When a CNN reporter all but calls an Obama surrogate a liar, people sit up and take notice. And when the accused liar is the husband of CNN's high-profile reporter Christiane Amanpour, it's an event.
Background: Jamie Rubin, former State Department spokesman for the Clinton administration, wrote an op-ed piece in Friday's Washington Post of behalf of the Obama campaign. Rubin claimed that he had previously interviewed McCain and McCain said he "was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government."
Oops. Too bad for Rubin, the McCain people released entire interview Friday, and the full interview shows Rubin intentionally misrepresented McCain.
Here is the statement released by the McCain campaign Friday:
Today, Jamie Rubin made a charge against John McCain. Every one of your news organizations put him on the air and covered his charges that John McCain flip-flopped on engagement with Hamas. Now we know that Jamie Rubin didn’t tell the truth.”
“As the entire video — just posted on SkyNews — clearly shows, John McCain absolutely did not advocate unconditional engagement with Hamas. Indeed, Rubin conveniently cut off his follow-up question to which McCain was clear that any engagement with Hamas would be conditioned on their actions and policies — that any actions would be “dictated by how Hamas acts, not how the United States acts.”
The issue came up on the Lou Dobbs show Friday night. CNN's Dana Bash and Lou Dobbs all but called Jamie Rubin a liar, and Dobbs volunteered to the put the McCain video on his own website.
Here is the transcript:
CNN’S DANA BASH: “You remember these interviews were done shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian elections. Lou, the McCain campaign just in the past couple of hours, found a link to more of Jamie Rubin’s interview from back then. In it, I’ll read you a quote from the rest of or at least more of the interview, In that quote Sen. McCain says, ‘I think part of the relationship will be dictated by how Hamas acts, not how the United States acts.’ Now the McCain campaign, as you can image, says that this is proof that Senator McCain has been consistent all along, and I should tell you that CNN asked Jamie Rubin earlier today for the rest of the interview or at least for a transcript and he said he didn’t have it. He said he only had this particular quote he said that was e-mailed to him.”
CNN’S LOU DOBBS: “Well that seems, certainly to, as you report, to substantiate precisely what Senator McCain is saying.”
BASH: “That’s what the McCain campaign is insisting and that’s why they were, as you can imagine, very eager to send out this e-mail. And I can tell you at the top of the e-mail the subject header said ‘Jamie Rubin Lied.’ Inside the McCain campaign, they are accusing Jamie Rubin of lying tonight. We’re going wait to hear back from Jamie Rubin about that charge. As you can imagine, that’s quite a charge to say somebody lied.”
DOBBS: “It is quite a charge. It is also quite something for someone from another campaign to conflate both the role of journalism and of course political activism. Let me ask you this. If we may, I’d like to provide the viewers of this broadcast a link, as you referred to it, that would give them the entire context of that interview. So if we may, I’d like to put that up on LouDobbs.com for our viewers’ benefits if they’d like to use it.”
BASH: “I’ll get it to you.”
DOBBS: “Great reporting and thank you very much.”
Jamie Rubin is married to Christiane Amanpour, one of CNN's highest-profile reporters.
Somebody is sleeping on the couch in the Rubin/Amanpour home tonite. And over at the Barack Obama campaign, they've got to be wondering if the wheels are starting to come off.
I just checked the LouDobbs.com web site and the video hasn't been posted yet. Ed Morrissey has the full video here.
