…and promptly got caught in what looks like a “mistatement” (via Hot Air):
Tonight on Countdown, Maddow again shot from the lip, this time slandering not a Congressman but Fox News. While her phraseology is clumsy and garbled (perhaps if she slowed down a bit she could speak more coherently), she is trying to make a point that Terry McAuliffe should not praise Fox News, and cites FNC’s final Democratic debate of 2004 as her evidence:
MADDOW: If you just think about the petty stuff that Fox News has done. The fact the last time they hosted a Democratic Presidential candidate campaign, they referred to all the candidates as Democrat candidates.
Where did Rachel Maddow get this idea from? She made it up! The Democratic debate hosted by Fox News, held in New Hampshire on January 22, 2004, was moderated by Brit Hume, and one of the questioners was Peter Jennings. Is Maddow trying to smear him too? Really, Rachel, that is pretty low. He is unable to defend himself. The transcript is clear: not once does Hume, or Jennings, or anyone else refer to “Democrat candidates”. The same is true of the post-debate analysis. Uh oh. Has Rachel just been caught in another smear?
Maddow, I think, is referring to an earlier debate in 2003 which gets a lot of play on the lefty blogs. (Although I don’t know if Fox is guilty as charged in 2003 as the transcript of the event suggests Fox News did not refer to the candidates as Maddow suggests.)
CORRECTION: The original version of this post was written under the mistaken impression that Rachel Maddow was guest-hosting the show. She was a guest, not a guest host.