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Oh Well, Drudge Pulled Back on Revealing the Administration's Wickedness
07/22/2003

It's not a good sign when online news services refuse to perpetuate stories about the administration's "smear campaign":

PRESS: Maybe it was another miracle. Last week Lloyd Grove devotes almost half a page in "The Washington Post", a reliable source, to talk about Matt Drudge, reporting that after the ABC News showed a report from Iraq by one of their journalists interviewed some American soldiers who were very critical about having to stay so long in Iraq, and they said -- one of them said Donald Rumsfeld ought to be fired. Lloyd Grove reports that the White House contacted you and informed you that that reporter happened to be Canadian, and he happened to be gay.

DRUDGE: Well...

PRESS: Do you feel you were being used by the White House and why did you let them...

DRUDGE: Oh reporters... (CROSSTALK)

DRUDGE: ... used in Washington, D.C., I don't know. That would be a new phenom that I don't think I would get credit for. I don't know how Lloyd Grove found this out. I certainly didn't tell him. He instant messaged me as we do, and he says, what's this, the White House tipping you off on the background on this reporter, who, again, you're correct, got the interview of the summer so far...

(CROSSTALK)

DRUDGE: ... to actually have enlisted men calling for the resignation of Rumsfeld on camera showing their face unprecedented...

PRESS: And their badges.

DRUDGE: And their badges unprecedented, but we're in a new media era where satellite television is going to change the dynamic of war. I'm not prepared to come on MSNBC and talk about my sources, as I don't -- I would never ask you about your sources. Do White House staffers of all ranks help me in research and tipping off stories, yes, they do. But if you're asking me, if White House...

PRESS: Do you think...

DRUDGE: ... staffers said do you know what, the ABC News guy is gay, go after him. That's not how it happened, and it's not my fault if people in this town conceive it as that...

I guess my biggest problem with the "smear campaign" theory is this: if it were true, it would indicate that the administration has no clue how to perform even the simple hard-ball tactics taught in Politics 101. They would have brought the story more publicity to throw dirt that has tended not to stick in recent years and that the intended "victim" is entirely open about. You have to want to find dirt on the administration to believe that this was some sort of organized attack.

My second biggest problem derives from the huge clue that the rest of the mainstream media didn't grab this dirt (on Bush) and run with it — a pretty good indication that any bad-light-Bush story has shaky foundations.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:42 PM EST