WaxWorks
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Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Ari is Leaving. Salon.com has a great article by Jake Tapper today listing some of Ari's greatest fibs. I'm not sure this is accessible to non-subscribers, so here's some of the better ones:
At the beginning of the Florida recount mess Fleischer disputed the notion that any voters were confused by the butterfly ballot, asserting that "Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold," a claim disputed by Buchanan, his Florida coordinator Jim McConnell, and Jim Cunningham, chairman of the executive committee of Palm Beach County's Reform Party.
That quote seemed to set the tone for his tenure. Plenty followed. A sampling:
Fleischer fueled the essentially bogus "White House vandalism" story, about the Clinton staff's exodus from the West Wing, by telling reporters, "What we are doing is cataloging that which took place." He did this with a certain flair -- engaging in partisan demagoguery while claiming to be doing the exact opposite. It really was quite magnificent, in its way. "I choose not to describe what acts were done that we found upon arrival, because I think that's part of changing the tone in Washington," Fleischer said. "I think it would be easy for us to reflect and to discuss these things, and to be critical. President Bush chooses to set a different tone." Where was all the damage done? "You know, I really stopped paying attention to all the different places," he said.
Nine months later, defending the president's hopscotch across the country in Air Force One on 9/11, Fleischer asserted that the White House was the target of Flight 93, a claim that again proved to be false.
Fleischer was actually laughed out of his own briefing room last February when he disputed that the U.S. government -- then fiercely engaged in a campaign to win support for its Iraq resolution in the United Nations -- was doing so. "Think about the implications of what you're saying," Fleischer said incredulously. "You're saying that the leaders of other nations are buyable. And that is not an acceptable proposition." The room erupted in laughter. (Click here, click on "Audio," and fast-forward to 37:07 into the briefing, to hear the peals of delight, followed by Fleischer's hasty "Thank you.")
Despite then-candidate Bush's continual refrain on the campaign trail that he loathed the concept of "nation building" -- on Oct. 11, 2000, Bush said, "We're going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not" -- Fleischer on Feb. 27, 2003, denied that the president ever voiced such an opinion. "During the campaign, the president did not express, as you put it, disdain for nation building," said Fleischer.
