Posted on 03/17/2008 11:48:44 AM PDT by jdm
Obama's Friday interview by Major Garrett, in which he describes his membership at Trinity United and his connection to Rev. Wright, has been called one of his worst ever. At the time, people were wondering what he could have been thinking, especially given the Democrats on-again-off-again boycott of Fox News.
Melanie Morgan says that as soon as it aired Garrett got an earful:
As I was waiting to go on-the-air, Major Garrett of Fox News was on stand-by to do further reporting on his excellent interview with BHO in which he simply asked a number of questions like: "Did Reverend Wright marry you? Did Reverend Wright baptize your children? How often did you attend church? Did you donate money to the church?"After that segment aired, Major Garrett's phone started buzzing. He received a call from Obama's campaign, and they were REAMING him over the report. From his end, I heard Garrett say "I have nothing to apologize for."
He repeated that several times, and he amplified by saying that he was merely asking questions that everyone wanted answers to.
That did NOT satisfy Obama's people, and Garrett flushed a couple of times while responding to the invective thrown his way.
Strategically, *I'm not sure why Obama would choose to go only to Fox News with this story, especially because I don't think that anyone ever believed this one would be confined to "conservative" media. So far it looks like every decision he's made about Wright has only made him look worse. Obama himself admits that "my judgment at the time [that he asked Wright to join his campaign] was that this was not as problematic as what I've seen over the last couple of days.
Genius.
Transcript of the interview is here. YouTube video is below the fold.
h/t Greg Pollowitz at National Review's Media Blog.
That’s WHY he went on Fox, people...
So it could be dismissed as “right-Wing Hate Speech”.
His advisor screwed up, badly. And the Clinton’s are LOVING it.
Major sounded like a prosecutor; it was great.
Major Garrett did an excellent job!
Senator Obama, you can’t fool all the people all the time and so on and so forth...
Not ready for prime time. Not ready for Saturday morning cartoons, for that matter.
Did he touch “the Lord’s” “anointed”?
Looks like Obama call play softball. And he wants to be in the major league?
It was just the kind of agressive grilling lefties give each other awards for — when the person being questioned is conservative.
aGGressive
After the segment was over, I exchanged seats with Beckel. As he was leaving, he slammed the studio door so hard that it almost broke some expensive audio/video equipment, according to the technican who was threading my microphone.
He was STEAMED.
Later, I asked him why he was so upset.
He replied ...”because Obama’s people didn't vet him and now Hillary's going to win.’
Put Britt Hume on a network news with 5-6 of the Fox News reporters and I guarantee that network owns the time slot.
I thought Beckel was in the Clinton camp.
I want to know why Major Garrett didn’t ask him some simple follow up questions.
I hadn’t read down that far. Thanks for including that passage on the thread.
That was back before Obama got really popular, I believe.
That’s exactly what I was thinking at the time—that Garrett sounded like he was cross-examining Obama.
Me, too.
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