January 16, 2010

Rachel Maddow responds to Jon Stewart's criticism of her reporting this week on USAID and has no apologies for Stewart.

Maddow: I know that's politics, but listen, I love me some Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. I'm a big fan. But no apologies for reporting which agency is the lead in our national effort to respond to Haiti, whether or not that agency is well resourced, whether it has been subject to partisan attacks, how much the current administration values and prioritizes and indeed brags on that agency. We all as Americans are counting on our government to do a good job in responding to this catastrophe. This is what it looks like to report on our government's capacity to do just that.

When President Obama gave USAID the lead role in coordinating this response to the disaster in Haiti he handed that agency its biggest humanitarian mission in years. Six days before the earthquake in Haiti Sec. of State Hillary Clinton had just given a major speech about how the Obama administration was going to elevate USAID to a primary position in the government.

[…]

Six days later the earthquake in Haiti and USAID gets put in charge of America’s response to it. They report that as of today USAID is fifty five million dollars into that response. They’re the ones coordinating America’s search and rescue efforts, water and emergency food aid, the way that supplies get into the country, shelter and sanitation and hygiene. At this point the road to being the world’s premier development agency runs through Haiti and we’ll keep reporting it.

Here's the Daily Show segment Rachel was responding to. I think Stewart is comparing apples to oranges to put Maddow anywhere near the same category as Limbaugh and Robertson. He completely misses the mark on this one. This is from the Jan. 14th edition of The Daily Show.

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