Derogatory Matthews Continues to Distort Exchange with Malkin

MRC ^ | 11:40am EDT, Wednesday August 25, 2004 | Brent Baker

[fight_truth_decay]

The MRC's Geoff Dickens caught this exchange, on Monday's Hardball on MSNBC, in which Matthews not only refused to admit his distortion of Malkin's point, but repeated it:

Matthews: "Welcome back to Hardball. Before we go to Dick Cavett, we want to get some final thoughts from Doug Brinkley and Stanley Karnow. Let me go to Doug Brinkley on a hot point on this program. Doug, there was a woman on the show the other night, Michelle Malkin or something, who was discussing in rather loose terms the idea that maybe John Kerry had purposely wounded himself to win a Purple Heart. Where would she get such an idea?"

Doug Brinkley: "Well, from the Internet, from talk radio. You know this is a right-wing August takedown on John Kerry, and rumors, and accusations, innuendoes flying. And that's just how, how gutter politics is played sometimes in America. It's a, I feel it is a completely irresponsible comment and she needs to apologize for making it. There's no evidence that says John Kerry ever shot himself."

Matthews: "Just a minute, Pat, we'll be back in a minute here. But do you want to say something?"

Buchanan: "Yeah, I do want to say something. Chris, I saw the show you did with Malkin. And there was, there was a misconnection there. She said-"

Matthews: "No, there wasn't. I asked her a dozen times to clarify what she was saying."

Buchanan: "She said, was it a 'self-inflicted wound'? And she said yes. And you were saying, was it purposefully done by Kerry? She should have said, no, it was the-"

Matthews: "Why didn't she say it when I gave her 12 times to do that?"

Buchanan: "Well, it was-"

Matthews: "Twelve times."

Buchanan: "Well, look, I mean-"

Matthews: "Just a minute, Pat."

Buchanan: "You can argue that with Ms. Malkin. But that, what she was saying was right from the book that it was a 'self-inflicted wound,' probably by a grenade that hit the rocks in front of Kerry."

Matthews: "Right. Of course we all know that kind of thing happens in war. The question is, was it purposely, did he purposefully shoot himself or not? That was the question that was being suggested by that discussion."

Buchanan: "I saw her and I do not believe she said it was purposefully-"

Matthews: "Watch the tape, okay."

"Self-inflicted" does not mean on purpose and no one in O'Neill's book, nor Malkin on the August 19 Hardball, ever said that Kerry "shot himself." Only Matthews came up with that slam at Kerry.

[beaversmom]

Yikes!

[fight_truth_decay]

An aide, Lori Klausutis, was found dead in Joe's congressional office in Florida on July 20, 2001 with a pulverized skull. Berkland discovered that Scarborough's aide had fallen and hit her head after having a health problem.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/01.05B.Klausutis.1.htm
http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/01.06B.Klausutis.2.htm
http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/01.07B.Klausutis.3.htm