The National Journal's Ron Fournier appeared on Greta Van Susteren's Fox News show on Tuesday and blasted Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for "making facts up" and "lying" in his non-stop campaign against the eeeeevil Koch Brothers.
Bless his naive little heart, Fournier even actually said: "Shame on us if we in the media let him get away with this." "If"? What's all of a sudden going to prevent that from happening, Ron? If anything, the already slim chances that the press will cover Reid's fairy tales have decreased, given strong evidence that Washington Post reporters completely invented a story about the Koch Brothers' lease holdings in shale oil-rich Canada — a story which "just so happened" to end up being the basis for a letter to Koch Industries' President demanding answers sent by a Democratic senator and congressman. The video segment, including Van Susteren's explanation as to why Reid can legally get away with being so reckless, follows the jump (HT National Review's The Corner; bolds and paragraph breaks are mine):
Transcript:
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: The thing that's just so distressing is that, you know, you would think on the Senate floor, where you're protected from libel, you can just say anything you want. What courage, what courage to say such things from the Senate floor when you know you can let it fly.
RON FOURNIER: Shame on us if we in the media let him get away with this.
First of all, his PAC has its own wealthy billionaires who are donating to him.
Second of all, the ad is false, outright false. Representative Cassidy actually fought against the Koch brothers here — that’s not pointed out in the ad. The ad is a lie.
Third, this is the third time in a row that Harry Reid’s PAC has had an ad that’s been labeled patently false by the Washington Post. He is making facts up. He is lying.
And eventually it’s going to come around and get you. Even in this media environment we have now, I’ve got to believe that Stephen (Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard) is wrong and the Democrats will pay a high price for lying in these Senate ads. They’re lying.
Fournier at least acknowledged the existence of "this media environment we have now." Why he believes that there's any realistic chance that a national establishment press corps which provided electoral cover for President Obama on Benghazi, allowed Reid to lie about Mitt Romney's taxes in 2012, allowed all manner of Obama campaign and Obama-supportive organizations' lies to go virtually unchallenged in 2012, has done all it can to ignore the IRS tea party targeting scandal, and has strained mightily for over six months to put lipstick on the ugly pig known as Obamacare will fully expose Harry Reid's lies to the nation and cause his party to pay a high price is beyond me.
The fact that Fournier said what he did on a Fox News show is telling by itself. He would never be allowed on CNN, MSNBC, or any of the the Big Three networks to say what he said on Tuesday. So Ron, exactly how is Reid's campaign of deceit going to blow up in his face if it never gets exposed outside of center-right outlets?
Here's a constructive idea, Ron: Publicly give credit to center-right outlets and blogs as the only ones who are unearthing this administration's and its party's cronyism, corruption, and intrusiveness.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
