Dick Cheney says something, Ed Schultz bloviates something else barely resembling it.
Naturally this makes Schultz very popular with liberals. (Audio clips after page break)
SCHULTZ: One final note I want to leave you with, I know you want to comment on this -- Osama bin Laden dead, Dick Cheney out taking credit for bin Laden's death today. Can you believe that?
PAPANTONIO: Yeah, Kurt Eichwald's new book, Ed, it is powerful. It's called "500 Days" and ...
SCHULTZ: I think he's gonna be on with Rachel tonight.
PAPANTONIO: Oh, it is just such a powerful book.
I'll take Papantonio's word for it that this new book by Kurt Eichenwald (mispronounced by Papantonio as "Eichwald") makes for a compelling read. As for Schultz's claim about Cheney, it is demonstrably false, a diplomatic way of saying that Schultz is lying.
Here is what Cheney actually said in remarks released to The Daily Caller on Monday in a story headlined, "Cheney responds to Obama's reportedly poor intelligence briefings attendance" --
"If President Obama were participating in his intelligence briefings on a regular basis then perhaps he would understand why people are so offended at his efforts to take sole credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden," Cheney told The Daily Caller in an email through a spokeswoman.
"Those who deserve the credit are the men and women in our military and intelligence communities who worked for many years to track him down. They are the ones who deserve the thanks of a grateful nation."
Schultz is entitled to his loathing for the former vice president, but he ought to stop short of inventing quotes and attributing them to the man.
Schultz also got it wrong a few days before that in recounting what was arguably the singular event of the Clinton presidency (audio) --
Let's not forget the witch hunt that was on Clinton for, what was the name of that thing? Whitewater. Hmm, remember that? Uh, let's not forget, uh, I believe the drugster, Rush Limbaugh, at the, when he was running his then-failed television show, accused him of killing Vince Foster, the Clintons being involved in the death of Vince Foster. I don't know if you remember those days or not, but, so those two things. And then, oh by the way, there was, I think in my mind, there was this, I don't know, this $40- or $50 million investigation, some guy named Ken Starr, remember that?
Oh yeah, they were after Clinton. And then of course the impeachment and then of course they didn't have the guts of their conviction because it was all a political process, they didn't try Clinton in the Senate. 'Cause they know it would have walked Al Gore right into the White House, but of course they couldn't do that because, hell, they had plans to steal the damn thing in 2000.
... GOP plans that apparently included a Democratic official in Palm Beach County signing off on a butterfly ballot to confuse elderly residents into voting for Bush. It was brilliant!
Knowing that Schultz enjoys reading NewsBusters, a couple of questions spring to mind. Ed, do you remember when you were in school studying the Constitution, how the House is given the "sole Power of Impeachment"? To your credit, you do recall that Clinton was impeached, but your memory falls short on what happened two months later, with the Constitution weighing in here as well. ("The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.") Contrary to what you claim, Clinton was most certainly tried in the Senate and acquitted. (Tabloid headline for the ages, courtesy of the NY Daily News -- "Close But No Cigar"). Any of this jog your memory, even a little?
Ed, you were working as a radio talk show host when the Lewinsky scandal broke in January 1998. What followed was a freakish media frenzy lasting more than a year. Remember that? Climaxing Culminating with the trial of an impeached president for only the second time in our history. Kind of a big deal when you think about it. The sort of thing you'd expect a person to remember, especially one who earns his keep opining about politics.
