Bernie gave an interview to the New York Daily News recently that you may have heard about. I’ve read the full transcript; Bernie gave a fine performance, as is also attested by others who were present. But the Clinton campaign, never one to pass an opportunity to launch a smear campaign, ginned up the outrage machine anyway. Their media enablers, like the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart, were only to happy to go along for the ride. The Washington Post, as you may recall, is the paper that saw fit to launch 16 negative stories about Bernie Sanders in 16 hours. Jonathan Capehart is their “Post-partisan" journoblogger already notorious for launching a dishonest smear on Bernie. His latest bit of hackery though, analyzing the Daily News interview, really takes the cake. Or to use the faux-amazement tone taken by Capehart, left my mouth agape.
Check for yourself. After reading this, I can only conclude that Capehart has severe reading comprehension issues, lacks basic understanding of material facts, or is just a dishonest hack that will put forward any smear in a desperate attempt to stay inside the Clinton media veal pen.
Let me show what I mean. First, let’s start with Capehart’s takeaway from Bernie’s discussion of financial regulations:
Considering this is the core of his campaign message, Sanders should know all of the points covered in 1, 2 and 3 inside and out. He should have been able to lecture his interrogators into a stupor with his detailed knowledge.
So Capehart damns Sanders for all of his answers in three parts of the interview, and especially damns him for answers that Capehart himself bolded for emphasis. Answers like this one:
Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program?
Sanders: It’s something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that.
For some quick context, the Sanders interview was taken on April 1, 2016. The Capehart hack job was published on April 5. The court order in the Metlife decision was ordered unsealed by the court today, April 7, so it should be made publicly available at some point today. Did you catch that? The NYDN editors asked Bernie about a court decision that wasn’t even unsealed yet. Bernie honestly answers he hadn't studied the implications of Metlife yet (because no duh, how could he have). And Capehart considers it emphatically damning. It’s damning for somebody, but not Bernie. The New York Times, surprisingly, handled the rest of the criticism of Bernie’s answers on financial regulation fairly well.
Capehart’s hack job only gets worse. I’m going to quote the full transcript, and underline the portion that Capehart selectively included:
Daily News: Okay. Now, you have obviously condemned Hamas for indiscriminate rocket attacks and the construction of the military tunnels. But you've also criticized Israel for what you described as a disproportionate response.
Sanders: Yep.
Daily News: And I'm going to look at 2014, which was the latest conflict. What should Israel have done instead?
Sanders: You're asking me now to make not only decisions for the Israeli government but for the Israeli military, and I don't quite think I'm qualified to make decisions. But I think it is fair to say that the level of attacks against civilian areas...and I do know that the Palestinians, some of them, were using civilian areas to launch missiles. Makes it very difficult. But I think most international observers would say that the attacks against Gaza were indiscriminate and that a lot of innocent people were killed who should not have been killed. Look, we are living, for better or worse, in a world of high technology, whether it's drones out there that could, you know, take your nose off, and Israel has that technology. And I think there is a general belief that, with that technology, they could have been more discriminate in terms of taking out weapons that were threatening them.
Check out that selective editing! Capehart turns a question focused on the disproportionate response from Israel into a general question about what Israel should have done in 2014, all to set up his takeaway that "[presidents need to know answers to the these questions with] finesse, which can’t be done if you ‘don’t quite think I’m qualified to make decisions.'” I guess it's easy to come away with that conclusion, when you cut out the entire finessed answer Bernie later gave to the question as to how the Israeli military could have responded better in 2014.
Capehart’s hackery-bonanza continues by quoting this exchange:
Daily News: Okay, while we were sitting here, I double-checked the facts. It’s the miracle of the iPhone. My recollection was correct. It was about 2,300, I believe, killed, and 10,000 wounded. [note — why does Capehart include this random aside, that was a follow up comment on a much earlier exchange? Was he just desperately looking for smear material, and didn't realize this thought doesn't connect with his next question?] President Obama has taken the authority for drone attacks away from the CIA and given it to the U.S. military. Some say that that has caused difficulties in zeroing in on terrorists, their ISIS leaders. Do you believe that he’s got the right policy there?
Sanders: I don’t know the answer to that. What I do know is that drones are a modern weapon. When used effectively, when taking out ISIS or terrorist leaders, that’s pretty impressive. When bombing wedding parties of innocent people and killing dozens of them, that is, needless to say, not effective and enormously counterproductive. So whatever the mechanism, whoever is in control of that policy, it has to be refined so that we are killing the people we want to kill and not innocent collateral damage.
So this is fairly straightforward. The Daily News asked is the President’s drone policy right, viz a vi military vs. CIA control. Sanders answered that he didn’t have a position on who should be in charge, but regardless of who was in charge of the drone program, "it has to be refined." Fair enough. But coming out of left-field, check out Capehart’s completely unhinged from reality hot take response:
Paris was attacked. Istanbul was attacked. Brussels was attacked and is basically a bedroom community for terrorists seeking to destabilize Europe. And several African nations have been terrorized by Islamic State affiliates. That Sanders “[doesn’t] know the answer” to whether the president has the right policy against the Islamic State is unacceptable.
WTF are you talking about Jonathan Capehart? The question was about drone policy. How do you go form that to spouting right wing talking points about Brussels being a bedroom community for terrorists (seriously, Trump would be proud) and putting words in Sanders’ mouth about Obama’s Islamic State policy? Tl;dr version of this is Go home Capehart, you’re drunk.
I’m going to skip the last dumb exchange about riding the subway, because I don't care if Sanders hasn’t ridden the subway since they apparently switched from tokens to cards. Instead, I’ll finish with this exchange quoted by Capehart:
Daily News: Okay. American Special Forces recently killed a top ISIS commander, after they’d hoped to capture him. They felt, from what the news reports were, that they had no choice at that. What would you do with a captured ISIS commander?
Sanders: Imprison him.
Daily News: Where?
Sanders: And try to get as much information out of him. If the question leads us to Guantanamo…
Daily News: Well, no, separate and apart from Guantanamo, it could be there, it could be anywhere. Where would a President Sanders imprison, interrogate? What would you do?
Sanders:Actually I haven’t thought about it a whole lot. I suppose, somewhere near the locale where that person was captured. The best location where that individual would be safely secured in a way that we can get information out of him.
To be clear, the Daily News apparently wanted to know where would prisoners be interrogated. I don't know why they expect a presidential candidate to know the logistical location that an ISIS commander would be imprisoned, which would presumably be highly dependent upon the circumstances of the capture. It's a pretty dumb line of questioning, to which Sanders charitably replies that he hadn't thought about it a lot, but someplace nearby that was secure. Duh. Good answer to a dumb question. Capehart’s takeway? "C’mon, man!”
To which I can only say, C’mon, man!
