Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has insisted that she consulted with all of her vice-chairs before deciding on the number of Democratic presidential primary debates would be held.
John Heilemann of Bloomberg Politics, in what Hot Air's Jazz Shaw described as "a rare moment of" someone in the press actually "doing their job" in fact-checking leftists, reported this morning that "I cannot find a vice-chair who was consulted in advance by Debbie Wasserman Schultz." The rest of the press appears to be completely disinterested in reporting on the DNC chair's obvious and blatant falsehood.
Heilemann made his statement on Wednesday's Morning Joe show on MSNBC (beginning with host Joe Scarborough's question at the 1:57 mark):
Relevant transcript (1:57 - 2:32; bolds are mine):
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Hold on a second, though. On the more important issue on whether Debbie called the other vice-chairmen as she told the media that she did, did she do that?
JOHN HEILEMANN: She did not. She did not. She did not. There's not a — I have not been able to find, I've done a lot of reporting on this in the last 48 hours. I cannot find a vice-chair who has, was consulted in advance by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Everybody that I have talked to, and that includes about a dozen people with knowledge of how this decision got made, all say that she made this decision unilaterally, and that the vice-chairs all learned about it via press release.
A blatant lie — multiples lies, really, based on the number of people she claims she told and didn't — made by the chairwoman of one of the country's two major political parties is apparently not news at the Associated Press, where a search on "Schultz debates" (not in quotes) comes up empty. The New York Times, which two days ago broke the story that Schultz has disinvited Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard from the debate because of her strident objections to the limited number of debates, also has no relevant stories about Schultz's lie listed in a similar search. Searches at Google News indicate that, with rare exceptions, only center-right blogs and outlets have been interested in relaying what Heilemann found.
It's almost impossible to imagine that Republican chairman Reince Priebus would get off as scot-free as Wasserman Schultz has if he were caught in such an obvious lie in a similar situation.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
