"I appreciate that you are correctly fact-checking the Republican claims."
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell actually said this to Obama Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Wednesday in a discussion about oil and gas prices (video follows with transcript and commentary):
KEN SALAZAR, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR: People who are running for office mislead the American people by saying that there’s a three-point plan or a bumper sticker kind of way of bringing down gasoline prices. The fact of the matter is that nobody can do that. The price of oil is set on the global economy. People who have looked at this closely and hard know that’s the case.
And so what the President is doing is being truthful to the American people. The political opponents are not. But the President's point of view is that we need to keep on the sustained program that we have been pursuing with an all of the above energy strategy to make sure that we get to energy independence and energy security for the United States. And that way the American people won't have to go through the kind of pain that they're experiencing right now or that they've experienced a number of times in the last 20, 30 years.
That really deserves repeating a third time: I appreciate that you are correctly fact-checking the Republican claims.
Now, in fairness to Mitchell, this comment came in the middle of a segment where she did question her guest about Politifact finding fault with comments President Obama has made about the number of oil rigs currently in operation.
At the end of the interview, Mitchell also noted that Presidents Clinton and Bush deserve some of the credit for how much oil is currently being drilled on American soil.
But "I appreciate that you are correctly fact-checking the Republican claims?"
C'monnnnn.
(H/T RCP)
