --
GRAHAM: In the last year he's made some very poor, dangerous foreign policy decisions at the strategic level. Israel has been thrown under the bus by this president. His ...
SCHULTZ: Ho, ho, ho, no, not true! Mr. Netanyahu is very satisfied with the way President Obama has operated with the Israelis. Play it again --
GRAHAM: (same remarks as previously quoted, followed by this): His standing in the state of Israel is very low. The Iranians don't fear us at all, they're trying to attack us here at home. So I would argue that Iraq and Afghanistan's being run out of Chicago ...
SCHULTZ: Really? Well I'm glad they are being run out of Chicago, because when Iraq and Afghanistan were being run out of Washington it cost us thousands of lives and trillions of dollars and gutted our infrastructure, thanks to your crowd, Sen. Graham.
Not unexpectedly, Schultz cited no examples to bolster his claim. Trouble is, finding them would have required a long, fruitless fishing expedition.
Netanyahu wasn't exactly "very satified" with Obama when he met with him during a March 2010 visit to Washington. Here's how Megyn Kelly of Fox News described it --
Netanyahu went to the White House to talk Mideast peace concerns. But not only did the Israeli leader not get the traditional photo op granted to any head of state, now we're hearing he was left to cool his heels in a meeting room for over an hour while President Obama walked out to have dinner with his family, which some are saying is an extraordinary breach of protocol.
The following month, Netanyahu decided against attending a nuclear security summit hosted by Obama in Washington, that less than satisfying discussion with Obama only weeks earlier still fresh in his memory.
The best example of how Schultz's claim has no basis in reality came during Netanyahu's most recent negotiations with Obama this past May. During an Oval Office photo op, Netanyahu bluntly rejected Obama's suggestion that Israel revert to its pre-1967 war borders. Here's NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell's take on "Meet the Press" the following Sunday --
He (Obama) did have language that said there would be land swaps to protect Israel's security, but it was taken as a red flag by Netanyahu. And what happened then was that even if this was implicit in things that previous presidents had said, Netanyahu seized on it even before he got on the plane. He criticized the president and in such a fashion, he lectured him in the Oval Office. And if you look at that picture that you have up there right now (footage shown of Oval Office meeting), it was a stone-faced Barack Obama and Netanyahu basically treating him like a schoolboy.
Which, come to think of it, Netanyahu may have found very satisfying.
