Politico vs. The AP
December 02, 2009 12:50 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
Covering the all-important White House crasher story, Politico and the AP come to drastically different conclusions even though both are working off the same set of facts. It seems Politico just wanted to improve its version of the story.
From the AP, headline:
WH gate-crashers went without confirmed invitation
Lede:
Copies of e-mails between the White House party crashers and a Pentagon official undermine their claims that they were invited to President Barack Obama's first state dinner.
Seems pretty straight forward, right? The party crashers, contrary to their public claims, had no invitation and nobody associated with the WH told them they did. In fact, the AP confirmed that the WH liaison called the party crashers hours before the state dinner and confirmed that they did not have invites:
Now look at how Politico spins that very same AP report. Headline:
W.H. Liaison Implicated in the E-mails?
Note the use of the question mark. Politico, basing its report solely on the AP article, cannot even remotely suggest the WH emails implicated the liaison--the facts simply don't support the claim--so Politico does the next best Drudgy thing and poses it as a question.
They've said that they showed up to SEE if anything had been worked out to get them in at the last minute.
But they prepped all day, acting like they knew they were getting in.
I'd like to hear what they told the Bravo TV crew that was following them around.
But we have heard from one of the people in the salon that the wife went to that day. When she was asked about the invite, when someone wanted to see it, she dug through her purse, like it was in there, but she didn't readily find it.
But we now know that it was NEVER in there, because she NEVER HAD an invite! She was pretending to look for something that she knew wasn't there.
And we also know that it was a day-long visit to that spa-salon for her, and when the receptionist/bookkeeper asked the husband about paying for the treatments/hairstyling/make-up they did, the husband told her that it was complimentary per the owner's decision. That woman then asked the owner, and the owner told her 'no', that he had not agreed to free services. The husband paid eventually.
Dishonest people all around.
Politico is just carrying the water for the right side of the aisle in questioning the liaison's role in this.
Their names were not on the list, and apparently they were told that their names were not on the list, yet they lied to the liaison that there names WERE on the list.
And they were kicked out of another dinner last month for the Black Congressional Caucus I believe. But what did they say about anyone trying to attend an event like this without tickets? That no one would possibly try to attend an event like this without a ticket - except they had done that very thing, and had gotten caught!
Dishonest through and through!
NEWSIES, IF YOU DON'T KNOW IT'S NOT NEWS AND CANNOT BE SAVED BY PUTTING A QUESTION MARK AT THE END.
Politico Full of S***?
Wow, this journalism stuff is easy!