It’s one thing for a leftist pundit to appear on MSNBC and smear Republicans as racist and bigoted. It’s another when the editor of MSNBC.com, a supposedly professional journalist, joins the ranks of liberal pundits slamming the GOP for its criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s comments following the attack on our Embassy in Benghazi.
Appearing on Tuesday’s NOW with Alex Wagner, Wolffe started off the show by having the audacity to claim, “there has been a witch hunt against every prominent person of color that has served alongside this president.” [See video below page break. MP3 audio here.]
Apparently Wolffe, along with fellow MSNBC staffers including The Cycle co-host Toure believe that legitimate criticism of the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for her post-Benghazi comments is racist simply because she is African-American and the three Republican senators out front in opposition to her happen to be white.
Wolffe’s comments come less than 24-hours after Toure claimed that, “he [John McCain] also gave us the horrible optics of he and Lindsey Graham as old, white, establishment folks wrongly and repeatedly attacking a much younger black woman moments after an election in which blacks and women went strongly blue.” Toure seemed to forget that one of those old white folks happens to be Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) of blue-state New Hampshire, who is younger than Susan Rice. Recognizing Ayotte's role, however, would contradict Toure’s tired "old white guy" narrative.
Rather than engage in a serious discussion about the intelligence failures both prior to and after the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, NBC’s Wolffe and Toure would rather seek to stifle criticism and inquiry by lambasting Rice's critics as racially motivated.
It's utterly shameless, of course, but par for the course for a network devoted to defending Obama and trashing conservatives at all costs.
See relevant transcript below.
MSNBC
NOW with Alex Wagner
November 27, 2012
12:00 p.m. EDT
ALEX WAGNER: Richard Wolffe, Shaman, explainer, reader of tea leaves that you are.
RICHARD WOLFFE: Yes.
WAGNER: How much of this is because President Obama would like to see Susan Rice as his Secretary of State?
WOLFFE: Well, let's say 50 percent and let’s say that –
WAGNER: You're putting it at a fair 50.
WOLFFE: I would say 50 percent. And I would say the other 50 percent is that Susan Rice is a proxy for this president. And I've said it again and I will say it again there has been a witch hunt against every prominent person of color that has served alongside this president. And this is part of it. Now there may be other serious things, there are in fact very really serious things, if that’s actually English
WAGNER: Only you would know, yes.
WOLFFE: About Benghazi that they should be investigating. What is troubling is that four Foreign Service officers died. What is truly troubling on top of that, is that these Senators apparently believe that going on a talk show, even a series of Sunday talk shows, makes you responsible for the security of people in the field. They know that's not the case. They know that Susan Rice isn't the line manager responsible for security. Didn't block the right security for these officials or funding thereof. She's not part of the CIA. She was out there doing what they do on Sunday talk shows, which is talking about a whole range of subjects. I suspect that if you asked John McCain in an honest moment about whether he was truly expert in all the things he talks about – in his many Sunday talk show appearances, he would say that occasionally he ventured into territory that he wasn't personally responsible for and that's where you get into the question of why it's not just me, it's the op-ed board, the editorial board of The Washington Post that has said this is bizarre. Why are they pursuing Susan Rice like this? There are very troubling questions about these senators and their witch hunt that they have engaged in.
