CNN correspondent Suzanne Malveaux made an apparent Freudian slip in response to a sound bite on health care reform from Senator Mitch McConnell on Monday’s American Morning. Malveaux initially labeled McConnell’s remark, in which the Senate Minority Leader cracked that the “only thing bipartisan about the measures so far is the opposition to them,” as a “snippy little phrase there” [audio clip from the segment available here].
The correspondent filed a report just after the beginning of the 6 am Eastern hour about the Obama’s administration and Democratic leaders’ efforts to get their health care “reform” package passed in Congress. Malveaux stated that “obviously, in public, there’s a lot of confidence. You heard Nancy Pelosi. You talk to White House aides....In an e-mail that I got this morning, however, one of the top White House aides was saying, look, this is a time when it’s important that the president look credible- look viable, still in this debate, and that the one thing that they are trying to get across to folks is that he is still a player in this, that he has not lost his political capital, despite the fact that he...did not get what he wanted this time around.”
After paying a clip from Obama aide David Axelrod from CNN’s State of the Union program on Sunday, where he tried to spin the administration’s failure to get their plan passed by the August recess, Malveaux described that there were still “hurdles” in the way of getting the “reform” package passed. She then played the sound bite from McConnell, who also appeared on State of the Union, where he warned that “the House bill and the Senate Health Committee bill- they pay for it by cutting doctors, cutting hospitals, and raising taxes on small business...they’re having a hard time selling it to their own...members. The only thing bipartisan about the measures so far is the opposition to them.”
Malveaux followed with her “snippy” label:
MALVEAUX: Well, that’s a snippy little phrase there- snappy phrase, but obviously, there’s something that a lot of people are feeling here- that this is going to be something that’s going to be tough. There’s still some real splits between the Democrats- some real problems the Republicans have with the bill. But the White House officials here believe that you put the president out there. He’ll be out there again this week, Alina, and in the weeks to come in August- August is not going to be some sort of grand recess for the president, that he’s going to be trying to push as much as possible behind the scenes- do a little bit more arm twisting as well.
Actually, McConnell was actually more ironical in his statement than snippy, but Malveaux might know something about being “snippy,” as she became a bit that way after Senator John McCain referred to then-candidate Obama as “that one” during the last weeks of the presidential campaign in 2008.
