Check out this transcript from last night’s Hardball. One, Matthew’s gushs over the imagery of Senator Obama hitting a three-point shot; two, Matthews offers to get “ethnic”; and, most important, three, Andrea Mitchell is accusing Senator Obama of setting up “fake” interviews with the military:
MITCHELL: But let me just say something about the message management.
He didn‘t have reporters with him. He didn‘t have a press pool. He didn‘t do a press conference while he was on the ground in either Afghanistan or Iraq. What you‘re seeing is not reporters brought in. You‘re seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questions by the military, and what some would call fake interviews, because they‘re not interviews from a journalist.
So, there‘s a real press issue here. Politically, it‘s smart as can be. But we have not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before.
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MATTHEWS: You know, Roger, sports fans everywhere make judgments about political figures. When George Bush threw that strike at Yankee Stadium at 9/11 right down the right over the plate…
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: … you didn‘t have to be a screaming, outlandish right-winger to think, wow, that‘s great for the country.
And then you see this guy, lean and mean, hitting that three-pointer from way outside. Could this be the bookends we‘re looking at, the—the athletic bookends of this—this whole contest over foreign policy?
(LAUGHTER)
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