Soledad tells former RNC chair: Minorities ‘know you and they… don’t like you’

By David Edwards/Raw Story

CNN host Soledad O’Brien on Friday advised former Republican National Committee Chairman Mel Martinez that Republicans would need to do more that just encourage African-Americans and Hispanics to get to know them better because “they know you and they decided they don’t like you.”

Speaking with Martinez before the the Republican Party’s winter meeting continued in North Carolina on Friday, she noted that the party had launched a website asking for suggestions but wondered how it would be turned into “real change.”

“Well, I think first of all, it’s a great reassessment taking place within the party and I think it’s very, very healthy,” Martinez explained. “I’m really quite encouraged, not only by the website and the fact we’re reaching out to people to input because I think we’ve lost the ability to communicate well and I think that’s a beginning.”

O’Brien pointed out that South Carolina committeeman Glenn McCall, who is part of a task force charge with moving the party forward, had suggested to The Wall Street Journal that the problem was that minorities “simply don’t know us.”

“In many ways, we’re at square one,” McCall said. “There are large portions of the population — African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, young voters — who simply don’t know us. We have to change that.”

“Is it that they don’t know you? Meaning you as the GOP,” O’Brien asked Martinez. “Or is that they know you and they decided they don’t like you?”

“Look, I think there’s a communication gap and I think that our party has done a poor job reaching out to these particular groups,” the former U.S. senator insisted. “And I think this is about communicating our message.”

“But on some other things you might say are core to the GOP message, I think you’re going to have a challenge,” the CNN host explained, pointing to the Republican Party’s policy of keeping taxes low for wealthy Americans while cutting government programs that help the poor.

“Does that mean that you take the assessment and then you change policy potentially?” she wondered.

“No, I don’t think you change principles, but I think you change the conversation,” Martinez declared. “We shouldn’t be talking about protecting the wealthy from raising taxes. We should be talking about a tax code that promotes economic growth, and that lifts all boats.”

“So, the bottom line is that it’s about taxes, it’s about an overbearing government but it’s really about how we communicate it. Are we really protecting a certain segment of taxpayers or are we looking to have a tax code that really promotes economic growth?”

Watch the video below from CNN’s Starting Point, broadcast Jan. 25, 2013.

Soledad O’Brien Calls Out the Hypocrisy of Republicans Refusing Aid to Sandy

By: Sarah Jones/politicususa

Up today for a possible vote is the $51 billion in federal relief for Hurricane Sandy. Congressman Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) told Soledad O’Brien on CNN”s “Starting Point” he has a problem with part of it because “it is not paid for.”

O’Brien challenged him by pointing out the hypocrisy of his position since no one demanded that the costs be offset for disaster relief for his state. After listing the costs of several of South Carolina’s hurricanes, she asked, “Doesn’t he (Chris Christie) have a point, that this is a different standard for folks in New Jersey than for everybody else, including those many folks in your state were given in the past.”

Watch here via CNN:

Pretending as if his vote is not a reflection of being threatened by the Club for Growth, Mulvaney claimed that his objection is that the relief is not paid for. “My difficulty is that this is not paid for. We’re borrowing this additional money to do this and I just think that’s wrong. I’m hoping we can figure out a way today during the amendment process to find savings elsewhere to pay for this without adding to the debt.”

O’Brien then reminded him of the hurricanes that hit South Carolina and that no one offset costs for hurricane relief to South Carolina, including Hurricane Hugo’s 5-8 billion in property loss.

She rolled a clip of Chris Christie listing the mostly Southern states (from which many of the conservative objections to Sandy relief emanate) that have been given relief with no questions asked. Christie said New Jersey expects nothing different than was done for Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and Iowa, and then huffed, “If they want to make new rules, they picked the wrong state to do it with.”

O’Brien asked Mulvaney, “Doesn’t he have a point, that this is a different standard for folks in New Jersey than for everybody else, including those many folks in your state were given in the past.”

Mulvaney put on his best Republican patronizing hat, and suggested calmly — as if New Jersey weren’t in the midst of a desperate situation — that things are different now. “I do think it’s a fair point. I would encourage the Governor and everybody else to consider the fact that in 1989 and even as late as Katrina several years ago the debt was much much smaller… we simply cannot continue what we’ve done in the past. That’s how we arrived where we are.”

Ah, so that’s how we got here. I thought it was the two unfunded wars and unfunded Medicare Part D combined with the Bush tax cuts that destroyed Clinton’s surplus. And then there was the Stock Market Crash of 2008, brought on by the rampant deregulation (Republican policy that was supposed to lead to growth) of Wall Street/banks/financial institutions. Recessions cost a LOT of money.

If he means that we can’t keep doing what the government is designed to do, then we have to ask why Republicans are against taxes, which really do put a dent in the deficit (see Gov. Brown, D-CA).

Soledad slams Red State editor’s moderator critique: ‘You have lost your mind’

By Stephen C. Webster/Raw Story

CNN contributor and RedState.com editor Erick Erickson finally got a taste of journalistic pushback on Friday morning, in the form of a smiling Soledad O’Brien.

The CNN morning host confronted the conservative talker over a Twitter post he wrote Thursday night, attacking Martha Raddatz, moderator of Thursday’s vice presidential debate, for not taking charge of the conversation.

“I’m sorry, but I think Martha Raddatz did an atrocious job as a moderator,” he wrote. “She lost control of both sides repeatedly.”

In a follow-up, however, Erickson seemed to criticize the ABC News senior foreign policy correspondent for the exact opposite thing: taking charge too much and forcing the candidates to answer specific questions.

“Dear future debate moderators, don’t make the topics in your wheelhouse the focus of a debate millions might watch,” he wrote.

Appearing on CNN just 12 hours later, Erickson had to answer for the schizophrenic criticism. “I think you have lost your mind,” O’Brien said. “I actually thought that wasn’t losing control.”

“I think you’re a journalist and journalists are gonna give her cover,” he replied. “I thought she was horrible.”

Later in the interview, Erickson mentioned “this unemployment number” as something that the moderator should have focused on. However, Raddatz did ask about unemployment, noting that the national jobless rate “just fell below 8 percent for the first time in 43 months,” and asking the candidates how quickly they think it could be driven below 6 percent.

“I just don’t think moderators should make the focus of the debate their wheelhouse,” Erickson said.

“Yeah, I’m just gonna disagree with you on that,” O’Brien replied. “I think she did a teriffic job. I thought that she was super strong. Do you think that [the last presidential debate moderator] Jim Leher did a good job?”

“Actually, I don’t think that either of them…” Erickson said, trailing off. “At least with Jim… I think Jim Leher, at least he really got out of the way and let them talk.”

A CBS News snap poll of undecided voters found that 50 percent thought Vice President Joe Biden won the debate, whereas just 31 percent picked Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

This video is from CNN, broadcast Friday, October 12, 2012.

Right-Wing Media's Libya Consulate Security Mythology Falls Apart

REMINGTON SHEPARD/Media Matters for America

The conservative media talking point that the White House abdicated its responsibility to secure the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, took a hit Wednesday when CNN's Soledad O'Brien pressed Congressman Jason Chaffetz to acknowledge that he joined House Republicans in voting to cut funding for embassy security.

Since the September attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the right-wing media have attacked the Obama administration for supposedly not having enough security at the compound. That myth is undermined by a State Department explanation that "no reasonable security presence could have successfully fended" off the attack.

Chaffetz, a surrogate for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign who is helping to lead an investigation into the attack, appeared to discuss that investigation on CNN's Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien. During the interview, Chaffetz echoed the right-wing media talking point that security was insufficient in Benghazi. But O'Brien pointed out the fundamental hypocrisy in this argument by noting that Chaffetz, like other Republicans in the House, voted to cut funding for embassy security.

O'Brien asked: "Is it true that you voted to cut the funding for embassy security?" Chaffetz responded: "Absolutely. Look we have to make priorities and choices in this country."

Indeed, Republicans, including Chaffetz and other House Republicans, voted in 2011 and 2012 to give the State Department far less than it requested for embassy security.

Soledad O’Brien grills Romney aide: Your campaign is ‘just a hot mess’

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Romney adviser Bay Buchanan on Tuesday declared that the release of leaked campaign videos showing the Republican presidential nominee writing off 47 percent of the country as “dependant” and “entitled” was just a “bump in the road.”

In an edited video published by Mother Jones on Monday, Mitt Romney had told wealthy donors that almost half of the country “pay no income tax” and were going to vote for President Barack Obama.

“My job is is not to worry about those people,” Romney asserted. “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

On Tuesday, Buchanan had the unenviable task of trying to do damage control while being grilled by CNN host Soledad O’Brien.

“As a candidate, he can’t worry about those he can’t get,” Buchanan explained, adding that the media should be focusing on “one out of every six Americans are in poverty today and that 47 million are taking food stamps in order to take care of themselves and their families.”

“Listen, I fully understand the strategy is to turn to the ‘real problem’ and talk about something else, but I’m going to keep you on this,” O’Brien said. “He says 47 percent of Americans pay no tax. That’s not correct. … Forty-seven percent of those people who pay no income tax — look at that chart there — 61 percent of those folks, they’re paying payroll tax, money is coming out of their paycheck. It’s being described as the myth of sort of the deadbeat nation.”

O’Brien continued by reading a satirical op-ed titled “Thurston Howell Romney” that was written by conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks: “The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.”

“So essentially, didn’t Mitt Romney in these leaked tapes bash his own voters?” O’Brien wondered. “Those are the people who are voting for Mitt Romney.”

“Honey,” Buchanan replied, “He recognized that more and more people are becoming dependant on government.”

“Aren’t the people he’s bashing to these wealthy donors, these are Republicans, these are white men with high school diplomas?” O’Brien pressed. “These very people are the people who are going to vote for him and now you have a major problem. … He’s not talking — 47 percent of the nation is not on food stamps.”

“It was inarticulate, I admit,” Buchanan said.

“There’s a sense that the campaign is in big trouble,” O’Brien pointed out. “Bloomberg [News] writes, ‘Today Mitt Romney lost the election.’ Politico says the wheels are falling off. Is that correct? Is it just a hot mess in there?”

“Certainly this is a bump in the road,” Buchanan agreed. “But is anybody looking at the campaign of Barack Obama? He’s spent the last week with America watching as his foreign policy of appeasement and apologies has disintegrated. We have problems around this world in all the Muslim countries, where anti-American sentiment is unbelievable. And that’s a good week?”

“But aren’t you kind of answering your own question,” O’Brien pointed out. “When you say, isn’t anybody looking at the campaign of Barack Obama, isn’t it like, ‘No because look at the headlines’? You’re drawing focus from your own campaign by these headlines.”

“No, that’s an indictment on the media, Soledad,” Buchanan insisted. “Is it not a story that one out of every six Americans is in poverty? Is that not a much bigger story, that 47 million Americans have to take food stamps to take care of themselves and their families and that’s because of four years of Barack Obama, and that he has no new fresh ideas on how to put America back to work? That’s what Mitt Romney’s all about, that’s what our campaign is about. That seems to be a whole lot more important than some comment that he may have inarticulately stated.”

“I appreciate your spin on it,” O’Brien concluded. “But I think ‘inarticulately stated’ is the least of the problems.”

Watch this video from CNN’s Starting Point, broadcast Aug. 18, 2012.

GOP Congressman Blows Up At CNN Host: ‘I Don’t Care What Fact Check Says,’ Obama Apologizes For America!

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

During an appearance on CNN’s Starting Point on Monday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) could not explain when President Obama “apologized” for the United States, despite repeatedly claiming that he went on an “apology tour” across the Middle East shortly after becoming president.

Since violence broke out across the region, Republicans have charged that Obama’s “defeatist” policies have caused the unrest and contributed to the death of Libyan ambassador Christopher Stevens. But pressed to detail where Obama has apologized for America by CNN host Soledad O’Brien, King came up short:

O’BRIEN: Never once in that speech, as you know, which I have the speech right here. that was — he never once used the word “apology.” He never once said “I’m sorry.”

KING: Didn’t have to. The logical — any logical reading of that speech or the speech he gave in France where he basically said that the United States can be too aggressive. [...]

O’BRIEN: Everybody keeps talking about this apology tour and apologies from the President. I’m trying to find the words ‘I’m sorry, I apologize’ in any of those speeches. Which I have the text of all those speeches in front of me. None of those speeches at all, if you go to factcheck.org which we check in a lot, they all say the same thing. They fact check this and they say this whole theory of apologies…

KING: I don’t care what fact check says.

O’BRIEN: There are fact checks. You may not care, but they’re a fact checker.

KING: No. Soledad. Any commonsense interpretation of those speeches, the president’s apologizing for the American position. That’s the apology tour. That’s the way it’s interpreted in the Middle East. If I go over and say that the U.S. has violated its principles, that the United States has not shown respect for islam, that’s an apology. How else can it be interpreted?

O’BRIEN: I think plenty of people are interpreting it as a nuanced approach to diplomacy is how some people are interpreting it. So I don’t think that everybody agrees it’s apology.

Watch it:

As the Washington Post put it, “the apology tour never happened.” Rather, shortly after becoming president, Obama traveled to the world introducing himself and differentiating his foreign policy from that of President Bush. “This is typical of many new presidents,” including Bush himself, who “quickly broke with Clinton administration policy on dealings with North Korea, the Kyoto climate change treaty and the international criminal court.”

The manufactured attack, which Republicans kicked off in 2009, “feeds into a subterranean narrative that Obama, with his exotic, mixed-race background, is not really American in the first place.”

Soledad O’Brien tries to get Christine O’Donnell to define the word ‘Marxist’

By Stephen C. Webster/Raw Story

CNN host Soledad O’Brien finally had an Inigo Montoya moment on Monday, and all it took was former Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell misusing the word “Marxist.”

Granted, it’s not the first time O’Donnell, a longtime anti-abortion activist, has called the president or Democrats “Marxist.” She even used the term to describe her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, drawing exclamation points across the conservative blogosphere. But when she rolled it out on O’Brien’s show Monday, describing the president’s public statements as “Marxist sound bites,” it was little more than a nonstarter.

“Why do you think they’re Marxist?” O’Brien asked. “I mean, you kind of throw the words socialist and Marxist around that are not necessarily, I think, anchored in definitions of socialism and Marxism. So give me the definition.”

“Well, they absolutely are,” O’Donnell replied. “They absolutely are. But let me, I’ll get to that…”

O’Donnell instead began speaking about an upcoming tea party event where a staged debate between tea partiers and occupy supporters is planned. She finally added: “And I would say that they’re Marxist because of the things that you hear coming from him about share the wealth, economic equality. And these soundbites might sound good and noble on the surface, but the problem is there’s quantifiable data that prove that they simply don’t work, and we’re a free market economy that’s supposed to empower the individual, let each person use their gifts, use the rewards to create a better life for themselves instead of what Barack Obama is posing – a tax code that punishes hard work, a tax code that reduces everybody to exactly the same.”

Unfortunately for O’Donnell, “sound bites” aren’t acts of policy, the president’s tax proposalsdo nothing of the sort, and encouraging people to share and be civil isn’t even close to the definition of “Marxism.” Even so, she’s not likely to stop saying it any time soon.

One mistake she probably won’t make again is calling herself a “policy wonk” in front of O’Brien. Earlier in the segment she’d mentioned that “policy wonks like me” read a lot of statistics and figures that apathetic youth don’t. “You’re a policy wonk now? When did that happen?” O’Brien asked a moment later, prompting O’Donnell to change the term, then change the subject.

“Well, I’ve been involved in politics for 20 years,” she tried to explain. “I mean, that’s what… Policy junkie. Political junkie. You know, I mean… We read these reports. We read when people say, that person is gonna destroy Medicare or, you know, worse than the other. But most don’t. Especially the young people. That’s why they’re so apathetic. That’s why those statistics are so so alarming.”

This video was broadcast by CNN on Monday, August 20, 2012.

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Soledad O’Brien schools Republican Rep. claiming Ryan Medicare plan ‘not vouchers’

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has become the latest Republican to go up against CNN host Soledad O’Brien on the issue of Medicare and lose.

During an interview on Friday, O’Brien called out Chaffetz after he tried to claim that that Medicare plans offered by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), would not turn the program into a voucher system.

“Let’s keep to the facts that President [Barack] Obama did take $700 billion out of Medicare,” Chaffetz told O’Brien.

“We’ve now had this conversation 15 times at least,” O’Brien noted, shaking her head. “As you know, it’s not taking money out of Medicare, right? It’s a decrease in spending over time and it’s a decrease that you yourself, I assume, voted for, right? In Paul Ryan’s budget in 2011 and 2012, he had that same number in his budget. Didn’t you vote for that?”

“It’s not exactly the same number,” Chaffetz replied. “I did vote in favor of the two budgets.”

“But now you’re criticizing something that you voted for twice, right?,” O’Brien observed.

“It’s a totally different approach,” the Utah Republican maintained. “For instance, the Independent Payment Advisory Board — IPAB — is not something that I support, but is something that takes that $700 billion that Obama took and puts it into the control of these bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.”

“At the end of the day, that same number crunching was voted on by virtually every single Republican in 2011 and then again in 2012. That is fair to say,” O’Brien pointed out, adding that both Romney and Ryan had promised to “save” Medicare by turning it into a “voucher program.”

“No, it’s not!” Chaffetz objected.

“It’s not a voucher program?” O’Brien wondered.

“It is not a voucher program,” Chaffetz insisted. “It is a premium support, and that is totally different than a voucher program. And every time somebody says, ‘Oh, it’s a voucher program,’ it’s false, it’s misleading, it’s derogatory and it’s inaccurate. That is not what it does.”

“You will give people money to go and buy their own insurance, right?” O’Brien pressed. “But we’re arguing over symantics. At the end of the day, isn’t it — you would give someone money to buy their own insurance.”

“No, a premium support program is different than a voucher program,” Chaffetz repeated.

“Walk me through how it’s different,” O’Brien dared the congressman.

“Because some people that have maybe more needs or medical needs or they have less income, they’re going to have more flexibility and more assets to go and do what they need to do in order to have some choice and flexibility and create competition in the marketplace,” Chaffetz explained.

“Which is they get a voucher to go buy something!” O’Brien concluded.

On Monday, John Sununu, who serves as the chairman of Romney’s national steering committee, had also lashed out at O’Brien after she tried to fact check his claims about Ryan’s plan to end Medicare as it exists today and turn it into a voucher system.

“Soledad, stop this!” Sununu shouted. “All you’re doing is mimicking the stuff that comes out of the White House and gets repeated on the Democratic blog boards out there.”

“I’m telling you what Factcheck.com tells you, I’m telling you what the CBO tells you, I’m telling you what CNN’s independent analysis says,” the CNN host explained.

“Put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead when you do this!” the frustrated surrogate quipped.

“You know, let me tell you something,” O’Brien said. “There is independent analysis that details what this is about. … And name calling to me and somehow by you repeating a number of $716 billion, that you can make that stick when [you say] that figure is being ‘stolen’ from Medicare, that’s not true. You can’t just repeat it and make it true, sir.”

And then on Wednesday, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Romney’s national campaign co-chair, became flustered and suggested that O’Brien couldn’t understand plain English after she pushed back on his claim that is was “absolutely beyond factual dispute that [Obama] has cut $716 billion” from Medicare.

“I speak English incredibly well, sir, as you know,” O’Brien told Pawlenty.

Earlier this week, PolitiFact determined that it was “mostly true” that the plans offered by Romney and Ryan would turn Medicare into a voucher system.

“We agree that in the world of policy wonks, there are distinctions between ‘vouchers’ and ‘premium support,’ having to do with the type of inflation adjustment used and the degree of marketplace regulation imposed,” the fact-checking publication wrote. “But the Romney-Ryan approach pretty much matches the dictionary definition of ‘a form or check indicating a credit against future purchases or expenditures.’ … For a political discussion aimed at voters rather than policy wonks, we think Obama’s use of the term ‘voucher’ is close enough to earn it a rating of Mostly True.”

Watch this video from CNN’s Starting Point, broadcast Aug. 17, 2012.

O’Brien lays waste to anti-Obama Navy SEAL’s claim of ‘non-partisanship’

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

It seems that Soledad O’Brien, the host of CNN’s “Starting Point,” is on a roll. Each day brings another ill-prepared surrogate from one of the presidential campaigns before her, and each day she proceeds to cheerfully eviscerate their talking points before sweetly thanking them for coming on the show and sending them on their way.

On Friday’s edition of “Starting Point” O’Brien challenged “OPSEC” or “Operational Security group” spokesperson and former Navy SEAL Scott Taylor’s purported “non-partisan” status.

“I know you know some of the criticism and it is that, even though you claim to be nonpartisan, that this group is actually very partisan,” she said. “You’re a Republican, you ran for Congress in 2010 in Virginia’s second congressional district. You have a rep in your group who worked for the Bush administration, you share office space with Republican groups. How do you answer that claim of being partisan when you claim that you’re not?”

“I answer that claim by first saying this is an American issue. You yourself have reported extensively on leaks, so have ever other network that’s out there,” Taylor replied. “I understand the criticism will say, people will say, you’re a Republican. Well, I’m an American first. I’m an American before I’m a Republican.”

OPSEC has released a 20 minute video entitled “Dishonorable Disclosures,” which is harshly critical of the president’s handling of the raid to capture and kill Osama bin Laden. The video also attacks the president for a series of alleged security leaks, the blame for which right wing opponents of the president have been quick to lay at the administration’s feet.

The run-in came at the end of a week that has seen O’Brien challenging spokespeople from both sides by firing incisive questions and expecting straight answers.

One could argue that it was a straight line from former Gov. John Sununu (R-NH)’s disastrous performance on “Starting Point” on Monday to the fact that so many people now know that the phrase “Wonder if Sununu’s fired now” is a palindrome. The Romney spokesman became so flustered during his interview that he angrily exhorted O’Brien to “put an Obama bumper sticker on [her] head.”

Since then, the anchor has grilled Democratic Congressmen Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (MO)over “coded” race language in Vice President Joe Biden’s gaffe earlier in the week where he told a racially mixed audience that Republicans want to “put y’all back in chains.”

Earlier today, O’Brien took Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) to the woodshed over his failed attempt to substitute the phrase “premium support” for the word “voucher” in describing vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)’s plan to revamp Medicare.

Whatever the source of Ms. O’Brien’s extra ration of honey badger-ishness this week, we at Raw Story say bravo. Not only does it make for good television, it makes for good journalism.

Watch the video, embedded via CNN, below:

CNN's O'Brien Corrects Right-Wing Media Medicare Falsehood

MELODY JOHNSON/Media Matters for America

CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien debunked the pervasive right-wing media falsehood that President Obama "stole $700 billion" from Medicare.

Right-wing media have repeatedly claimed that the Medicare savings included in Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) "gutted" the Medicare program. However, on CNN's Starting Point, when Romney senior adviser John Sununu claimed that Obama "gutted Medicare by taking $717 billion out of it," O'Brien was quick to correct him.

O'Brien pointed out that Sununu's talking point has been debunked by the Congressional Budget Office, which found that the Medicare savings in the ACA are not cuts, but rather a reduction in the expected rate of growth of the program.

O'Brien also noted that independent fact-checkers have found that the Affordable Care Act does not cut Medicare benefits. These fact-checkers also determined that the claim that hundreds of billions of dollars have been cut from Medicare is outright false.

When Sununu continued to claim that Obama had gutted Medicare, O'Brien confronted him with even more facts, citing evidence that drug providers and hospitals agreed to the Medicare savings because their "theory is that what they're going to be able to do is make up by the number of people who come into the system. It doesn't reduce or cut the benefits. 

The right-wing media either doesn't understand the ACA's effect on Medicare, or is blatantly misleading about it. Either way, O'Brien was correct to challenge this false claim, and it's time for the rest of the media to follow suit.

Right-Wing Pundits Smear Soledad O’Brien As ‘Anti-Semitic’ And Racist

By Eli Clifton/Think Progress



A contentious CNN interview by Soledad O’Brien with Breitbart.com editor Joel Pollak set off a firestorm of vitriolic name-calling against O’Brien from the far-right, with some critics going so far as to falsely accuse the CNN anchor of anti-Semitism.

In a March 8, interview, O’Brien challenged Pollak’s assertion that a video from 1990 showing President Obama, then a law student, hugging late Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell was a “smoking gun” for Obama’s true beliefs on “racial division and class warfare.” Pollak’s manufactured controversy hinged on characterizing Critical Race Theory (CRT) as “hold[ing] that the Civil Rights Movement was a sham and that White Supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown.” Prodded by Pollak to define CRT, O’Brien accurately characterizedit as a theory that “looks into the intersection of race and politics and the law.” (Watch it here.)

While Pollak in his eagerness to hype his “bombshell” video mischaracterized CRT as a radical theory that calls for a war against white people, animosity on the far right has been pointed at Soledad O’Brien for correcting his inaccurate statements. Chris Loesch, husband of CNN contributor Dana Loesch, tweeted (HT: Little Green Footballs):

And Michelle Malkin, writing on David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com, claimed that O’Brien defended CRT and Bell because “she masks her political activism under the banner of corporate media ‘diversity.’” Malkin continues:

…[L]iberal minority journalists simply can’t resist carrying water for Obama. That’s because their journalistic unity demands political unanimity. If you don’t accept the left-leaning agenda of “social change” journalism, you’re enabling racism. If you don’t support the pursuit of racial hiring goals as a primary journalistic and academic goal, you’re selling out.

Noticeably, neither Loesch and Malkin offer any evidence that CRT calls for “war against white people” or that O’Brien’s comments were rooted in anti-Semitism or racism. Indeed, the increasing politicization of anti-Semitism accusations has raised eyebrows among many in the Jewish community. Sarah Wildman, a columnist for the International Herald Tribune and PBS, wrote in The Jewish Daily Forward last January:

…[W]hen anti-Semitism is falsely applied, we must also stand up and decry it as defamation, as character assault, as unjust. That is why when we debase the term by using it as a rhetorical conceit against those with whom we disagree on policy matters, we have sullied our own promises to our grandparents. For if we dilute the term, if we render the label meaningless, defanged, we have failed ourselves, our legacy, our ancestors, our children.

While Loesch and Malkin are quick to throw around incendiary accusations, it might be helpful for them to explain why they believe O’Brien’s defense of CRT and critical questioning of Joel Pollak justify accusing an award winning CNN anchor of racism and anti-Semitism.