lashed out at O’Brien after she tried to fact check his claims about Ryan’s plan to end Medicare as it exists today and turn it into a voucher system.
“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 quipped.
“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.”
And then on Wednesday, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Romney’s national campaign co-chair, became flustered and suggested that O'Brien couldn't understand plain English after she pushed back on his claim that is was "absolutely beyond factual dispute that [Obama] has cut $716 billion" from Medicare.
“I speak English incredibly well, sir, as you know,” O’Brien told Pawlenty.
Earlier this week, PolitiFact determined that it was "mostly true" that the plans offered by Romney and Ryan would turn Medicare into a voucher system.
"We agree that in the world of policy wonks, there are distinctions between 'vouchers' and 'premium support,' having to do with the type of inflation adjustment used and the degree of marketplace regulation imposed," the fact-checking publication wrote. "But the Romney-Ryan approach pretty much matches the dictionary definition of 'a form or check indicating a credit against future purchases or expenditures.' ... For a political discussion aimed at voters rather than policy wonks, we think Obama’s use of the term 'voucher' is close enough to earn it a rating of Mostly True."
(h/t: Mediaite)