**UPDATE** On Wednesday morning, Chuck Todd played the audio of Obama's speech from 1998 on his show The Daily Rundown, 4 hours before appearing on Andrea Mitchell Reports who refused to play the clip for "authenticity" reasons.
It took less than 12 hours after it was published online at the website of leftist magazine Mother Jones for a video secretly recorded at a Mitt Romney fundraiser in May to appear all over NBC and MSNBC. The heavily-edited video, obtained by the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, has been a staple of MSNBC coverage the past two days.
Fast forward to Wednesday when audio of then-State Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) speaking at Loyola University talking about his support for wealth redistribution. MSNBC refused to play the audio on air. On her show Wednesday, Andrea Mitchell claimed that the network's reason was: [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
Because we have not authenticated this 14-year-old tape from Loyola College when Barack Obama was a State Senator. So because we have not independently at NBC News and MSNBC authenticated it, we're not airing it. But the basic issue is, they're accusing President Obama as John Sununu said to me yesterday of class warfare, that is trying to change the subject
Chuck Todd defended the decision to not to air the audio either claiming that:
Well it is. Look, this to me feels more about look at where they distributed it, they went to the Drudge Report to make sure the audio got out there.
Apparently Todd and Mitchell believe that the Obama campaign’s lack of denial over the authenticity of the audio isn’t enough evidence to justify playing the audio on their network. Unsurprisingly, NBC had no problem rushing to play a video obtained by the liberal Mother Jones and plastering the video all over their networks, even though it was clearly placed in a liberal publication to further an anti-Romney feeding frenzy in the media, much like Todd insists the Obama audio was treated by conservatives placing it on Drudge Report in order to bait the media to cover that.
Hilariously, one hour later on NewsNation with Tamron Hall, NBC apparently WAS able to confirm the authenticity of the Obama clip and played it on air exposing Mitchell’s attempts to cover up President Obama’s controversial comments.
See relevant transcript below.
MSNBC
ANDREA MITCHELL REPORTS
September 19, 2012
1:06 p.m. EDT
ANDREA MITCHELL: Let's explain this redistribution issue because we have not authenticated this 14-year-old tape from Loyola College when Barack Obama was a State Senator. So because we have not independently at NBC News and MSNBC authenticated it, we're not airing it. But the basic issue is, they're accusing President Obama as John Sununu said to me yesterday of class warfare, that is trying to change the subject, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD: Well it is. Look, this to me feels more about look at where they distributed it, they went to the Drudge Report to make sure the audio got out there. This is about reassuring I think the base, that hey wait a minute, don’t, they spent a lot of time over the last 48 hours making phone calls to donors, doing conference calls, trying to sort of calm everybody down, don't flee the ship, yes it's been a rough couple weeks, yes the convention could have gone better but hey look, as bad as it is, take the worst poll out there, we're only down five or six points. This is not –
MITCHELL: Exactly. But let's –
TODD: But I want to make a point about fundraising. It is amazing to me that yesterday, let's talk about both schedules, the president had to spend his day in New York raising money, and Mitt Romney had to spend his day in Dallas and Salt Lake City, two important places for him to raise money and we're in September. And it just seems to me, I just think, I can't believe both principles are having to spend this much time raising money. We know they need it –
MITCHELL: Something wrong really wrong with the system.
TODD: But it's like guys, you got to -- it seems to be more time -- I'm sure they both would rather be campaigning. And I do think that Romney's schedule, it seems to be too much fund-raisers and not enough campaigning.
