You can give MSNBC’s Morning Joe crew credit for this much:
they spent almost half an hour on Tuesday’s show discussing the NBC News
report that President Obama knew that millions of Americans would lose
their current health insurance plans because of ObamaCare. Host Joe
Scarborough seemed appropriately outraged that the president knew about
this even as he repeatedly insisted that those who liked their health
insurance could keep it.
Curiously, however, neither Scarborough nor any of his guests ever
accused the President of “lying.” They never called him a “liar,” said
he “lied,” or used any form of the infinitive “to lie.” [Listen to MP3 audio here [1].]
Rather than coming out and saying the president lied, Scarborough opted
for softer language, often a variation on “not true.” He accused Obama
of “saying things that he knew were not true.” Later, he claimed that
the President “knew he was not telling the truth.” Twice he blasted
Obama’s assurances that “ended up not being true.”
At one point Scarborough softened up his language even more and said the President “misled” us all:
"I mean, they can try to talk about the policy right now, but they’re
not going to get to talk about the policy until they first explain why
the president misled the American people for five years."
He also got fancy:
"I would never, on my key landmark piece of legislation, tell the American people something that was diametrically opposed to the truth over and over and over and over and over and over and over again over the past five years."
The most telling moment came during the second hour of the show.
Scarborough asserted, “Based on this NBC News investigation, the
president knew he was...” At this point, the host paused momentarily, as
if he was considering what to say next. The word “lying” would have
been sufficient to complete that sentence, but Scarborough found a
wimpier synonym to use. With the shadow of a smirk on his face, he
continued, “...telling deliberate untruths.” It looked like a conscious effort to avoid calling the president a liar.
Scarborough was not the only one on the program who couldn’t bring
himself to utter the L-word. The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein borrowed
one of Scarborough’s verbs when he proclaimed, “Let’s concede that the
White House did mislead when it said that you can keep the policy that you have.”
Julie Pace of the Associated Press fretted that the administration was “having to answer questions about whether the president was quite honestly telling the truth to the American people.” Later, she mildly wondered, “[I]s that good policy to essentially be dishonest to the American people?”
Don't get me wrong. It was great to see the Morning Joe
panelists spend so much time debating this important development in the
ongoing ObamaCare saga. It was even better to see Scarborough slam the
president for being dishonest. But it was odd to hear the host and his
guests refuse to directly say the president lied when they had multiple
opportunities to do so. Their soft language blunted the overall impact
of their criticism.
Below are some relevant highlights from October 29:
6:06 a.m.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: [President Obama] would point to those terrible
Republicans, saying, “Oh, they’re lying. They’re trying to scare you and
tell you that some bureaucrat is going to kick you off of your policy.
No. I’m here to assure you, as the president of the United States, if
you like your plan, you get to keep your plan.” Not only is that not
true, Lisa Myers’ reporting shows this morning that he knew it wasn’t
true and went on saying it anyway.
6:07
SCARBOROUGH: What I’m suggesting is I would never, on my key landmark
piece of legislation, tell the American people something that was
diametrically opposed to the truth over and over and over and over and
over and over and over again over the past five years.
6:10
JULIE PACE: It is a real problem when you have, on the one hand, these
tremendous issues with the website. Just over the weekend, we had a
whole ‘nother set of problems that hadn’t been discovered until now. So
you have that component of it. Every day they’re having to answer
questions about that. And now they’re having to answer questions about
whether the president was quite honestly telling the truth to the
American people, so those are not things you want to be dealing with at
this stage.
6:10
SCARBOROUGH: And now Lisa’s component, the third component of the
story, which is the president, if the report is correct, and I know it
is, the president’s been telling things to the American people that he
and his administration have known aren’t true.
6:12
SCARBOROUGH: Has anybody tried to justify – because, I mean, they can
try to talk about the policy right now, but they’re not going to get to
talk about the policy until they first explain why the president misled
the American people for five years. Has anybody tried to explain away to
you how this happened?
6:13
SAM STEIN: Let’s concede that the White House did mislead when it said
that you can keep the policy that you have. There are important things
to note here.
7:05
SCARBOROUGH: And then third, Lisa Myers’ report this morning talking
about all those assurances the president gave about people being able to
keep their insurance actually ended up not being true at the end.
7:07
SCARBOROUGH: Chuck Todd, the sticker shock story out of L.A, L.A. Times
– man, that’s a lot more damning to this administration and supporters
of ACA than, say, these website snafues. That’s just an embarrassment.
But you stack that with the president’s assurances that ended up not
being true, this is a real problem for the White House. What do they do?
7:08
SCARBOROUGH: The bigger part of this story is, damaging part is, Lisa
Myers is reporting that the president was saying things that he knew
were not true.
7:09
SCARBOROUGH: No, no, no, Lisa Myers’ report is that he knew he was not
telling the truth. And he said it at the State of the Union address, he
said it in 2012. Based on this NBC News investigation, the president
knew he was (momentary pause) telling deliberate untruths, and how do
they get around that?
7:13
PACE: You could argue that it is good policy to take people who are on
catastrophic plans, who are on plans that have very low levels of
coverage and put them on better plans, improve their coverage. But if
these people didn’t know that that was happening, is that good policy to
essentially be dishonest to the American people?
-- Paul Bremmer is a News Analysis Division intern at the Media Research Center.