That’s Not the Meeting We Thought We Knew
I said yesterday we’d find out soon enough whether Obama’s team met with Blago about the Senate seat.
KHQA TV wishes to offer clarification regarding a story that appeared last month on our website ConnectTristates.com. The story, which discussed the appointment of a replacement for President Elect Obama’in the U.S. Senate, became the subject of much discussion on talk radio and on blog sites Wednesday.
The story housed in our website archive was on the morning of November 5, 2008. It suggested that a meeting was scheduled later that day between President Elect Obama and Illinois Governor Blagojevich. KHQA has no knowledge that any meeting ever took place. Governor Blagojevich did appear at a news conference in Chicago on that date.
They mentioned such a meeting in two separate dispatches—but if they’re climbing down, we accept that it never happened.
But what are to make of this passage from the Blago Bleep Tapes?
Rod Blagojevich said he knows that the President Elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the Senate seat, but “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. [Bleep] them.”
Well, somebody had to be talking to somebody, didn’t they?
Not I, said the Elect:
“I had no contact with the governor or his office, so I was not aware of what was happening,” he said.
Well, okay, if you didn’t (even though your guru, David Axelrod said you did before he said you didn’t), how did Blago get the impression that you had?
And what now looks pretty clear, at least based on these tapes and what the U.S. attorney is telling us, is that someone from Obama-world did have communication with the governor about this.
Who was it? What was said?
Attempts by CNN reporters and others to get answers have been met with a big: “no comment due to an ongoing investigation.”
I teach my children that they will learn to tell the truth not out of abstract moral necessity (that’s a grad school subject), but because it will get them in less trouble. There would have been no problem had Obama said “Sure, I talked to him about the seat, and this is what I said.” If he said nothing wrong.
But somebody said something. And we’re learning all the time Obama’s first instinct when confronted with a shady character from his past (is there any other kind?) is to lie.
Lie, lie, lie.
Can you blame us if we call him the Liar-Elect?