Chuck Todd: White House Didn’t Really Tell Reid Not To Come Crying To Us
This morning, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd caused a big stir by seeming to say on the air that the White House told Harry Reid this about the opt out: “You’re the vote counter. But don’t come crying to us when you need that last vote.”
But Todd emails me to clarify that he didn’t mean the White House actually said this. His quote is being taken too literally, he says, and is being “twisted.”
Todd’s claim was a big deal because — taken literally — it seemed to undercut the White House’s public statements of support for Reid’s plan. It fanned the storyline that there are serious tensions between Reid’s office and the White House.
But Todd emails that he didn’t mean this is the actual message the White House is sending, and said it was his own characterization. “It was `as if’ they were sending that message,” Todd said. “I feel like my quote is being a tad twisted. Everything gets too literal.”
Just to clarify my position here, it’s very clear that the White House seemed to think the trigger was the better way to go and didn’t help Reid in the push for the opt out. Reid deserves real credit for what he did, and it’s understandable that people are pressuring the White House to show unity behind it. That said, it’s just not clear to me that the White House isn’t more or less behind Reid right now.
Update: It’s also worth adding that the jury is still out on whether the White House will lend a hand getting the opt-out to 60 votes if Reid’s team signals a need for the White House’s assistance.
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” Everything gets too literal.”
Chuck, hon, you’re a journalist – since when are people supposed to take you figuratively?
SMH
Todd becomes his own cable catnip.
“Reid deserves real credit for what he did.”
What did he do?
Yup. Just as the Pew poll confirmed in the previous thread… “News” no longer means facts.
Thank you Corporate Media.
When was the last time Chuck Todd was right about anything?
“When was the last time Chuck Todd was right about anything?”
That’s a trick question, right?
His words were taken literally, therefore his quote was getting twisted? WTF does that mean? Which is it?
How about this Chuck? Say what you mean. We don’t need your characterizations. If you have information, give us the information. Otherwise, STFU!
Love the media clusterfvck.
BREAKING: Chuck Todd admits to a torrid love affair with a goat.
sbj. He bucked the WH.
And Todd should stick to reporting and try and avoid the commentary. It’s good reporters are being held accountable. The honest ones acknowledge the errors. Others, like the Fox propagandists, just continue on because they have an agenda.
This episode demonstrates the problem with journalists acting as “pundits.” The lines between fact and opinion are blurred.
Update: Chuck Todd clarifies his earlier statement to say he merely petted a goat.
Chuck Todd = Terrible
Stick to polls Chuck. Ever since NBC moved you away from being “the numbers guy” and into reporter world, you’ve gone nothing but backwards.
Stop spending all your time trying to suck up to the DC establishment by pushing the standard CW all the time, and maybe you’ll stop looking like a dips*** hack. You have the talent.
It’s amusing to see the transistion he’s made. You can, literally, look back at the last 2 years and see him dive into DC media dogma, and take the right-wing bait hook line and sinker in an effort to earn a “rep”. How sad.
I don’t have a clue what Todd is saying here. Is he saying this is what people inside the White House have been telling him, but not “literally” in those words, or is this just his guess as to what is going on?
I guess it doesn’t really matter, since I don’t trust the guy anyway.
I was floored when they hired Chuck – he’s in over his head, not to put too fine a point on it.
@mike: “sbj. He bucked the WH.”
Is that the official line then? Because I have no idea how ‘we’ feel about that. Vote?
The cw is that Reid bucked the WH by going with the so-called opt out versus the so-called trigger? Does anyone have any idea about how either one of these three week old ideas would even work? Did Reid actually write up how this opt out works and when can we see it?
See Greg, this is why we keep you honest.
@Greg
Regarding your update…
You say it’s “up in the air”?
Is there any signal the White House WON’T help, should Sen. Reid come up short by a vote or two?
The White House wants a bill to pass, and to go into committee. If this is the bill going to the floor (and it appears that it is)…the DEFAULT position should be that the White House is going to do all it can to help make sure it passes.
The onus is on someone to prove the White House WON’T help…not the other way around.
Important to clarify that the 60-vote threshold only applies to the procedural matter–the bill itself will require only 50 for passage.
Another example of this Prez running things under the radar.
“The U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s new global wealth unit will focus on taxpayers with assets worth tens of millions of dollars who are sheltering wealth through complex business entities, the IRS chief said on Monday.
The IRS unit, which started operations in recent months, is part of a broader effort at the agency to combat international tax evasion, and the unit will grow over time, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told a meeting of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
“We will take a unified look at the entire web of business entities controlled by a high-wealth individual,” Shulman told the meeting. “At least initially, we will be looking at individuals with tens of millions of dollars of assets or income.”
The high-wealth unit will focus on trusts, real estate investments, privately held companies and other business entities controlled by rich individuals, Shulman said.
While use of sophisticated legal structures are at times legal, there are other instances where they “mask aggressive tax strategies,” he said.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUSN2619341620091026
And yet we are engaged in silly pie fights instigated by the frigging media.
Good article in Time:
“This is all about his home-state politics,” said one senior Democratic Senate aide. “This gets the left off his back.” If he can’t manage to get the public option past a filibuster, Reid could at least tell the liberals in his party that he gave it his best effort.”
Working like a charm with this group!
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1932397,00.html
“Important to clarify that the 60-vote threshold only applies to the procedural matter–the bill itself will require only 50 for passage.”
Let’s double clarify that:
“Both procedural hurdles ahead of Reid — bringing up the bill and cutting off a promised Republican filibuster — will require him to muster every one of the 60 Democrats in his caucus. But the motion to proceed is far easier for the Democrats; to block their leader on that would be a gratuitous slight. What is questionable is whether they will vote with him when the time comes to cut off a filibuster, a procedural move that is known as invoking cloture. At this point, it appears that Reid could be three votes short, with most of the focus centering on Senators Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. All three come from states that John McCain carried handily against Barack Obama in 2008.”
Is what I said the official line? I have no clue what that means. You asked what did he do. I said he bucked the WH and went with an idea he thinks he can get the votes for rather than the trigger, which is a months old idea that was originally floated by Sen. Kerry.
I think everyone knows conceptually how the opt-out works. I suppose we’ll see the detail of it shortly before a vote. We may even get lucky and someone will go into detail as to what it entails in the MSM
Ezra Klein goes over the concept HERE .
It appears that the president was right about fox’s influence on the so called MSM! Todd has been peddeling his “sources inside the whitehouse” for quite some time now. He was played by these sources who told him one thing off the record “supporting triggers” only to turn around and do the complete opposite making him and the rest of those who told us the public option was dead, look like even bigger idiots than they are. Ladies And Geltlemen….I give you JOURNALISM?
“Update: It’s also worth adding that the jury is still out on whether the White House will lend a hand getting the opt-out to 60 votes if Reid’s team signals a need for the White House’s assistance.”"
Yeah, not clear at all. Surely the WH might be tempted to have its initiative go down in humiliating defeat. Makes a lot of sense. Not.
“The onus is on someone to prove the White House WON’T help…not the other way around.”
It should be most obvious to anyone watching this admin that they will not let themselves be seen as pushing for something if it later looks to be a failure. Witness Deeds…
This is what happens when “journalists” (and in Chuck’s case, I use the term loosely) forget their job is to report the news and start getting into commentary and opinion.
I just went to the video clip of what Chuck said; and you easily tell that he was just batting the topic around with Joe Scarborough, and they were both in commentary mode, rather than quoting the exact words that someone said.
This is the danger with the modern practice of having reporters also coming on shows as commentators, and opinion givers.
That type of conflation of roles is showing up more and more, even on the evening news. Reporters are being interviewed about their personal opinions, by the Anchors.
They should just be reporting the hard news, and not also switching into opinion mode. This is what happened to Chuck Todd today. He was acting as an Opinion Provider, but he was using his own reporting information to opine on.
“And yet we are engaged in silly pie fights instigated by the frigging media.”
hee hee!
I still maintain the biggest story that never got around at all was Obama telling Holder to fire up the anti-trust division of the DOJ again – that’s the only place any kind of meaningful regulation of corporations by the Executive branch> can from and it’s a big deal.
I just don’t get the people who think Obama hasn’t done anything.
“This is the danger with the modern practice of having reporters also coming on shows as commentators, and opinion givers.”
You’re totally right about that – plus all the hobnobbing among journalists and politicians and lobbyists in DC, which has scrambled the whole bunch of them together. It’s all mixed up – you have “journalists” like Judith “I’m the effing Queen of Iraq” Miller working for the NYT and the neo-cons; probably the VEEP. You have the same people being paid to lobby for things who go on news shows to talk about them as if they were objective. The whole thing is incestuous as hell.
Tena – I know. Both left and right distracted by the latest shiny object. First the anti-trust nugget and now this tax evasion thingy. Reform of corporate and financial sectors in underway, under the radar.
This incident reveals a lot more about the people reacting to it than it does about the White House OR Chuck Todd.
Blame the WH?
Blame Chuck Todd?
Blame Harry Reid?
Each is simply being what they are…..
amk
Thanks for the reuters article, I missed that one. Maybe it will take the IRS heat off the rest of us. We’ve been audited 3 times in the last 10 years. Luckily, so far I only owed them a little extra the first time.
lmsinca – You’re welcome. See, I can be an useful idiot too.
@Tena,
Chris Wallace went on a hunting trip with Carl Rove, and then expects us to take him seriously when he claims that FAUX News is not in Bed with The Republican Party!
max:
Just cause Chucky has a goatee, does not mean that he is attractive to goats. They have more class than that!!!
“Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.
“Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid’s has said the Senate bill will.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28788.html
“Lieberman did say he’s “strongly inclined” to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he’ll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn’t changed first.
“I’ve told Sen. Reid that if the bill stays as it is now I will vote against cloture,” he said.”
This means that a floor vote will strip the PO and we’ll be back to Baucus’s SFC bill, with Lieberman and Snowe support. Reid is just blowing smoke up the wazoos of progressive liberals.
Greg, I’m very confused by the two (seemingly) contradictory ideas of the WH wanting the strongest bill possible, and then the implication from Todd that they refuse to help get a stronger bill through the Senate because they think it won’t pass…
Are they pulling a Baucus, or am I right in thinking that the “public option is dead” crowd has no credibility when they claim to have a line on the WH’s thinking on this issue?
Lieberman is going to get wailed on if he is the single vote blocking cloture, we now have very few targets left to get this through the Senate and you can bet that progressives are going to be reinvigorated after this latest success.
“Lieberman is going to get wailed on.”
Why would he care?
Hey Todd: Learn how to express yourself properly. It kind of comes with the job. Dipshit.
We can pass that version without Snowe or Lieberman, so that gives them no leverage. On the other hand we can not pass that version, because over 50 Democrats will not support it.
I think getting more that 50 on board, is far more important than getting traitor Joe, or Snowe Job on board.
Liebermann = backstabber
Watch out for this snake in the grass. I wouldn’t count on that POS’s vote.
Shoulda given more money to Lamont…
@LIam: “Lieberman did say he’s “strongly inclined” to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he’ll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn’t changed first.”
He’ll “vote to block a floor vote.”
Do you understand what that means?
Sure thing, sbj. Lieberman has always been a man of his word. If he says something, you can take it to the bank … he simply wouldn’t allow himself to be bought off. No sirree.
Do you think buying these votes will cost us all more than buying the stimulus votes?
Maybe the public will finally come to understand that the democrats do not have 60 votes in the senate. They have 58 dems and 2 independents.
Lieberman could not be clearer… he won’t vote for cloture if there is ANY public option in the bill. Now what???
So….this is something Chuck Todd *thinks* the WH would say…even though they didn’t say it? Just like the Obama “Thesis” kerfuffle? Man, we are really in the Twilight Zone when it comes to news reporting and truth.
“If he can’t manage to get the public option past a filibuster, Reid could at least tell the liberals in his party that he gave it his best effort.”
SOP. I’ve seen it before with legislators — loudly supporting a doomed bill just for the kudos. I wouldn’t be surprised if Reid choreographed the filibuster dance with Lieberman.
Said the hooker to the john: “Wow, that was great, Tiger! Now leave the money on the dresser.”