Pat Caddell: “This press corps serves at the pleasure of this White House and President”

Public opinion pollster and political film consultant, Pat Caddell recently gave a speech on  “The Audacity of Corruption” at the Obamanation: A Day of Truth Accuracy in Media Conference 9/21/2012…

There’s a shorter version of his speech with just the highlights. But as far as I’m concerned, every part of a Pat F’n Caddell speech is a highlight. Caddell has never been better than in this speech blasting today’s ObamaMedia, which he repeats several times, scares him.

He said, “this press corps serves at the pleasure of this White House and President”, which is very similar to what another Democrat pundit, recently said: Kirsten Powers: The media seems to be taking their orders from the Obama administration.

Video and transcript via AIM

PAT CADDELL: Thank you.  Glad to be with you.  This could take a long time, but we don’t have that, so let me just get right to this.  I think we’re at the most dangerous time in our political history in terms of the balance of power in the role that the media plays in whether or not we maintain a free democracy or not.  You know, when I first started in politics—it had been for a long time, and for many years—everyone on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, despised the press commonly, because they were SOBs to everybody, which is exactly what they should be. They were unrelenting. Whatever the biases were, they were essentially—they were equal-opportunity people. That changed in 1980. There’s a lot of reasons for it. It began to change in the ’80s. It changed—an important point in the [Michael] Dukakis election, when the press literally was trying to—Dukakis-Bush, get Dukakis elected by ignoring what was happening in Massachusetts, with a candidate who was running on the platform of  “He will do for America what he did for Massachusetts”—and they were on the verge of bankruptcy.

***

The same thing: I raised the question of David Plouffe.  David Plouffe, who is the White House’s Senior Advisor—he was the campaign manager last time, he and [David] Axelrod sort of switched out, Axelrod going back to Chicago for the campaign—and just after it was announced that he was coming, an Iranian front group in Nigeria gave him $100,000 to give two speeches in Nigeria.  Now, let me tell you: There’s nobody that hands—no stranger gives you $100,000 and doesn’t expect something in return, unless you live in a world that I don’t.  And when he—no one has raised this in the mainstream media.  He was on with George Stephanopoulos, on ABC, a couple of weeks ago, and they were going through all these questions.  No one asked him whatsoever about that.  He was not inquired—there’s been no—George Stephanopoulos, a former advisor to Bill Clinton—who every morning, while Rahm Emmanuel was Chief of Staff, has his call with Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville, and the three of them have been doing it for years—and he is held out as a journalist.  He has two platforms.  I mean, he’s a political hack masquerading as a journalist.  But there’s no—when you don’t ask the questions you need to ask of someone like David Plouffe, who’s going in the White House—when we’re talking about Iran, I just finishedsurveys, some of you may have seen, with John McLaughlin this week, with Secure America Now, why not—just how strongly Americans are concerned with Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, what’s happening in the Middle East, and cuts in defense spending.  This is not the place for that, but it strikes me as the American people identify, in the polling we’ve done over the last year, is Iran is the single greatest danger to the United States.  And here’s a man who’s being paid by an already named front group for that—for a terrorist regime, and is not asked about it, or queried about it!

The third thing I would say is that—then there’s of course [National Security Advisor] Tom Donilon, who I know very well from years back, who I would cause a little bit of a stir a few months ago when I said he was the “leaker-in-chief.”  I mean this ridiculous running around—“How did these secrets get out?”—when it is clear he is a person whose only credential—has no credentials for foreign policy; who has been in the White House; who was a political operative for Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, and others; who was known to have, in my opinion, to be just the most amoral person I know in politics; and who is using and orchestrating national security.  In Mr. [David] Sanger’s book [Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power], as a reviewer at [The New York Times] said, “The hero of this book, and the clear source of it, is Tom Donilon”—but let me just make a point.  Neither does—and I would say this to the Congressman—“You know, all the Republicans have to do”—you know, I talk often about the “Corrupt Party” and the “Stupid Party,” but the Stupid Party couldn’t be stupider when it comes to things like this.  They could have called Tom Donilon and other people down to the Congress, put them under oath, and asked them if they had leaked.  Instead you have Eric Holder, who runs the most political Justice Department since John Mitchell—only in John Mitchell’s administration we had Justice Departments that were so politicized and so corrupted by politics—and he appoints someone who gave two people to do a study on the leaks, sometime in the next century will come out, and one of them is a, was a contributor to Barack Obama when he was a state senator.  That’s a really unbiased source!  And the press, of course, won’t look into this.  It will not ask the question.  But the Republicans could have called them down.  Yes, the President could have extended Executive Privilege, but let him say “I will not answer that question, sir” on the question of “Did you leak these secrets that Dianne Feinstein, the Chairman, the Democratic Chairman, of the Senate Intelligence Committee said were endangering national security and American lives?”  As she said when she read Sanger’s book, “My God, every page I turn I learn something that I don’t know!”  I mean, these are serious matters but in Washington they’re playful, and the press does not pursue any of them.

***

We have a political campaign where, to put the best metaphor I can on it, where the referees on the field are sacking the quarterback of one team, tripping up their runners, throwing their bodies in front of blockers, and nobody says anything.  The Republicans don’t.  The reason you will lose this battle is for one reason.  Despite organizations like AIM and others who are pointing this out, and the fact that 60% of the American people are in on the secret here—I mean, they’re no idiots—Republicans and those candidates who are not the candidates of the press refuse to call them out.  If I were the Romney campaign I would’ve been doing this for months!  I’d have been looking at individual reporters!  I would be telling the American people, “They’re not trying to stop me; they’re trying to stop you!  And they are here to do this!”  And I would have made the press themselves an issue because, until you do, what happens is, they are given the basic concession of authenticity and accuracy, or that they are credible, by not doing that.

SEE ALSO:

Gateway Pundit: Rush Limbaugh Accuses Obama of Coordinating a Campaign of Deceit & Lies (Video)

The Right Scoop: Kirsten Powers: The media may be complicit in another terrorist attack on America

You know what? They don’t care. They’ve got an election to win for their Precious, and that’s all that matters right now.

Ace of Spades HQ: Only ABCNews’ Jake Tapper Reports That Adminstration Secretly Knew Benghazi Was a Terrorist Attack From Day One; CBS, NBC Embargo

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