After embarrassing herself with her incompetently biased attempt to “fact check” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney during the second presidential debate, CNN correspondent Candy Crowley has already began trying to save her shattered credibility. In a panel discussion afterward, a fast-talking Crowley tried to spin away her offensive conduct by admitting that Romney was indeed correct in casting blame on the Obama Administration for falsely blaming an anti-Islamic video for attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
“It was one of those moments, and I could even feel that here, you know, when you say something you’re not expecting,” Crowley insisted, admitting she simply couldn’t help herself from unprofessionally inserting herself into a heated dispute between presidential candidates.
“He was right in the main, I just think he picked the wrong word,” Crowley said, echoing the extremely legalistic reading of the facts about what President Obama meant when he said “acts of terror” in reference to the Benghazi attack.
Knowing that she is facing a tremendous amount of backlash for her outburst, Crowley tried to play down the Libya discussion in the debate, insisting it wasn't really important:
"They’re going to parse and we all know about what the definition of is is, but, I, uh, you know, in the end, I think John [King]’s probably right. I think this has a lot more to with jobs and the debt crisis and all of that kind of stuff.
If her unprofessional conduct had not been so highly visible, Crowley's sad attempts to excuse herself would be amusing since she's almost literally admitted she has a knee-jerk liberal bias. Instead they are only ironic.
Full transcript of Crowley's remarks is below:
CANDY CROWLEY: Well, you know, I heard the president speak at the time. I, sort of, reread a lot of stuff about Libya because I knew we’d probably get a Libya question so I kind of wanted to be up on it. So I knew that the president had, had, said, you know, these acts of terror won’t stand or, whatever the whole quote was.
And I think actually, you know because, right after that I did turn around and say, but you’re totally correct that they spent two weeks telling us this was about a tape and that that there was a, you know, this riot outside the Benghazi consulate which there wasn’t.
So he was right in the main, I just think he picked the wrong word. And I, you know, they’re going to parse and we all know about what the definition of is is, but, I, uh, you know, in the end, I think John [King]’s probably right. I think this has a lot more to with jobs and the debt crisis and all of that kind of stuff.
I just think that probably it was one of those moments and I could even feel that here, you know, when you say something you’re not expecting. It’s just that was the natural thing coming out of me going, ‘Actually he did, you know, call it an act of terror.’ Uh, when, you know, half the crowd clapped for that and the other half clapped for ‘But they kept telling us this was a tape, this was caused by a tape’ so, you know, in the main, the thrust of what Governor Romney was saying, which is why I went back and said that, um, but I just think he picked the wrong kind of way to go about talking about it if that makes sense.