On Thursday night's Media Mash on Fox News Channel, Sean Hannity and MRC president Brent Bozell were quick off the mark, denouncing Chris Matthews for failing to press Barack Obama about the broken promises and lies of Obamacare.
Both men lined up questions they would have asked. "Let's say little old Sean Hannity gets to interview the president. What, at this moment, you have an audience of kids, what are the main questions that you think, that you would ask the president?" (Video, transcript below)
HANNITY: I'll give you my list off the top. What do you say to those people you promised if they liked their plan, they keep their plan, but lost their plan? What do you say to those people who liked their doctor, lost their doctor, when you said they can keep their doctor? What do you say to those people, those families that you promised would save on average $2500 per family per year? What do you say to the country about you said it would be $900 billion and now it's $2.7-or-8 trillion. Did you know that people wouldn't be able to keep their plan, but say it anyway? Were those questions asked, Brent Bozell? No. What other questions?
BOZELL: No, no, another one. How about just asking the question, Mr. President, just yesterday you spoke to a national audience and you lied. You said the republicans have no [health] plans. The Republicans have been putting out one plan after another since 2009. It was just sheerly dishonest. No, Chris Matthews is not going to ask him any serious questions. What is going on here is the president is now in full community organizer mode. You are seeing it with the chest thumping rhetoric, you're seeing it with the ugly accusations, you're seeing it with the lying. And he's looking for the most comfortable venue that will be most sympathetic to him, and that's why he's on MSNBC with Chris Matthews.
HANNITY: Frankly, Noah Rothman over at Mediaite had a good line. I think it's a desperate move by the president to do this, and frankly, fairly pathetic, because I don't think he can answer [tough Obamacare] questions in a way that would be credible to the American people.
Scott Whitlock reported that on a show still mysteriously called "Hardball," sympathetic Matthews could only ask Obama about how he would like to encourage the twentysomethings to sign up:
MATTHEWS: You have a great audience here of-- college age-- people and some graduate students and faculty. There's some resistance out there among young people-- We've seen it in the polls-- to, to enrolling in the-- in the exchanges and to get involved in taking responsibility for their health care. What's your argument why they should do that?
After listing their questions, Hannity turned to a funny clip of Matthews trying to say Obamacare is a great theme, but the president had bad spelling and handwriting on it:
MATTHEWS: I think I would compare it [the ObamaCare fiasco], Andrea, to a brilliant writer, perhaps, with a great theme who turns in a paper with a lot of misspellings, or bad handwriting. It's a bad way to roll out something. With all the great strengths, potentially, of a national health care system along these lines, the way it was rolled out has hurt it. It hurt its reputation. It's given the other side a lot of talking points to use against the President generally in terms of his competence.
Hannity called that "hero worship." Bozell just tried to keep from laughing through an answer:
BOZELL: When they're down to this, it's time to punt the ball and go to something else! When you're going to [laughs] -- when you're going to say the reason Obamacare isn't working, bad handwriting! [Laughs] . I mean, you've to say, you've run out of excuses here! It's time to move on to another subject. This isn't selling, but again, in community organizer mode, you go to your base and try to mobilize your base. The minority base. That's what he's down to. It is panic mode for this administration.
