Alan Grayson appears to have done the impossible with his “Taliban Dan” ad. He’s gotten MSNBC to turn on him; the result is a strikingly hostile interview with Contessa Brewer:
MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer tells Grayson: ”The Taliban is so far beyond [not] wanting their women to work outside the home. There are acid attacks on young girls, and there are killings and murders based on what happens with women there. And your opponent has never been accused that. PolitiFact… have actually fact-checked your ad.”
She plays the full tape of Dan Webster, saying, “Don’t pick the verse, she’s supposed to submit to me.’ Brewer says, “He’s basically encouraging men to focus on Bible verses other than ‘submit to me.’ Your ad was rated false by PolitiFact; why not just use his stands on women’s issues? Why twist his words?”
Grayson smugly responds, “We didn’t twist his words. We could argue in context, out of context, whatever… When a career politician is tagged with his own words, which we quoted in the ad, of course he’s going to say it’s out of context.”
Brewer won’t quit: “Your people cut that, ‘submit to me, submit to me.’ And they put that in. His stand on the issues should stand alone, shouldn’t it?”
Grayson concludes that Brewer and MSNBC are part of the problem: “Contessa, look what you just did. When you ran the ad, you only ran the parts that you wanted to talk about. You didn’t run the parts that I just discussed. You’re doing it. We want to discuss women’s issues, and you’re preventing that from happening.”
She quotes Sandy Webster, Dan Webster’s wife, and asks whether this negative attack ad could backfire on him.
“Contessa, I invited you just now to go into what the issues were and you completely avoided them,” he lectured. “Instead, you gave time to my opponent’s wife to express her indignation without addressing those issues.” He discusses Webster’s opposition to abortion in cases of rape, and declares, “I don’t think you should get us off track, or anyone else, including Dan Webster and his wife.”
When Alan Grayson is attacking MSNBC, he’s turned on his last ally.