Matt Drudge vs. Barack Obama
A video-clip battle breaks out online over Obama's health-care reform plan
The Obama administration is wading into a war of words with Matt Drudge, said Mike Allen in Politico. The White House has posted a three-minute video "punching back at an old clip of President Barack Obama that was featured on the Drudge Report with the headline 'Uncovered Video: Obama Explains How His Health Care Plan Will 'Eliminate' Private Insurance'" (watch Obama's response to Drudge). In the White House clip, Linda Douglass of the White House Office of Health Reform says the Drudge post was an example of "disinformation" aiming to scare people so they'll reject health-care reform.
Is this "the best the White House can do to rebut the Drudge-linked video"? said Scott Johnson in Power Line. Linda Douglass played clips showing Obama making a bunch of fuzzy ObamaCare promises, but didn't really refute the president's past statement, shown in the Drudge clip (watch the video Drudge linked to), that Obama thinks employer health coverage could be eliminated 20 or 30 years down the road. It sounds like Obama's "sales pitch" amounts to telling Americans what he thinks they want to hear, even if it goes against "deeply held views" he has expressed in the past.
The "sliced up" video Matt Drudge "hyped" is supposed to prove that Obama wants to eliminate private health care, said Mark Murray in MSNBC, but a transcript of the 2007 event at which he made the comments "suggested no such thing." Drudge was never "a fan of Obama," but it looks likes Obama coverage on his site, the Drudge Report, is becoming "even more negative" as Obama's poll numbers decline.
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