CNN defends 'superb' debate moderator Candy Crowley over her 'point of fact' on Benghazi . . . and claims she only gave Obama more time because he speaks slowly

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Toby Harnden In Washington - The Daily Mail


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CNN has sent out talking points to its staff, directing them to say that Candy Crowley was merely 'stating a point of fact' about the Libya 'terror' row and insisting that Barack Obama only got more time than Mitt Romney because he speaks slowly.

In an email to all CNN staff, the network's managing editor Mark Whitaker congratulated his anchoron her role as moderator and washing over the controversy over her effectively siding with Obama over Romney on a question concerning the U.S. Consulate attack in Libya last month.

Whitaker wrote: 'Let's start with a big round of applause for Candy Crowley for a superb job under the most difficult circumstances imaginable.'

According to the internal email, obtained by TMZ, Whitaker continued: 'The reviews on Candy's performance have been overwhelmingly positive but Romney supporters are going after her on two points, no doubt because their man did not have as good a night as he had in Denver.'

The moderator's dramatic intervention, in which she cut Romney short when he claimed that Obama had failed to say the attack was the work of terrorists in the his Rose Garden statement the following day, has been met with outrage.

Crowley appeared to backtrack just a few hours after she left the GOP candidate exposed on the stage in front of millions of viewers.

She admitted that Romney had been 'right in the main' but added that he had 'picked the wrong word'.

She then told chat show The View today: 'It didn't come to me as I'm going to fact check that. It came to me as let's get past this... To me I was really trying to move the conversation along... This is a semantic thing.'

A storm of protest has followed the incident. Top Romney allies said Crowley 'had no business' intervening in the argument, accusing her of 'getting in the game' rather than being an impartial observer.

During a question about security at the Benghazi compound, where four American officials including ambassador Chris Stevens were killed on September 11, Obama said he was ultimately responsible as commander-in-chief.

Romney then questioned whether or not Obama had called the consulate attack an 'act of terror' in his Rose Garden address the following day.

While Obama cut across Romney - saying 'look at the transcript' - Crowley seemed to back up the President, telling the Republican governor that Obama did 'call it an act of terror'.

Her interjection drew applause from the audience, led by Mrs Obama, but angered political commentators, who accused Crowley of stepping in on behalf of the President.

Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro called the moderator's reactions a 'disgrace' while his colleague John Nolte said Crowley 'lied to save Obama'.

Democratic strategist Joe Trippi told Fox News the exchange was 'going to help the President', adding: 'There’s a ref, and the ref just threw the flag.'

Romney advisor Ron Kaufman continued the sporting metaphor as he said: 'At different times tonight, she in fact got into the game, and she wasn't on the sidelines.'

And former New Hampshire governor John Sununu said: 'Candy was wrong, and Candy had no business doing that, and Candy didn't even keep the time right.'

However, top Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom insisted he was relaxed about the controversial intervention, saying: 'I don't complain about the refs - I think Candy was dandy.'

The shock moment came in the middle of what CBS News anchor Scott Pelley described as 'the most rancorous presidential debate ever', adding: 'We have never seen anything like that in presidential history. They turned every question from the audience into an attack on the other.'

Crowley often struggled to control the candidates as they spoke over each other amid angry exchanges.

[DemonGeminiX]

*Cough* BULLSHIT! *Cough*


She should've stepped in and told Obama to shut the fuck up when he kept interrupting Romney when it was Romney's turn to speak. Classless, all the way around. Completely and utterly classless.

[perrhaps]

She looks like Meatloaf in drag.

[Acid Trip]

She looks like Meatloaf in drag.

Nah, Meatloaf would look better than her.

[Acid Trip]

Whitaker wrote: 'Let's start with a big round of applause for Candy Crowley for a superb job under the most difficult circumstances imaginable.'

So she was being suppressed by automatic gun fire and the sound of mortars falling from the sky? Disease was spreading through the town hall at a rate never seen before? She was parched and fresh water was impossible to find?

Man, I must have watched the wrong debate. The one I saw she played moderator to a couple bags of hot air. Hardly "the most difficult circumstances imaginable."

[Muddy]

I thought she did fine... Both candidates behaved poorly..

[Teh One Who Knocks]

I thought she did fine... Both candidates behaved poorly..

She blatantly took sides when it was her job to moderate, that's an epic fail

[Muddy]

Did she?

[Richard Cranium]

Candy Crowley, who was suspected of being one more liberal moderator in the tank for Barack Obama, was more than just in the tank for him; she dove in and sucked all the water out for him so he could pretend he walked on water.

In the first presidential debate, Jim Lehrer, no slouch at shilling for the Democratic Party, interrupted Mitt Romney 15 times and Barack Obama only five.

Crowley made Lehrer look like an amateur. She interrupted Obama nine times, (although four of those were when he wouldn’t respect the time limit when discussing assault weapons; he went over his time limit all night long), but when it came to Mitt Romney, she was utterly beyond the pale.

Crowley interrupted Romney 28 times. 28 times. Her desperation to keep Romney from scoring points was so patently obvious that it wasn’t really a surprise when she had her infamous moment: the moment when she interrupted and falsely claimed Romney was incorrect in accusing Obama of refusing to call the Benghazi attack an act of terror.

And even beyond the interruptions, there were numerous instances where Crowley’s obvious partisanship prompted her to treat Romney with great disrespect:

1. She wouldn’t let him respond when Obama lied about the auto industry. First she called him Mr. Romney instead of governor, then protested, “there'll be plenty of chances here to go on, but I want to... We have all these folks. I will let you absolutely... OK. Will - will - you certainly will have lots of time here coming up.” Romney never did get the chance to respond.

2. After the question asking whether gas prices as they stand now are the new normal, Obama got 2 chances to respond. When Romney asked for his second chance, Crowley shut him off by saying, “ … in the follow up, it doesn't quite work like that. But I'm going to give you a chance here. I promise you, I'm going to.” She didn’t.

3. When discussing how he would deal with deductions, just as Romney was about to destroy Obama with statistics, Crowley jumped in to save her man not only by denying the value of statistics, but changing the narrative to say Romney’s numbers couldn’t possibly add up:

“And Governor, let's - before we get into a vast array of who says - what study says what, if it shouldn't add up. If somehow when you get in there, there isn't enough tax revenue coming in. If somehow the numbers don't add up, would you be willing to look again …”

4. When Romney was trying to make a point of Obama’s pension investing in China, Crowley cut him off by insinuating people were tired of him talking:

“Governor Romney, you can make it short. See all these people? They've been waiting for you. Make it short.”

Then she really tried to humiliate him with this: “If I could have you sit down, Governor Romney. Thank you.” She never asked Obama to sit down.

5. The infamous incident when she interrupted Romney’s claim about Obama’s refusal to call the Benghazi murders a terror attack:

“It - it - it - he did in fact, sir. So let me - let me call it an act of terror...

Prompted by Obama to say it a little louder, Crowley obliged:

“He - he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take - it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.”

6. 6. Just as egregiously, when the question was about assault weapons and Romney naturally started to discuss fast and furious, Crowley quickly shifted him away from that and turned it into an attack on Romney’s assault ban position:

“Governor, Governor, if I could, the question was about these assault weapons that once were once banned and are no longer banned. I know that you signed an assault weapons ban when you were in Massachusetts, obviously, with this question, you no longer do support that. Why is that, given the kind of violence that we see sometimes with these mass killings? Why is it that you have changed your mind?’

The fact that Obama escaped all night long by lie after lie didn’t seem to disturb Crowley in the slightest. She had her shadowy agenda, and she stuck to it fiercely. Now it is our job to throw her out into the sun where every American can see exactly how dirty she is.

[Richard Cranium]

On CNN's "State of the Union" on September 30, Candy Crowley asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) why he thought it took the administration 17 days after the Benghazi attacks to give a "sort of definitive statement" that terrorists orchestrated the attacks.

While moderating Tuesday's debate, Crowley forgot the timeline and facts she commanded two weeks earlier, and she inexplicably took President Obama's side when Obama and Romney were arguing about whether Obama referred to the Libya attacks as acts of terror on the day after.

Romney correctly said Obama did not refer to the Benghazi attacks as acts of terror the day after. When Obama boldly lied and claimed that he had done so, Romney looked startled. Then, Crowley jumped in and said Obama had indeed said the day after the Benghazi attacks that those acts were acts of terror.

Obama did say "acts of terror" on September 12, but he was not referring to the terrorists attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, which the Obama administration tried to claim was the result of spontaneous protests in response to an obscure anti-Muhammad Internet film.

Hours later on Tuesday evening, Crowley went on CNN and said Romney "was right in the main, but he just chose the wrong word," but the damage was long done by then.

On September 30, Crowley said that 17 days after the attacks, on Friday September 28, "we got the administration's sort of definitive statement that this now looks as though it was a pre-planned attack by a terrorist group, and some of whom were at least sympathetic to al Qaeda."

"Why do you think and are you bothered that it has taken them this long from September 11th to now to get to this conclusion?," Crowley asked McCain.

After McCain answered that the Obama administration did not immediately want to admit it was a terrorist attack because it would interfere "with the depiction that the administration is trying to convey that al Qaeda is on the wane, that everything is fine in the Middle East," Crowley explicitly asked McCain if he thought the administration's actions were indeed "political."

"I think there are certain political overtones. How else -- how else could you trot out our U.N. ambassador to say this was a spontaneous demonstration?," McCain answered.

"Maybe they thought that at the time," Crowley said.

McCain then responded:

Five days later? That doesn't pass the smell test. It was either willful ignorance or abysmal intelligence to think that people come to spontaneous demonstrations with heavy weapons, mortars, and the attack goes on for hours.

[Richard Cranium]

Romney "picked the wrong word!" And for that sin the the referee ran onto the field and tackled the other guy!

This is a scandal; a total and complete media scandal committed by a woman who promised to violate her contract and to insert herself into the debate. All she did for weeks was brag about how she intended to grab the spotlight -- and boy did she ever.

Absolutely disgraceful.



We're done with the second presidential debate, but it was apparent 45 minutes in that between the questions Crowley chose and her handling of who was allowed to speak and when, that this debate was a total and complete setup to rehabilitate Barack Obama.

If these are truly undecided voters, they're apparently undecided between Obama and the Green Party. Moreover, as I write this, Obama's already enjoyed four more minutes of speaking time than Romney. In a ninety-minute debate, that's a big deal.

The lowest and most dishonest part of Crowley's disgraceful "moderation" was when she actually jumped into the debate to take Obama's side when the issue of Benghazi came up. To cover for his and his administration's lying for almost two weeks about the attack coming as the result of a spontaneous protest over a YouTube video, Obama attempted to use as cover the claim that he had called the attack a "terrorist attack" on that very first day during his Rose Garden statement.

Romney correctly disputed that.

Crowley, quite incorrectly, took Obama's side and the crowd exploded.

Here's what Obama said that day:

No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.

Context matters and the context here is that Obama connected this "act of terror" to … a mob action over a YouTube video -- not a deliberate terrorist attack. Obama was using the term generically and it would be almost two weeks before he used it again.

Let's not forget that Susan Rice said declaratively on the five Sunday shows four days later that it was NOT an act of terror.

And during those two weeks the Obama administration lied like a rug. For Crowley to step in and attempt to correct Romney on a statement that is at best arguable, was completely out of line. The debate over this debate has only begun.

[Muddy]

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[PorkChopSandwiches]

I can :wank: