White House Praises Itself For Swift Action In Sherrod Firing

Sherrod, remember, says that the pressure came from the White House. (Indirectly, I think -- the people who called her said the White House wanted her resignation.)

Check out this weird denial:

But three Democratic sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, singled the White House's initial response to the incident out for praise in the regular 8:30 a.m. staff meeting Tuesday morning. The sources differed on the substance of Messina's praise, but concurred that he had praised the speed of White House communications in response to the flap, which was driven by a misleadingly-edited video posted to Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website.

One source, who is unhappy with the administration's handling of the incident, paraphrased Messina's remarks: "We could have waited all day – we could have had a media circus – but we took decisive action and it’s a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere."

So, like, he says the White House took the action, right?

Now comes the spin. This is so weak:

But two other senior officials present at the meeting, who responded to a call to the White House press office, said the gist of Messina's words had been conveyed to POLITICO inaccurately, and that Messina -- a top political operative and senior manager -- was merely speaking in his capacity as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and "cheerleader" to boost staffers' morale.

Notice that's not a denial he said these things, it's just claiming, um, what we already knew, that he we giving his staff a "Yay, we done good" thing.

How the hell is that a denial or even a quibbling with the story as reported?

posted by Ace at 02:59 PM

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