The Washington Post notices that President Obama took Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin’s words completely out of context in a speech he made yesterday:
At the University of Iowa, Obama said, “You’ve got one member of Congress who compared these student loans — I’m not kidding here — to a ‘stage-three cancer of socialism,’”
…
Though Obama did not name him, that was a reference to a comment from Akin in a debate with the Republican senate candidates Saturday. Asked about the student loan issue, Akin slammed the government for taking over college loans in a 2009 bill.
“America has got the equivalent of stage 3 cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no businesses tampering in,” he said.
In a statement, Akin objected to Obama’s paraphrase.
“With all due respect, the President misquoted me. I was not saying that student loans are a cancer. I referred to the policies where there is a government takeover of private industries,” he said.
This wasn’t a first for President Obama: As I noted at the time, Obama also misquoted Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) earlier this week, editing her words to give a significantly different meaning to her statement about student loans.
When the Romney campaign used a clip of Obama out of context in an ad in November, the national media took notice. In my opinion, they were right to do so. But why isn’t Obama being held to the same standard? Besides the Washington Post and NBC, I’m not seeing any national media outlets acknowledge that he’s misquoting Republican House members.