Limbaugh And Hannity Report Biden's Alleged Comments As Fact

Limbaugh: “Biden Did Call” The Tea Party “Terrorists.” From The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: Tea party guy was off prompter. Anyway, I'm going to have to translate all this. Ryan Rhodes said I would like to understand why your vice president is calling us terrorists. Obama: OK, I'll explain it right now, he didn't call you guys terrorists. And of course, he definitely lied because Biden did. It would be great if CBS News would release Biden's own denial so that we can hear that. But Biden did call them terrorists. I mean, hell, the whole Democrat Party was calling them terrorists. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 8/16/11]

Hannity: “By All Accounts,” The Terrorist “Statement Was Made By Biden.” From Fox News' Hannity:

HANNITY: All right. This just in from Iowa, President Obama got in a heated debate back and forth with a Tea Party activists demanding to know what a town hall whether or not Vice President Biden had called members of the Tea Party terrorists, during the debt ceiling debate. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: When you went to him privately and said, look, your Vice President call the Tea Party terrorists, what did he said?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Well, he just denied it. And he said the vice president didn't make any of those assertions. And so, if he doesn't want to even admit what was on TV nationally, all over the place. Then how can you even have a conversation, but then he decided to say, well, we can't have a conversation because you are saying that I called you terrorists. I mean, you know, the fact is, it demonstrates the deep divide.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Now, by all accounts that statement was made by Biden. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/15/11, accessed via Nexis]

But The Report Was Anonymously Sourced And Explicitly Denied By Biden

CBS: Biden Explicitly Denied Allegation, Calling It “Absolutely Not True.” From CBS News:

Vice President Joe Biden tells CBS News that published reports that he compared Tea Party-linked lawmakers to “terrorists” during a closed-door meeting Monday are “absolutely not true.”

“I did not use the terrorism word,” Biden told CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Scott Pelley.

[...]

Biden told Pelley he let lawmakers “vent” about the deal, which includes spending cuts but may not include revenue increases. (Some liberal House Democrats have vowed not to back the deal.) But he says he did not assert that he agreed with the terrorism comparison.

“What happened was there were some people who said they felt like they were being held hostage by terrorists,” he said. “I never said that they were terrorists or weren't terrorists, I just let them vent.”

Added Biden: “I said even if that were the case, what's been happening when you now have taken and paid the debt and move that down so we can now discuss, the nuclear weapon's been taken out of anyone's hands.” [CBSNews.com, 8/1/11]

Politico Attributed Claim About Biden To Anonymous “Sources In The Room.” From Politico:

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation's debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

Biden, driven by his Democratic allies' misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists.” [Politico, 8/1/11]