Rachel Maddow appeared on David Letterman's Late Show last night, where they discussed Monday night's Presidential debate. Dave has been a reliable supporter of Obama's as well as a thorn in the side of Romney, but yesterday he complained bitterly to Rachel about Obama's supposedly lying about Romney's position on letting Detroit Go Bankrupt.
It seems the shape-shifting, soulless Romney has accomplished the impossible - convincing David Letterman that he didn't say Detroit should go bankrupt.
DAVID LETTERMAN, HOST: Here's what upset me last night, this playing fast and loose with facts. And the President Obama cites the op-ed piece that Romney wrote about Detroit, “Let them go bankrupt, let them go bankrupt,” and last night he brings it up again. “Oh, no, Governor, you said let them go bankrupt, blah blah blah, let them go bankrupt.” And Mitt said, “No, no, check the thing, check the thing, check the thing.”
Now, I don't care whether you're Republican or Democrat, you want your president to be telling the truth; you want the contender to be lying. And so what we found out today or soon thereafter that, in fact, the President Obama was not telling the truth about what was excerpted from that op-ed piece. I felt discouraged.
RACHEL MADDOW: Because the "Let Detroit go bankrupt" headline you feel like was inappropriate?
LETTERMAN: Well, the fact the President is invoking it and swearing that he was right and that Romney was wrong and I thought, well, he's the president of course he's right. Well, it turned out no, he was taking liberties with that.
Now, he never says how 'we found out soon thereafter' that the President was 'taking liberties' with what was 'excerpted' but it has him very hot under the collar. Is he referring to some factcheck he read afterwards? Since he found out a day later, clearly he's not referring to what Romney actually said in the debate. And there is no 'excerpt' of Romney's Op-Ed, so who knows what that was about.
But what's worse is how Newsbusters is now using this as 'proof' that President Obama lies. They take the video and chop it off at the end of the above transcript, and go on to say on their site:
Well, Dave, from those of us that analyze the media, let me just say that if you paid attention to this matter from its inception, you would have known that the President, his party, and the press that support them have been badly misrepresenting this issue for years.
Maybe more importantly, they've been misinforming the public on numerous things, and you've been a part of it.
However, one has to wonder what set Letterman off enough to bring this up?
After all, this is not the most egregious example of this White House playing fast and loose with the facts. Or is this just the first one Letterman could grasp?
Regardless of the answer, it's nice to know the Late Show host has some veracity line in the sand that can't be crossed no matter how much he loves a politician.
Whoa, hold on there, deceptively edit things much? Newsbusters cuts the video off at approximately 1:10 before going into the little diatribe above. Watch the rest of the video to see Rachel Maddow's explanation that they happened to leave out.
TRANSCRIPT STARTING AT 1:10
RM: I think whath the President was saying was "your big idea was that private financing would come in and rescue them". And that was at a time when there was no private financing in this country. The credit markets were absolutely locked. Mr. Romney's own firm, Bain, was asked if you would like to potentially get involved in the financing rescue program for the auto industry and that just didn't exist. So had we gone with Romney's 'let Detroit go bankrupt plan' there would be no auto industry. And I think the President said it with more nuance at the earlier debate...
DL: Right
RM: ... and he lost. So he got pointier so it would sound better but maybe in losing the nuance it didn't come out as accurate.
DL: But part of it is is that I just don't know what I"m talking about.
Come on, the Op-Ed was titled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt"! That's what the newspaper editorial board decided Romney was saying. Not to mention, those in Detroit whose livelihoods depend on the American auto industry know who had their backs. And what's most interesting is the observation by Rachel that a detailed, nuanced explanation was just too complicated even in the context of the first 90 minute long debate - and Obama subsequently 'lost'. He then had to dumb it down to 'win' the following debate. Blame your medium - Dave.
And just to tie it up in a bow, HuffPo's Paul Abrams reminds us what Romney's intent was, is, and always will be - not to protect jobs or even the industry, but investors only.
For example, Romney argues that he "also proposed a managed bankruptcy" and the "only" difference was that he wanted the government to provide guarantees for private investors after the bankruptcy proceedings, rather than the "pre-managed" bankruptcy with a massive infusion of government money going into the bankruptcy that the president did.
Them's a lotta words. Moreover, they are dense and boring. Unless one is familiar with the jargon, it will all seem like a lot of gobbledygook. Exactly what Romney wants.
Of course, one can explain, as the president and others have tried to do, that those nuances were night-and-day choices: that the auto companies were out of money, that customers would not purchase cars as the companies were going through Romney's proposed bankruptcy that would have taken months on end thus exacerbating the companies' problems, and that there was no private capital that was eager to step up so that the proposed "guarantees" would have been meaningless.
But, Romney's purpose was at once far more insidious and also easier for voters to grasp. In addition to "guarantees to investors," instead of money from the government, Romney wanted a conventional bankruptcy to proceed because investors and creditors would be protected first (and perhaps, the only ones protected).
Romney's plan had zero chance of saving the U.S. auto industry as we know it. Zero.
Romney knew it when he wrote the article.