Stop the presses! Stop the presses!
One of Barack Obama's biggest fans in the media, David Letterman, said on Tuesday's Late Show that he was "upset" and "discouraged" the president during Monday's debate lied about Mitt Romney wanting to let Detroit go bankrupt (video follows with transcript and commentary):
DAVID LETTERMAN, HOST: Here's what upset me last night, this playing fast and loose with facts. And the President Obama cites the op-ed piece that Romney wrote about Detroit, “Let them go bankrupt, let them go bankrupt,” and last night he brings it up again. “Oh, no, Governor, you said let them go bankrupt, blah blah blah, let them go bankrupt.” And Mitt said, “No, no, check the thing, check the thing, check the thing.”
Now, I don't care whether you're Republican or Democrat, you want your president to be telling the truth; you want the contender to be lying. And so what we found out today or soon thereafter that, in fact, the President Obama was not telling the truth about what was excerpted from that op-ed piece. I felt discouraged.
RACHEL MADDOW: Because the "Let Detroit go bankrupt" headline you feel like was inappropriate?
LETTERMAN: Well, the fact the President is invoking it and swearing that he was right and that Romney was wrong and I thought, well, he's the president of course he's right. Well, it turned out no, he was taking liberties with that.
Well, Dave, from those of us that analyze the media, let me just say that if you paid attention to this matter from its inception, you would have known that the President, his party, and the press that support them have been badly misrepresenting this issue for years.
Maybe more importantly, they've been misinforming the public on numerous things, and you've been a part of it.
However, one has to wonder what set Letterman off enough to bring this up?
After all, this is not the most egregious example of this White House playing fast and loose with the facts. Or is this just the first one Letterman could grasp?
Regardless of the answer, it's nice to know the Late Show host has some veracity line in the sand that can't be crossed no matter how much he loves a politician.
