BSTD
White House advisors “bewildered and puzzled” by McClellan’s whacks. CNN:
(CNN) — Former White House counselor Dan Bartlett lashed out at Scott McClellan in a telephone interview Wednesday, saying the allegations that the media was soft on the White House are “total crap,” adding that advisers of President Bush are “bewildered and puzzled” by the allegations in McClellan’s new book.
“It’s almost like we’re witnessing an out-of-body experience,” Bartlett said of McClellan. “We’re hearing from a completely different person we didn’t have any insight into.”
Bartlett added that intimates of the President feel McClellan has violated his trust. “Part of the role of being a trusted adviser is to honor that trust,” said Bartlett. “It’s not your place now to go out” and criticize the President like this.
“What did he really believe when he was serving as press secretary?” Bartlett asked.
While he said McClellan himself has to “answer as to motive” for writing the book now, Bartlett said, “I do question his judgment.”
Bartlett said the bewilderment stems from “Scott’s decision to publicly air these deep misgivings he’s never shared privately or publicly” with fellow Bush insiders. “To do it now, through a book, is a mistake,” he added.
Well, these are the times that try men’s souls. A wartime White House has got to be a traumatic place. After all those years held hostage by the national media, he could be suffering from Pressroom Syndrome. After enduring that kind of verbal barrage day in and day out, maybe a form of BSTD … you know, Bullshit Talk Disorder. People start having flashbacks. Sometimes about things that didn’t even happen.
Bartlett asserted that McClellan did not play a major role in key events, noting that the former aide was serving as deputy press secretary for domestic issues during the run-up to the war in Iraq, raising questions about how McClellan could claim the President used “propaganda” to sell the war.
“I don’t think he was in a position to know this,” Bartlett said flatly. He said it’s “troubling” that McClellan is now “gives credibility to every left-wing attack” on anecdotes that are “either thinly-sourced or not witnessed by him” in the White House.
Meanwhile, McClellan at NBC, via Politico:
“The White House would prefer that I not talk openly about my experiences,” he said in a lengthy, at times combative interview with anchor Meredith Vieira. “These words didn’t come to me easy. … I’m disappointed that things didn’t turn out the way we all hoped they would.”
He added: “I have a higher loyalty than my loyalty necessary to my past work. That’s a loyalty to the truth.”
A White House official replied: “No one at the White House ever told McClellan not to talk about his experiences.”
Ari Fleischer, “heartbreaking.” FOX:
“I would think if he harbored such deep feelings about things he wouldn’t have and shouldn’t have accepted the press secretary job in the first place.”
“He got dealt a deck of cards that were very tough. He was the press secretary at a time when the war in Iraq started to go very badly, he had issues inside with staffers who deceived him.”
“There are some legit issues that Scott raises, but the point he makes about the President and the war in Iraq, that’s the part I just don’t understand.”
“There are just parts of here that don’t sound like Scott McClellan.”
Current White House warrior Dana Perino:
“It is sad,” said current White House press secretary Dana Perino, dismissing McClellan on Wednesday as “disgruntled about his experience at the White House. … This is not the Scott we knew.”
The president was “surprised” by the book’s claims, Perino said.
“He is puzzled,” she said of Bush, “and he doesn’t recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years.”
Disgruntled former employee? Better keep the guns locked up. Might go White House.
Meanwhile, here’s Newsbusters on that liberal media whose epitaph the sockpuppet sometimes known as Greenwald tapped out yesterday:
Peter Osnos, who wrote Wednesday that he “worked very closely” with Scott McClellan on McClellan’s new book published by PublicAffairs which Osnos founded, is a liberal whose publishing house is affiliated with the far-left The Nation magazine and the publisher of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. PublicAffairs has a roster of authors who are nearly all liberals and/or liberal-leaning mainstream media figures, including six books by far-left bank-roller George Soros.
Howbout that. No wonder they are calling him “traitor” and “Benedict.”
With thanks to Memeorandum on the roundup.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:08 am on Thursday, May 29, 2008
9 Responses to “BSTD”
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May 29th, 2008 at 11:37 am
How much was he paid for his work of ‘fiction’?
May 29th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
So? Let me get this straight. He was lying then, but he is telling the truth now. Or is it the other way round? And, who cares?
May 29th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Who gives a shit about a press secretary’s opinion? They feed him bullshit all day long, it’s his function.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I am starting to get really tired of this dog and pony show. He did it for the fame and the money and to get even because he thinks they let him twist in the wind.
Coward.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Ari Fleischer: “There are just parts of here that don’t sound like Scott McClellan.”
Um, yeah. Those are the parts the ghost writer wrote.
“Come on, Scott. I know how to write books that sell. It’s my business. We’ll leave it in as is. I’ll get my fat unattributed paycheck, and you’ll be rich.”
May 29th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Greed apparently makes cranks of us all.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
He added: “I have a higher loyalty than my loyalty necessary to my past work. That’s a loyalty to the truth.”
Which he suddenly discovered after he was no longer working at the White House.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Exactly, Rebecca. What a phony.
I love this quote from Fleisher: McClellan “was flawless in his performance, especially when you read the transcripts.” LOL–if you watch the press conferences themselves, the performances were pretty unimpressive!
Amusing, but also very much on point. Fleisher stretched as far as he could to provide a compliment when it was appropriate. McClellan clearly has very different values.
June 7th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Scott McClellan: when life imitates imao.us