Jake Tapper and ABC News are apparently agreeing with Tucker Carlson that the biggest racist in the country is President Obama:
On the eve of the first presidential debate, the conservative website The Daily Caller Tuesday circulated previously unreported clips of a five-year-old speech in which then-Senator Barack Obama praised his controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and suggested the federal government discriminated against the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
“I’ve got to give a special shout-out to my pastor. The guy who puts up with me. Counsels me. Listens to my wife complain about me. He’s a friend. And a great leader,” the president said of Wright in an address to the Hampton University Annual Ministers’ Conference in Hampton, Va., in June 2007 in video posted by The Daily Caller and first aired on Fox News.
ABC News ran that clip in a March 2008 piece on “World News Tonight with Charles Gibson.” At the time, prepared remarks of Obama’s speech were released by the campaign and a local newspaper posted a nine-minute edited video of the address. What ABC News and many others, including The Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson, covered at the time was based on that edited video and the prepared remarks.
As ABC News reported at the time, Obama implied the Bush administration had ignored what he called “quiet riots” in the United States — serious instances of poverty and hopelessness that had gone unaddressed by the federal government.
But the full version of the speech, posted on The Daily Caller website this evening, shows Obama taking that argument a step further, suggesting the federal government overlooked the needs of residents of New Orleans suffering in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, as opposed to victims of other disasters in other parts of the country.
“Down in New Orleans, where they still have not rebuilt 20 months later,” Obama says, “there’s a law, federal law — when you get reconstruction money from the federal government — called the Stafford Act. And basically it says, when you get federal money, you’ve got to give a 10 percent match. The local government’s got to come up with 10 percent. Every 10 dollars the federal government comes up with, local government’s got to give a dollar.
“Now here’s the thing, when 9/11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act — said, ‘This is too serious a problem. We can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget that dollar you got to put in. Well, here’s 10 dollars.’ And that was the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, ‘Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with y’own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not going to wait for you to scratch it together — because you’re part of the American family.’ … What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money? Makes no sense. Tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much.”
Carlson told Fox Tuesday night the clips were evidence the then-candidate was “whipping up race hatred and fear. Period.”
So, umm… Was he wrong? Were there exceptions for 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew and not Katrina? Why was that?
Nowhere in the piece was any discussion over whether or not Obama still smokes cigarettes, so I am not sure how much of this is Tapper’s or Mary Bruce’s:
Last August, I ran into Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, outside the Senate chamber in the Capitol.
This was before the Obama surge, before he had omnipresent Secret Service agents, back when you might see him strolling solo.
We chatted for a second, mainly about the Pakistan speech he’d recently given and about how the media had covered it. He was in good spirits.
As any close friend or family member can attest, I have an unusually keen sense of smell and immediately I smelled cigarette smoke on Obama. Frankly, he reeked of cigarettes.
Obama ran off before I could ask him if he’d just snuck a smoke, so I called his campaign.
They denied it. He’d quit months before, in February, they insisted. He chewed nicorette.
But I knew what I’d smelled and I asked his campaign to double-check and to ask him if he’d had a cigarette.
Up next- ABC News airs Obama in the Whitey Tape.
Is there anything more depressing than a White House Reporter regurgitating shit from Tucker Carlson and Matt Drudge and advancing the BLACK PEOPLE ARE THE REAL RACISTS trope?
I guess the election is not close enough, so journamalists must do what they need to to get the Drudge and Free Republic hits and simultaneously change the dynamic of the race. Or maybe audition for a job at their sister network.
So sad.
Hill Dweller
The amazing thing is Obama says nothing about race in those quotes. It’s that douchebag Carlson who injects race into the story.
El Cid
Wait — why would it be surprising that Obama praised Rev. Wright before the whole Rev. Wright scandal that got nowhere electorally (and as if Southern Baptists aren’t continually damning the US to hell for supporting gays or whatever) and before he denounced him?
I mean, they are aware that the only reason there was a ‘Jeremiah Wright scandal’ was because Obama had been going to the church he led?
Was the assumption that Obama would be showing up each week in church for no other reason than to loudly condemn the very preacher who was leading the service?
Though I agree that would have made him an intriguing character.
Alison
Hannity was apparently also in fine form on this: http://www.salon.com/2012/10/03/right_wing_racial_panic//
And by “fine form” I mean fucking disgusting, of course. The Twitters tell me he actually did a “black person” voice, which…I don’t know, for Hannity probably means he tried to talk like Jules from Pulp Fiction?
Ever ever closer to the ni-CLANG moment, I swear. I’d bet $10,000 of Romney’s money on it.
JCJ
I think Romney can win if he opens the debate with something along these lines: “I might be a member of some cult, but that motherfucker is BLACK! Seriously! He is B-L-A-C-K!” It looks like Jake Tapper, et al would simply say that both sides do it.
Burnspbesq
This is the best they’ve got?
In other news, the kid got to meet Michelle O. tonight in Seattle. He is pretty amped up about it.
LT
WORST fucking racists in the history of our beautiful country was ni**ers who got lynched. Never has anyone cause so much racial divisiveness.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In their defense, they later provide some context that undercuts Hannity and Carlson
But… isn’t this what they used to call burying the lede? Shouldn’t the story be that the Pudge Brothers are trying to dishonestly trying to pimp racism? that what is supposedly a scandalous scoop was one aspect of what OBama was saying all year? And that what Obama was saying was a specific legislative angle on what everybody in the fucking country and everybody in the fucking world knew, that Bush & CO fucked up in their immediate and long term response to Katrina?
LT
Tapper says it’s “previously unreported”.
Already debunked.
El Cid
Only Barack Obama, out of all people in the nation, found the US response to Katrina to fail to adequately respond to poor black residents’ needs.
Needs including having police shooting them down without cause and covering up the crime and not allowing them to flee to safer land over a bridge and make up shit about how they had turned the Super Dome into the Thunder Dome, and such, and print photos of white people going into evacuated shops getting supplies while printing photos of black people doing the same and calling them ‘looters’.
They are so poor, and so black…
El Cid
@LT: And the way they purposefully marred all the scenic views by so blatantly rotting from the trees from which they were hung.
Another Halocene Human
CNN-Caucasian News Network
ABC-Anybody But Color
handy
Look e’eryone, Obama’s droppin’ his “G”s and gettin’ all black y’all.
Rightwing nut jobs: 2008 called and wants its “Paint Obama As A Dangerous Radical” tactics back.
They’re apoplectic over the fact the Mother Jones 47% video got so much traction and set Romney on his heels. Obama got some heat for the Rev. Wright thing for about two news cycles but it lost all its juice ever since–and it drives these idiots nuts.
Hill Dweller
That is a good line.
SatanicPanic
This is going to make minorities want to vote for Republicans. VICTORY!!
patroclus
I think someone is getting a little desperate. Obama has been President for four years since the Jeremiah Wright issue war raised and dealt with and he has an actual record which can be debated. Jeremiah Wright is no longer a pastor anywhere and no longer exerts any influence on Obama. The video actually depicts Obama saying he didn’t think race had anything to do with Bush’s incompetence regarding Hurrican Katrina.
The one thing I believe about the whole story is that Obama probably still sneaks a smoke from time to time. Otherwise, the story is merely a rehash of Spring 2008 and isn’t really all that relevant to anything. But if this is the Republicans’ issue one month before an election, I think they should push it hard because it says more about them than it does about Obama.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Maddow talked about this on her show tonight, and gave it the treatment it deserves.
handy
I mean WAKE UP SHEEPLE! The President is a BLACK GUY! HOw did this happen? WHERE IS THE VETTING?!
KG
Gawd, I was really hoping our resident troll was going to be here spinning this like a 45. His hopes were so so high earlier today
amk
previously unreported ? dafuq? fuqqing liars/idjits.
rev wright, rev wright.
DPS
Are you kidding? Black people have it made in this country. They get free phones from Obama and everything. They don’t need unusual help when a whole city is drowned. They can pull themselves up by their phone cords.
LD50
well, we all wondered how much longer it would be before the race baiting started going mainstream…
Mister Papercut
I know it’s a massive sign of my white privilege, but honestly, it took the whole Reverend Wright non-scandal to make me realize that white people really, really get off on dictating to blacks how to conduct their affairs (and probably doubly so from the supposedly self-made, “Bein’ white ain’t never privileged me one bit!”-crowd). Fucking self-awareness and considering an alternate viewpoint, how do they work?
Violet
Remember when Jake Tapper commented here? Fun times.
Mnemosyne
I do love how the DC doesn’t bother to mention that Obama was talking about the 1992 LA riots, which means he was talking about Bush Sr.’s ignoring of the “quiet riots” that happened before the big one grabbed everyone’s attention.
And he was incorrect because ….
If Republicans want to bring up Hurricane Katrina in this election, I say Bring.It.Mo.Ther.Fuc.Kers. They have NO conception of how much of a breaking point Katrina was for a lot of formerly loyal Republican voters. Please, please remind all of those Republicans who voted for Obama in 2008 exactly why they did that in the first place. I’m begging you.
patroclus
@Violet: Yeah, I remember when Jake Tapper made up allegations out of wholecloth that Laura Ingraham received death threats based on no evidence whatsoever. Such a fine journalist Mr. Tapper is!
Arundel
I just cannot stand Jake Tapper. Saying this video was “previously unreported” is a demonstrable lie and a journalistic crime. Simply untrue. And, where’s the bombshell? WHAT in the fuck about the video that’s been available for years, that even Republican operatives in the 2008 election knew about , is so shocking? Man, I hate our MSM, I cannot believe that asshats like Tapper get paid the salaries they do for being such dishonest hacks.
Violet
@patroclus: Yep. Reading that thread again is just as infuriating as the first time. Jake Tapper is good at what he’s paid to be good at: being a stenographer for power and furthering his own career. Journalism and truth? Notsomuch.
LT
@El Cid: Yeah. Exactly. Bastard lynchees.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Replace “Barack Obama” with “Tucker Carlson”, and you may have something there.
handy
@amk:
“This video clip we broadcast five years ago has never been reported on until now.” Some Grade-A level Orwellian Doublethink aint it?
ETA: Or Tapper is just monumentally sloppy. Take your pick.
patroclus
@Mnemosyne: Indeed, the Republican position appears to be that Brownie did, in fact, do a heckuva job. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think that’s a particularly winning argument.
But if the lying smearing Republicans want to re-litigate Katrina, by all means, go for it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne:
There’s a very weird cluster-think on the right in this round, they don’t just want to pretend the financial meltdown happened on Jan 21 2009, they really seem to think no one remembers or cares about the Bush years. It’s true that as a people, we have been too forgiving. Condi Rice has a 65% approval rating. But they seem genuinely bewildered that people don’t blame Obama for the shitty economy, they have the gall to criticize Obama for ‘turmoil’ in the middle east, and Ryan specifically mentioned ‘American flags burned around the world, and the fucking capper, on Benghazi
Rumsfeld: It ‘Has Got To Be Embarrassing’ To Get Intelligence Wrong
Violet
Here’s the first post that DougJ posted about Jake Tapper’s behavior on the Laura Ingraham show. The previous post I linked above is the follow up. Tapper comments in both and DOES NOT like being called on his crap.
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.)
Well, yeah, blacks are the real racists. I mean, what kind of shot do white people have to get anywhere in this country? We haven’t had a white president in something like 12 or 15 generations* And I’ll bet that white people make up less than 25 or 30% of presidents and prime ministers in the world. How is that fair? I’m glad that Mr. Carlson and his top-flight newspaper are bringing these shameful facts to light.
*Measured in the lifespan of voles.
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
Shit, I just realized that it’s ABC News via Tapper claiming that Obama was talking about W when he was actually referencing the 1992 LA riots.
What a fucking joke of a “news” organization. I’m actually embarrassed for them to have Tapper post an out-and-out lie like that on their website. That’s right, Jakey, I actually read the transcript of the speech, so I know you lied. Better hope none of your bosses get around to it.
Violet
@Mnemosyne: Click on the links in my comments above to see where he chuckles along with Laura Ingraham, refuses to say anything about her lies, and then posts in the comments here to defend his lack of journalistic integrity. Nothing has changed.
sherifffruitfly
I wish ABL had posted this, so we could see 300 comments telling her how oversensitive and reverse-racist she is.
gwangung
@sherifffruitfly: Heh.
And co-signed.
patroclus
@Violet: Like I said two years ago in your link, I think you’re wrong when you state that Jake “chuckles” along with Laura Ingraham’s non-facts; I think, as I did then, that he was “giggling” along with Ms. Ingraham’s non-facts.
But the worst was when he stated that “the audio tape would back him up” when, of course, it didn’t.
And now, two and a half years later, Tapper’s claiming that the video tape of Obama’s speech is going to back him up on the absurd notion that Obama blamed racism for Bush/Brownie’s Katrina incompetence. I listened to the tape, helpfully provided above, and no, Obama didn’t blame racism at all. Kanye West certainly did, but not Obama. Obama’s opinion was that the undeniable Katrina incompetence was color-blind. Yet another example of Tapper not adhering to fact – he apparently has learned no lessons whatsoever in over two years.
rb
@sherifffruitfly:
I wish ABL had posted this, so we could see 300 comments telling her how oversensitive and reverse-racist she is.
Ha! No kidding.
jshooper
A black man socializing with more than 3 other black people at the same time is automatically divisive (the NBA and NFL are perfect examples)…Also a black man speaking at a University is divisive…But a BLACK PRESIDENT (with a arab name) is the most egregious desecration of American culture that could ever be devised…The fact that Obama even exists and will go down in history as a United States President drives right wingers (and some firebaggers) INSANE…He had the nerve to intrude into their lily white world and no matter what they do…they can’t erase him from their lives
cbear
Oh goody, this gives me a chance to reprise my 2008 response to Tapper regarding the infamous “Obama Smoking” kerfuffle:
Last August, I ran into Jake Tapper, media guy, outside a bar in the Capitol.
This was before the promotion to ABC News, before he had the omnipresent publicity agents, back when you might see him strolling solo.
We chatted for a second, mainly about the Iraq War and about how he and the media had fucked up the coverage of it. He was in good spirits.
As any close friend or family member can attest, I have an unusually keen sense of smell and I immediately smelled goat semen on Tapper. Frankly, he reeked of goat semen.
Tapper ran off before I could ask him if he’d just blown a goat, so I called his producers.
They denied it. He’d quit blowing goats months before, in February, they insisted. He chewed goat-dick flavored toothpicks .
But I knew what I’d smelled and I asked his producers to double-check and to ask him if he’d blown a goat.
They reported back that he had told them he had not blown a goat since he quit.
And maybe that was true. Maybe I imagined the goat semen. My olfactory nerve somehow misfired.
Except….last night on MSNBC’s Hardball, Tapper admitted that his attempt to wean himself from blowing goats had not been entirely successful.
“I fell off the wagon (into the barnyard) a couple times during the course of it, and then was able to get back on,” he said. “But it is a struggle like everything else.”
Now I wonder about last August.
It’s not a big deal in the scheme of things—his infantile articles, his incessant regurgitation of gooper talking points—indeed, it’s miniscule. Hardly worth mentioning.
Except that I don’t like feeling that I was not being dealt with honestly. And as much as journalists who are suspect of ordinary citizens might scoff at such a notion, we consider ourselves to have the right to the truth, and to be sure the media is telling us the truth, about blowing goats, and illegal wars, and leading the country down a path so many of us know is the wrong one. (Corny, I know.)
Mike B
Sane people watch the video and wonder what they are supposed to be enraged about.
Republicans watch the video — or Obama doing anything — and they just see this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFY2kJ96jNY
russell
obama might smoke, but he’ll still kick carlson’s ass in a game of one-on-one.
and yes, it’s true that blacks are the real racists. if they weren’t so freaking black, we could all get along.
zzyzx
I was thinking that if you made a list of the reasons why something becomes a scandal, this meets none of them:
(1) Has a easy to distribute video clip that can just be played to offend people
(2) Fits an existing narrative about the candidate
(3) Helps to define someone who we don’t really know much about.
What we have here is a 40 minute speech that can seem bad to people who already believe if you stop and explain step by step where the problems are. Since no groundwork had been laid by the mainstream to present Obama as a racial radical – although it has been made on the Hannity show over and over again so this is another way where this will preach to the already converted – that isn’t really the insult against him. Again contrast to Romney where had been presented as not caring about the non-rich before his infamous statement about non caring about the non-rich. Finally, Obama has been president for 4 years. It’s hard to drum up the same fears that he’d be black first, president second when none of that has happened yet.
Lurking Canadian
Anything to distract from the 47% video. I hope people greet this with the scorn it deserves.
jeremy
@jshooper: You mean African name. Obama is a african name not arab.
Ash Can
Violet brought it up, so I’ll add on. Remember when Jake Tapper came here and got his can kicked all over the comment thread, and Cole got all up in everyone’s grill for kicking Tapper around instead of being decent and asking him a bunch of questions? Shit like this is why Tapper got his can kicked.
redshirt
Were they Menthol cigarettes, Jake?
Egads. We need to clean the stables that is the MSM. Full of shit.
Also too: Did Repuglicans WINZ TEH DAY? That’s all that matters, after all.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@jeremy: Hussein is Arabic.
Marshall
Nothing from 2008 counts (for Obama*). That’s just the way it is. He is, like him or not, going to be regarded by the Public as a known quantity. (This is not a liberal bias; the same was true for Bush in 2004.)
* If something came out from 2008 regarding Romney, it would be relevant as he is not yet a known quantity, not having been President for the last four years.
kay
I think it was inevitable. Things have to be even-steven or political media are full of angst and fretting.
If Mitt Romney has a damaging secret video, Obama has to have a damaging secret video too.
It doesn’t matter that Obama gave this speech publicly, and it doesn’t matter that they already covered it and it doesn’t matter that some of them praised the speech at the time it was given, like Maureen Dowd did.
We have to do the absolutely dumbest, lowest level of compare/contrast, every day, and we must never, ever get beyond that.
This speech is EXACTLY THE SAME as the Romney 47% video, because they say so.
The only thing missing at this point is them saying the speech is Obama’s Katrina. We could come full circle on the mind-numbing idiocy of this constant attempt to equate one thing with another thing.
Jay in Oregon
Tweet of the Year in the Unintentional Hilarity category goes to:
https://twitter.com/Flyingright1/status/253316129240539136
Hat tip to Alex Pareene and TBogg for giving that wider exposure…
kay
@Jay in Oregon:
So funny. I just love when it circles back on itself and becomes ludicrous, which seems to happen more and more often.
I think the difference between attacking Obama on his race (allowed, even expected) and attacking Romney on his religion (absolutely forbidden) is that white people have varied religions. Off limits, due to collateral damage. Might mistakenly hit a random white person, and we can’t have that.
John PM
I saw the story this morning on WGN Morning “News.” I just know this is going to be the first question Obama gets tonight
kay
@John PM:
He’ll do fine with it. He’s been answering this same question, phrased slightly differently, for his whole public life. Forget “public”. I imagine he’s been answering this question since he was 5 years old.
Southern Beale
Oh YES Republicans, PLEASE make this election about the Bush Administration’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina. PRETTY PLEASE! I’m pretty sure that resulted in the Democrats retaking the House in the November 2006 election.
The Klown
Whoever that was impersonating Obama in that video needs to work on his voice – that totally did not sound like Obama. It sounded like somebody trying to talk like a black preacher.
He did look just like Obama though.
Bobby Thomson
Oh, good. We don’t have to pretend Tapper has any integrity.
Today.
But just watch, eventually one of the many things he does won’t be godawfully stupid and dishonest and Cole and DougJ will tell us to lay off again.
Tone In DC
@Mister Papercut:
LULz.
Mnemosyne
@jeremy:
Barack is an Arabic name.
MikeJ
@Mnemosyne: Jewish too. Deborah’s general.
tomvox1
I like this strange elision by Tapper/Bruce:
So are they saying that ABC somehow did not have access to the “full version” of the tape in 2008? Or that they did but chose not to air it but now it is newsworthy when it wasn’t then? Or they did not at that time have the expertise in deciphering “dog sirens” that Carlson so ably provides today?
Pretzel logic in extremis and really a very shameful demonstration by everybody’s favorite “reporter with integrity” Tapper.
Tractarian
@handy:
This. The right wing is desperate for their own 47% tape. And they are furious that every one of their contrived non-troversies is met with a collective “Meh” by the public, to-wit:
GOP: Fast and Furious! Public: You mean the DOJ engaged in a botched gunwalking operation that the President was not directly involved in? YAWN.
GOP: Benghazi cover-up! Public: Wait, the Obama Administration decided to wait until investigations were done before declaring that this was terrorism? DOUBLE YAWN.
GOP: Whitey tape! Public: So Obama said nice things about his pastor? And he thinks the Bush Administration f*cked up its response to Katrina? YAWNY-YAWNERSON.
The amusing thing is, it’s not that Obama is made of Teflon. It’s that these non-troversies are devoid of any substance. You’ve heard of damning with faint praise; this is praising with faint damnation. And it’s so transparently political that it’s turning off swing voters.
Patricia Kayden
This post is funny because so many Black people feel that President Obama hasn’t been Black enough. He’s fine with me, but looks like he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
Debbie Lerman
Remember Obama’s kick-ass speech in response to the Rev. Wright uproar? Here’s a video he inspired:
href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpgTmLwH4bo”>
Paul in KY
Anybody who doesn’t understand that Karl Rove & company knew that the only reason LA ever goes Democratic was because of NO & thus the less people there, the better for GOP is a dingbat.