Free Pass for Turd Blossom
Personally, I thought Scott McClellan would be dancing as fast as he could this week. But once again I have underestimated how lazy, shiftless and thoroughly whorish the White House press corps can be. And when I say whorish I don't mean cocaine and limo whorish, I mean cheap tequilla and Motel 6 whorish. I searched the gaggle for the past two days for questions on Rove and -- nada. Nothing. Zip. Bupkiss.
Amazing.
Arianna noticed the same thing:
Today’s press gaggle took place aboard Air Force One on the way to Scotland. Now, given that Rove may or may not be the subject of a federal investigation, one would think that our intrepid White House reporters might, you know, ask the White House spokesman about that.If this represents the MSM's idea of integrity, then maybe Judith Miller is going to jail to protect it.
But if you do a text search for the word “Rove,” you’ll see that not a single press person thought that the fact that the President of the United States' most trusted advisor is, at the very least, a key player in a criminal investigation was worth a single question to Scottie McClellan. Not a one.
This is all the more significant because of the role McClellan may eventually play in Rove’s fate. As Newsweek reported and I blogged about, when this story began heating up, McClellan went out of his way to defend Rove -- saying that he’d been “assured” that Rove was not involved in the leaking.
“Rove will have no compunction about lying through his teeth to save himself, counting on the fact that Cooper’s e-mails are, apparently, not cut and dried,” one of the group said. And it doesn’t hurt that Rove’s underlings would rather fall on their swords than tell the truth... which, in the Bush White House, is seen as selling out. All of which would leave McClellan to “take one for the team and eat major crow about all the assurances he’d given the press.” Of course, if they continue to avoid asking him about it, he may not even have to do that.
posted by Jane Hamsher @ 7/06/2005 08:52:00 PM
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