Andrea Mitchell Warns Keystone Pipeline Would Ruin Obama's 'Climate Change Legacy'
On her 1 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Monday, host Andrea Mitchell warned
that President Obama would endanger his reputation with left-wing
environmentalists if he dared to approve the Keystone Pipeline: "It
goes very much against the legacy, the climate change legacy of not
only Barack Obama, but [Secretary of State] John Kerry has spent his
whole life devoted to working on these environmental issues and all of
his allies are really against this." [Listen to the audio]
Mitchell began by observing that a new State Department report on the
proposed oil pipeline "basically said there is going to be a bad effect
on climate change whether they build this pipeline or not" and would
give "some political cover to the President and Secretary Kerry if they
want to go the route of building the pipeline."
On Friday's NBC Nightly News, Mitchell hyped environmentalist opposition to the project and efforts to discredit the newly-released study.
On
Monday, Mitchell did acknowledge the political implications of the
decision, noting that building the pipeline "would help [Senator Mark]
Begich [D-AK], would help [Senator] Mary Landrieu [D-LA], at least two
key states" in the 2014 elections.
Appearing on the show, The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza
sympathized with the President: "And it's legacy versus sort of pure
politics...Because the reality of Keystone for someone like Mary
Landrieu for example, or Mark Begich, jobs. That's sort of the bottom
line, that it equals jobs....So legacy versus another kind of legacy,
which is the House and Senate control and what President Obama did for
the down-ballot races, it's obviously not an easy decision."
Before ending the segment, Mitchell made sure to dismiss the notion
that the pipeline would create jobs: "By the way, that report also says
that only fifty permanent jobs. 3,900 temporary construction jobs, fifty
permanent jobs. So this is gonna be debated."
— Kyle Drennen is Senior News Analyst at the Media Research Center. Follow Kyle Drennen on Twitter.
