May 13, 2014

Judge Napolitano is known for being a religious right, Fox News anti-Obama talking head of the highest order. He doesn't mind embellishing or distorting facts to make his arguments and that was the case today when he appeared with Gretchen Carlson. He was all a-gaga over a NY Daily News story about Tim Geithner's new book, "Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner claims White House asked him to lie during TV interviews: book"

In it Adam Edelman claims that the White House was forcing Geithner to lie about Social Security adding to the deficit on national TV.

Geithner, who led the Treasury Department from 2009 to 2013, said Obama administration officials routinely directed his talking points ahead of interviews scheduled on Sunday morning political talk shows.

I remember during one Roosevelt Room prep session before I appeared on the Sunday shows, I objected when Dan Pfeiffer wanted me to say Social Security didn’t contribute to the deficit,” Geithner wrote in his new memoir, “Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.” “It wasn’t a main driver of our future deficits, but it did contribute.

Almost all presidential administrations direct their cabinet members and other officials on talking points when they are going to do national interviews. That's not a shock, but typical. Edelman calls it an eye-opening revelation. Really? No where in that quote does it say that Geithner said he was begin forced to lie.

Judge Napolitano latched on to that article and then, as do most right wing talkers, turned into possible evidence of their Benghazi coverup. (rough transcript)

Judge: That Dan Pfeiffer, the senior adviser to the president asked him to lie in his first series of Sunday talk shows including one with our colleague Chris Wallace, about whether social security was in the black or in the red. The government has fuzzy math, you can interpret it as being in the red or black, but both Geithner and Pfeiffer believed it was in the red. When Geithner says Pfeiffer asked him to lie about it and Geithner say I wouldn't, this got a lot of people to thinking. From the very first days from this administration they were in the lying business. So is Benghazi? Is, 'you can keep your own health insurance and your own doctor if you like.'...

I'll do another post on Geithner's stupidity when it comes to Social Security, the budget deficit and his being head of Treasury. Social Security by law can't add to the budget deficit, but he believes it still does? So even if he didn't believe in it, it's not being asked to tell a lie. Oy. I imagine Frank Luntz sent Republicans a memo saying:

Whenever there's a discrepancy that you can use relating to any story, connect it to Benghazi.

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