Category Archives: Soledad O’Brien

November 16, 2012 · 8:07 AM

Soledad O’Brien destroys GOP over Benghazi, Susan Rice (video)

Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nevada) is apparently not on the same page as Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham on this issue…although his original statement was meant to be the standard talking point the two senators want to send out to the press, Rep. Heck unitentionally muddies the waters a bit…

America Blog – John Aravosis

I am seriously loving CNN’s Soledad O’Brien of late. Have always enjoyed her work, but lately the woman has been on fire when it comes to dealing with political types who are clearly playing games with the truth.  (As part of my homage to Soledad, see this post detailing her feat of “Sol-splaining” the truth to political hacks.)

Today it was GOP Rep. Joe Heck of Nevada, who was on Soledad’s show to talk about John McCain and Lindsay Graham trying to kill UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s expected nomination to be Secretary of State. McCain and Graham are upset with Rice because they thinks he lied, or didn’t know enough, about the situation in Libya immediately following the attack on our consulate and CIA outpost there.

soledad-obrien-1

Soledad is not impressed.

During their talk, Soledad pointed out – as I do in my post this morning – that McCain and Graham seem to be taking a hypocritical stance on Susan Rice’s nomination since they didn’t seem to have any problem with Condi Rice’s nomination to the same job, even though she did something far worse than Susan Rice. Condi aided the Bush administration in lying its way in to a war, Iraq, that has cost us trillions of dollars and countless American, and Iraqi, lives. That’s a lot bigger than 4 casualties at a US consulate in Libya.

In response, GOP Rep. Heck , who’s on the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating the administration over the Libya attack, appears to exonerate Susan Rice, and instead prove that Condi Rice should have been the one blocked from becoming Secretary of State. The video is below, but here’s NYT columnist Charles Blow’s take on what Heck just said:

CHARLES BLOW: What I’m trying to figure out, are you saying that Condoleeza Rice actually should have known, because she had more intimacy with the information [WMD in Iraq] and then still said something that she knew was wrong, and that in fact Susan Rice is a sacrificial lamb because she was put out as the face of the administration for something that she didn’t know anything [about], so in fact that’s more of a defense of Susan Rice than it is a condemnation of Susan Rice. That’s how it sounds to me.

SOLEDAD O’BRIEN: That’s what it sounds like to me, so, forgive me sir, will you walk us through this one more time. You think it’s different because Condoleeza Rice actually had first-hand knowledge?

And Heck just continues reiterating that Susan Rice’s situation is far worse than Condis’ because Condi was heavily involved in Iraq war planning and Susan Rice was not heavily involved in what happened in Benghazi. Which only goes to prove that Susan Rice shouldn’t be the Republican party’s scapegoat.

Then again, far be it for the Republicans to turn down the chance to beat up on a woman, and a black woman at that. Rice should consider herself fortunate that she wasn’t a Latina too.

Here’s the video – great television, and a great job by Soledad and Charles Blow.

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September 17, 2012 · 3:07 PM

GOP Congressman Blows Up At CNN Host: ‘I Don’t Care What Fact Check Says,’ Obama Apologizes For America!

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is yet another loose cannon in Congress.  The man has a history of making volatile and mainly false political statements and this is just one more.  However, King is not the first one to dismiss ”Fact Checkers”.  Romney’s camp did the same thing recently.

So, it seems that the GOP fringe wants to either deny or discredit Fact Checkers as a way of allowing their lies to continue without scrutiny.  Apparently they can’t see  that the American people are NOT as dumb as they assume we are.

What the heck are these people smoking?

Think Progress

During an appearance on CNN’s Starting Point on Monday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) could not explain when President Obama “apologized” for the United States, despite repeatedly claiming that he went on an “apology tour” across the Middle East shortly after becoming president.

Since violence broke out across the region, Republicans have charged that Obama’s “defeatist” policies have caused the unrest and contributed to the death of Libyan ambassador Christopher Stevens. But pressed to detail where Obama has apologized for America by CNN host Soledad O’Brien, King came up short:

O’BRIEN: Never once in that speech, as you know, which I have the speech right here. that was — he never once used the word “apology.” He never once said “I’m sorry.”

KING: Didn’t have to. The logical — any logical reading of that speech or the speech he gave in France where he basically said that the United States can be too aggressive. [...]

O’BRIEN: Everybody keeps talking about this apology tour and apologies from the President. I’m trying to find the words ‘I’m sorry, I apologize’ in any of those speeches. Which I have the text of all those speeches in front of me. None of those speeches at all, if you go to factcheck.org which we check in a lot, they all say the same thing. They fact check this and they say this whole theory of apologies…

KING: I don’t care what fact check says.

O’BRIEN: There are fact checks. You may not care, but they’re a fact checker.

KING: No. Soledad. Any commonsense interpretation of those speeches, the president’s apologizing for the American position. That’s the apology tour. That’s the way it’s interpreted in the Middle East. If I go over and say that the U.S. has violated its principles, that the United States has not shown respect for Islam, that’s an apology. How else can it be interpreted?

O’BRIEN: I think plenty of people are interpreting it as a nuanced approach to diplomacy is how some people are interpreting it. So I don’t think that everybody agrees it’s apology.

Watch it:

As the Washington Post put it, “the apology tour never happened.” Rather, shortly after becoming president, Obama traveled to the world introducing himself and differentiating his foreign policy from that of President Bush. “This is typical of many new presidents,” including Bush himself, who “quickly broke with Clinton administration policy on dealings with North Korea, the Kyoto climate change treaty and the international criminal court.”

The manufactured attack, which Republicans kicked off in 2009, “feeds into a subterranean narrative that Obama, with his exotic, mixed-race background, is not really American in the first place.”

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August 16, 2012 · 12:10 AM

Pawlenty suggests that Soledad O’Brien doesn’t understand English

Tim Pawlenty speaks to CNN’s Soledad O’Brien

The Raw Story

Romney surrogates going up against CNN host Soledad O’Brien clearly haven’t learned their lesson.

A day after former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu angrily told O’Brien to “put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead,” former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney’s national campaign co-chair, suggested that the CNN host didn’t understand English.

During an interview on Wednesday, O’Brien told Pawlenty that one of the presumptive Republican presidential candidate’s ads falsely claimed that President Barack Obama had cut $716 billion from Medicare — but the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had determined that it was actually reduction in spending, not benefits.

“Isn’t that just patently untrue in that ad?” she asked the former Minnesota governor.

“No, that’s not correct, Soledad,” Pawlenty replied. “It is absolutely beyond factual dispute that [Obama] has cut $716 billion out of the money that was projected to be spent on Medicare over the next 10 years.”

“But, sir, it’s not a cut in Medicare, right?” O’Brien observed. “Let me just read from the CBO. It’s a ‘permanent reduction in the annual updates to Medicaid’s payment rates.’ It’s a cut in the spending — future spending. And it’s cut that actually goes to insurers, right? I mean, it’s not cuts to individuals.”

“No matter how you say this, it’s a cut to Medicare,” Pawlenty insisted. “You can’t even with a straight face, look your viewers in the eye and tell [them] that it’s not a cut to Medicare.”

“Well, I can’t look viewers in the eye from where I am,” O’Brien pointed out. “I’m saying the way the CBO puts it. … That is a savings.”

“Do you know what that is in English?” Pawlenty quipped.

“I speak English incredibly well, sir, as you know,” O’Brien shot back. “So, tell me what it is in English.”

“In plain speaking is this — and I just mean in compared to the mumbo jumbo in the bureaucracy in the CBO — what they’re saying is that Medicare was going to go up by X and now it’s going to go up by X minus $716 billion. There is no question that is a cut in where current law was before Obamacare was passed. There is no way you can present that in any other way.”

“Of you can call it a savings is actually the other way to present that,” O’Brien explained.

Although O’Brien is of Latino (and Irish and African American) descent, she actually only speaks English fluently.

On Monday, Sununu, who serves as the chairman of Romney’s national steering committee, had  lashed out at O’Brien after she tried to fact check his claims about vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s plan to cut Medicare.

“Soledad, stop this!” Sununu shouted. “All you’re doing is mimicking the stuff that comes out of the White House and gets repeated on the Democratic blog boards out there.”

“I’m telling you what Factcheck.com tells you, I’m telling you what the CBO tells you, I’m telling you what CNN’s independent analysis says,” the CNN host explained.

“Put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead when you do this!” the frustrated surrogate shot back.

“You know, let me tell you something,” O’Brien said. “There is independent analysis that details what this is about. … And name calling to me and somehow by you repeating a number of $716 billion, that you can make that stick when [you say] that figure is being ‘stolen’ from Medicare, that’s not true. You can’t just repeat it and make it true, sir.”

Watch this video from CNN Starting Point, broadcast Aug. 15, 2012…

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