On Wednesday, Think Progress’ Faiz Shakir discovered video from the “Preserving Freedom Conference,” where Womick told a room of people that, “we cannot have Muslims in our military because we cannot trust them.” Many in the crowd gave him a standing ovation.

As inflammatory as his statements are, Womick deserves at least a little bit of context. After serving as an F-15 Fighter Pilot through the first Gulf War, Womick became an airline pilot, based out of Nashville. When the September 11 attacks occurred, he was in the air, flying a plane from Dallas to Los Angeles, with 140 passengers on board. If you watch the extended interview with Fang (below), Womick proves himself to be more well-researched on the Koran than his seemingly-flippant sound bites make him out to be. “I was flying on September 11th,” he told Fang, “and that’s when I really started to study and learn who the enemy was.”

Later in the interview, Womick tends to waver just a little bit, saying that while true believers of Islam are commanded to, “kill anybody who will not convert,” those who don’t fully commit are fine by him. The sticking point is that the true believers are also told to lie, so there’s really no way of knowing who to trust:

“Personally,” Womick said, “I don’t trust one Muslim in our military.”

Watch the Rick Womick interview, conducted by Lee Fang, below, courtesy of Think Progress:

“I would just say very generally, I think people are quite unhappy with the state of the economy and what’s happening. They blame, with some justification, the problems in the financial sector for getting us into this mess, and they’re dissatisfied with the policy response here in Washington,” Bernake said, adding that his proposed changes take into account not the protests specifically, but many of the movement’s grievances.

Watch his full response below:

h/t ThinkProgress

Here’s the clip, including what Perry said:

Perry was asked to comment on the 50th anniversary of the Friendship Nine sit-in, which took place in Rock Hill, SC, where Perry was speaking. Here’s Perry’s answer:

Listen, America’s gone a long way from the standpoint of civil rights and thank God we have. I mean we’ve gone from a country that made great strides in issues of civil rights. I think we all can be proud of that. And as we go forward, America needs to be about freedom. It needs to be about freedom from overtaxation, freedom from over-litigation, freedom from over-regulation. And Americans regardless of what their cultural or ethnic background is they need to know that they can come to America and you got a chance to have any dream come true because the economic climate is gonna be improved.

That’s right, folks, the natural extension of the civil rights movement is the continued struggle for the right of the average American to be trickled down on, and if they’re really lucky, maybe get to do the trickling one day. This perversion of the struggles of black Americans is nothing new in this year’s GOP race. Rep. Michele Bachmann made a similar comparison in July, saying through a spokesman that “that slavery was horrible and economic enslavement is also horrible.”

O’Connor’s criticism of Jansing hinged on the fact that Perry didn’t specifically say the words “corporate tax rates” in his response, which, while true, doesn’t make Chris Jansing a liar. Perry’s ham-fisted comparison was clearly in reference to corporations and wealthy so-called “job creators.” Issues like tort reform and “over-regulation” are pet causes of wealthy special interests, and Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to oppose any tax increases on the wealthy, while displaying an eager willingness to raise taxes on everybody else. Jansing’s intro might have been a tad narrow, but given that she played Perry’s complete answer, she’s owed some latitude for interpretation, and her interpretation was correct.

While I was arguing with Larry about this, though, I noticed that liberal website ThinkProgress posted an item about this clip on Monday with the headline “Rick Perry Compares Civil Rights Movement To GOP Fight For Lower Corporate Taxes,” which is awfully close to what Jansing said while introducing the clip, and in a pre-commercial teaser in which she said “Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry — get this — comparing African-American`s struggle for civil rights with the GOP`s fight for lower taxes.”

When I saw the ThinkProgress piece, I literally laughed out loud at the thought of an apoplectic Newsbusters newsroom (do they have a newsroom?) revving up their liberal bias engines. Based on the circumstantial evidence, there’s a good chance that Jansing, or someone at Hardball, first got wind of Perry’s remarks from the ThinkProgress post. What’s so wrong with that? Absolutely nothing, but the modern media watchdogging game has devolved into an effort to delegitimize news sources, rather than to assess the substance of what’s actually being reported.

The exception to this lack of coverage, Maddow said: liberal websites like Think Progress, Daily Kos…and one other famously left-leaning site Maddow apparently feels isn’t so left-leaning these days. Here’s how she put it:

“…and thanks to reporters like Jason Linkins at Huffington Post, which used to be liberal but who knows anymore.”

Man, HuffPo really can’t catch a break lately (except for the whole “getting $315 million” thing). Video below, via MSNBC.

It’s an interesting video because it brings up a lot of questions about the way the Tea Party movement is generally depicted and covered. On Good As You – a site devoted to activism within the gay community – the video is given a funny headline and minimal introduction (it notes that Volsky is a friend to the site), pretty much allowing viewers to make up their own minds about what the video is actually about. On Buzzfeed, however, things get a little more politicized, with the video description reading “For once, the Tea Party gets something right.”

And it’s not like viral news and entertainment site’s commenters were about to let that little blurb go by without, well. Commentary. Writes “aaronb18:”

The Tea Party isn’t about gay marriage. It is about lower taxes and less governmental involvement. You guys love to frame stories. And how many conservative stories are you going to run prefaced by “for once”? Maybe it isn’t for once after all.

Another commenter, the Simpsonsly-named “Stupid Flanders,” thought the video was a refreshing look at Tea Party members, and noted that most of the digital ink spilt over the movement at Buzzfeed is not exactly positive:

I’m sure there were some who came up with some dumbass rant about how they were personally affected by the legalization of same-sex marriage, but they were wisely not included in the video. However, it’s nice to see that not all Tea Party members are unevolved, unreasonable people, as one would think from the typical Buzzfeed “Tea Party” posts.

“Jaytorade,” meanwhile, used a sweeping generalization to note the folly in making sweeping generalizations:

The people of New Hampshire want their guns and the lowest taxes possible. They don’t typically get wrapped up in the overly religious moralistic crap of southern style conservatives.

Who knows whether the video was edited in such a way as to make a specific point (…That Tea Party members aren’t inherently homophobic? That the issue of same-sex marriage isn’t even a big deal for the group commonly held up as hateful and reactionary, so why should it not legal across all states? Your guess is as good as mine.), but we personally found it interesting to happen across a video about the Tea Party, think we absolutely knew where it was going, and be surprised. It goes to show how very narrow – and how very predictable – so many media outlets (from evening cable political shows to fun, addictive websites mostly devoted to puppy videos) happen to be when it comes to carving out very specific roles for different segments within the U.S.

We see that Tea Party members aren’t inherently insane, or hateful, or out to hunt gay babies under cover of darkness. And we think that most people, on an intellectual level, fully understand that as well. But it’s not like that ever makes for good TV, right? It doesn’t make for a compelling narrative, or a fun villain (or, alternately, an easy canvas onto which truly hateful people can project their own fears and prejudices).

So. Have a look for yourselves, and let us know what you think:

h/t Good As You via Buzzfeed

Think Progress has a transcript of the exchange:

Ryan argued against “redistribut[ing]” in this manner. After the constituent noted that “there’s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down,” Ryan argued that “we do tax the top.” This response earned a chorus of boos from constituents:

CONSTITUENT: The middle class is disappearing right now. During this time of prosperity, the top 1 percent was taking about 10 percent of the total annual income, but yet today we are fighting to not let the tax breaks for the wealthy expire? And we’re fighting to not raise the Social Security cap from $87,000? I think we’re wrong.

RYAN: A couple things. I don’t disagree with the premise of what you’re saying. The question is what’s the best way to do this. Is it to redistribute… (Crosstalk)

CONSTITUENT: You have to lower spending. But it’s a matter of there’s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down.

RYAN: We do tax the top. (Audience boos). Let’s remember, most of our jobs come from successful small businesses. Two-thirds of our jobs do. You got to remember, businesses pay taxes individually. So when you raise their tax rates to 44.8 percent, which is what the president is proposing, I would just fundamentally disagree. That is going to hurt job creation.

Watch the clip below:

(H/T Think Progress Via The Blaze)

The broad premise of Wilson’s piece is perfectly legitimate. Every nook and cranny of the Tucson shooting story has been exhaustively mined, so merely discussing what happens to an incapacitated House member’s seat is no sin. Wilson actually links to a Washington Post article that explores that very question. Wilson’s offense is in wielding fists of ham that would make Oscar Mayer crap his pants:

Should constituents allow members to hold onto their seats like political Brett Favres with no concept of when it is time to go?

Stepping down from one’s office is nothing to be ashamed of. In actuality, the shame lies in not being honest with one’s own self about the responsibilities that voters have entrusted in one and the expectations they have. Constituents should expect that an official will either be appointed or a special election held within six months, not years. This current Congress should take this issue up immediately and in consultation with Giffords’ family and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer come to an appropriate remedy.

After all, Rep. Giffords is not the only person suffering in Arizona. On Oct. 1, 2010, Arizona stopped funding seven kinds of transplant surgery for Medicaid recipients.

Not only is it too soon to demand her resignation, it will always be too soon to compare Gabrielle Giffords’ heroic, miraculous struggle for survival with the travails of serial NFL retiree Brett Favre.

On the other hand, the attempt to paint this as conservative ghoulishness is as lazy and unfair as it is predictable. No one wants to admit that someone on their own “side” can be this big an a-hole. Keith Olbermann probably got the idea that “Right-wing blogs demand Giffords’ resignation” by reading the Think Progress piece, Their implication that Wilson is a conservative is supported by a link to a piece Wilson wrote for HipHopRepublican.com which, if they had bothered to read, would have made apparent that he’s no conservative. The piece is a vigorous defense of Barack Obama‘s handling of health care reform, immigration, and the BP crisis.

There is legitimate grounds on which to criticize Frum. His forum is a mix of news and commentary, so he could have, and should have, provided some analysis of Wilson’s column. His failure to do so can fairly be read, then, as a promotion of Wilson’s views, if not an endorsement of them. But that doesn’t make this a “right-wing blog” issue. It makes it a “questionable judgement” issue.

Since November, the anti-Strausites have been circulating emails that deride Straus’s religion and declare that only a “true Christian speaker” would be fit to serve in the House. Abby Rapoport of the Texas Observer has also obtained an email conversation between Rebecca Williamson and John Cook, two members of the Texas State Republican Executive Committee (SREC). In it, Cook complains that Texans “elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it. This is not about Straus, this is about getting what the people want.”

He dug himself even deeper during a subsequent phone interview with Rapoport:

“When I got involved in politics, I told people I wanted to put Christian conservatives in leadership positions,” he told me, explaining that he only supports Christian conservative candidates in Republican primary races.

“I want to make sure that a person I’m supporting is going to have my values. It’s not anything about Jews and whether I think their religion is right or Muslims and whether I think their religion is right. … I got into politics to put Christian conservatives into office. They’re the people that do the best jobs over all.”

Still, says Cook, he isn’t an anti-Semite because—guess what!—he has two Jewish friends. Oh, and because his “favorite person that’s ever been on this earth is a Jew”—Jesus Christ. Well, that clears everything up!

[h/t Think Progress]

Think Progress, the website that first put the US Chamber of Commerce in the spotlight, points out that the absence of disclosure rules is the real problem:

In fact, neither the Post nor the Times “refudiated” the ThinkProgress report. Both merely quoted Chamber of Commerce officials who only discussed the limited “AmCham” funds, only one of several avenues for foreign funding of the Chamber. Both articles recognized that there is no outside oversight of the Chamber’s money flow. “Money, however, is fungible,” the New York Times editorial board explained, “and it is impossible for an outsider to know whether the group is following its rules.” As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent writes, “The Chamber still hasn’t addressed in any detail the core allegation against it.”

Only Gillespie has made the “charge of illegal criminal activity.” Although it is illegal to solicit foreign funds for electioneering, the essential fact is that there are no disclosure requirements that provide oversight to know whether or not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is obeying the law. The Chamber successfully lobbied to kill the DISCLOSE Act, which would have closed the loopholes opened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

Regarding the Center for American Progress, which Gillespie invokes, Think Progress notes:

Unlike the Chamber, the Koch brothers, and Ed Gillespie, the Center for American Progress strongly supports the DISCLOSE Act and broad campaign finance reform.

In fairness to Gillespie, the NY Times article takes a skeptical view of Think Progress’ charge, at least as recounted by President Obama:

“Just this week, we learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign corporations,” Mr. Obama said. “So groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections.”

But a closer examination shows that there is little evidence that what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers and campaign finance documents.

In fact, the controversy over the Chamber of Commerce financing may say more about the Washington spin cycle — where an Internet blog posting can be quickly picked up by like-minded groups and become political fodder for the president himself — than it does about the vagaries of campaign finance.

This conclusion completely misses the point, however. The problem isn’t the US Chamber of Commerce, but rather, the flaw in campaign finance rules that it reveals.

Hopefully, though, we can all agree on one thing here: “refudiate” still isn’t a word.

In a video, first posted by the National Review Online, McCain gets very defensive when pushed by Kerry Eleveld of The Advocate and Chris Geidner of Washington, D.C.’s Metro Weekly about the extent of investigations.

Think Progress’ Wonk Room has a transcipt:

MCCAIN: We do not go out and seek. Regulations are, we do not go out and seek to find out if someone’s sexual orientation. We do not!

ELEVELD: But senator, that’s not…

MCCAIN: That is the fact! That is the fact. Now ma’am, I know the military very well, and I know what’s being done. And what is being done is that they are not seeking out people who are gay. And I don’t care what you say, I know it’s a fact.

ELEVELD: It’s not what I say.

MCCAIN: I dont’ care what you say! And I don’t care what others say. I’ve seen it in action. I’ve seen it in action. I have sons in the military, I know the military very well. So they’re not telling you the truth.

ELEVELD: Senator, just to make sure…

MCCAIN: Just to make sure. We do not go out and seek out and find out….

ELEVELD: Private emails are not being searched? Private emails are not being searched?

MCCAIN: …See if someone is gay or not. We do not go out and see whether someone is gay or not.

ELEVELD: There are documented cases…

MCCAIN: They do not, they do not, they do not. You can say that they are, you can say [inaudible] it’s not true!… Yea, I’d like to see…

GEIDNER: It is the case of Mike Almy, Senators.

MCCAIN: Bring them to our office. It is not the policy, it is not the policy, it is not the policy.

GEIDNER: But it is the case that it’s happening, Senator.

MCCAIN: It is not the policy, it is not the policy, it is not the policy You can say that it is the policy, sir if you choose to. It is not the policy. I would be glad to get that to you in writing.

McCain is known for having a short fuse and his unwillingness to respond to the questions posed by Eleveld and Geidner demonstrate how uncomfortable the issue of DADT is for McCain. It’s also nice to see reporters from the LGBT press pushing Senators on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell given the reluctance many reporters have in asking questions on the topic.

One of the nice things about covering Congress is that members can’t avoid talking to reporters after votes and they are forced to be accessible. The fact that NRO had this video suggests that even NRO was expecting a hearty defense of the law, not a nasty McCain firing back at journalists’ questions.

Writing for the Tennessean, Bob Smietana reports:

he Rev. Bob Old of Springfield, Tenn., doesn’t care what they think.

The longtime Baptist minister says the Rev. Terry Jones of the Dove World Center Outreach in Gainesville, Fla., is doing the right thing by burning the Quran. So he’s going to do likewise.

Old plans to set fire to a Quran on Saturday at his home and then post a video of the burning book online. And if he had his way, there would be no Muslims in America.

“If they want to have their religion, they can have it somewhere else,” said Old, former pastor of First Baptist Church in Joelton and Academy Heights Baptist Church in Gallatin, which merged with another church. He no longer has a congregation and instead runs an evangelical ministry called Disciples of Christ.

(H/T ThinkProgress)

Writing for Think Progress’ “Wonk Room,” Igor Volsky reported:

When Judge Vaughn Walker struck down Proposition 8, Fox News barely mentioned the story and its most prominent conservative commentators ignored it entirely. Yesterday, after the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reported that former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman — who had orchestrated President Bush’s gay-bating 2004 re-election campaign — was coming out as gay, Fox News Channel remained similarly mum and as of this posting has yet to run a single segment on the story.

…

It’s unclear why Fox News ignored the story, since some Republicans have embraced Mehlman’s coming out. Current Republican Party chairman, Michael Steele, for instance, issued a supportive statement: “His announcement, often a very difficult decision which is only compounded when done on the public stage, reaffirms for me why we are friends and why I respect him personally and professionally.” Mehlman has also said that President Bush has been “incredibly supportive” of his coming out.

Ignoring stories which undermine conservative causes, however, is the norm at Fox. Earlier this month, Fox News refused to run a single segment on Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s racially-charged rant, after which she resigned from talk radio.

While mentioning it just once doesn’t necessarily change the larger point of Volsky’s report, covering once is better than ignoring it. And one could easily make the argument that mentioning this story once is all the attention it deserved. The NY Times‘ Brian Stelter astutely points out that this Friday afternoon coverage of the Mehlman story is very similar to the method by which Fox News reported the $1 Million donation to the Republican Governor’s Association by News Corp. (FNC’s parent company.)

Update - Johnny Dollar points out that this story was also covered during the GrapeVine segment of Special Report

Update #2: Yahoo’s Michael Calderone points out that Bret Baier’s mention aired after the Politico and ThinkProgress pieces had been posted, thereby making them correct at the time. [GM]

Let’s go backwards on this, shall we? Here’s the current BigGovernment moral of the story as depicted in Dunetz’s piece:

“If this story is true, and there is no reason to doubt her, it shows the extent that Breitbart, Fox,and the Tea Party have gotten under the skin of the White House. Rather then to think it through they overreacted and forced Sherrod to pull over on the side of the road and resign without telling her side of the story.
It is also hard to understand why the NAACP would instantly condemn Ms Sherrod, if the speech was indeed as she said, why wouldn’t they respond by releasing the entire speech? One explanation may be that she is lying, but if you listen closely to the end of the clip she does seem to be pivoting toward saying it was about income not race (and then seems to change her mind again).

Another explanation for the White House and the NAACP not releasing the entire tape is the possibility that Shirley Sherrod is their sacrificial lamb. Possibly they do not care about the truth. Perhaps they realized their resolution attacking the Tea Party as racist was such a political loser, especially coming right after disclosure of DOJ Black Panther scandal, they see the condemnation of Sherrod as a way out of theses crises and seem racially balanced.”

Clearly Sherrod is a hero! A champion of the cause! A martyr brought down by racist liberals and accused of the very sins they commit!

But, wait, just 21 hours ago, Sherrod wasn’t so well appreciated over at the house that Breitbart built. In an article entitled “Racist Govt Official/NAACP Award Recipient Resigns after Big Government Exposé,” the site seems to take a slightly different opinion of the case. Here’s what the writer Publius had to say after the USDA fired Sherrod and issued a statement that there was zero tolerance for discrimination amongst their ranks:

“So, the USDA has issued a statement. We’re still waiting to hear from the NAACP.
Presumably, they will denounce the racism in the video as strongly as the Obama Administration has.”

So…they…wanted the NAACP to condemn Sherrod? At which point did they change their mind? Was it maybe around the point that their sworn enemies, the NAACP and Obama Administration that have basically been depicted as being one and the same, did what they asked them to do? Or was it around the time that it became clear that the villain they had created just wasn’t so evil after all? It’s hard to say, but it’s clear that the moral of the story that BigGovernment readers were supposed to take away has completely changed in the past day.

Ironically, a few days ago, the liberal website ThinkProgress was alleged to have edited together a video of apparent racism at Tea Party events. The website Pajamas Media noticed that, amongst the clips in the video, were images of signs that were proven to have been made by anti-Tea Party protesters infiltrating the group. ThinkProgress rigorously defended this claim, going so far as to post source material of a racist protester that the right alleged to have been a left-wing plant.

So, are the liberals at Think Progress are just as guilty of misrepresenting their enemies as that original Andrew Breitbart-written article was of misrepresenting Sherrod? Apples to oranges, and no, editing together disparate and unsourced images to score political points is a far cry from recontextualizing a speech that leads to one’s firing. But the bottom line and common theme in both stories is this: finding the truth in a hyper-partisan and digital age is becoming a nearly impossible thing to do.

So here’s the moral of the story you’re reading right now (and, no, I’m not planning on completely changing it in a day); when you’re reading a partisan website or watching a ideological news network, whether conservative or liberal, you should always take their “investigative reporting” with a grain of salt because, many times, the truth becomes irrelevant next to the agenda. And that’s a lesson that, perhaps, even the White House needs to learn as well.

Editor’s note – this post has been edited for clarity since its original posting

Think Progress

The Census Bureau is rolling out the ACS nationwide this year, after testing it since 1996. It’s a survey designed to either help communities better determine their needs, or to steal your soul, depending on who you ask. Apparently, Erick is in the latter group.

I’m beginning to smell a rat here. Just last night, Jon Stewart criticized CNN for hiring Erickson, then acting shocked to learn that he crosses the line so much that the line issued him a permanent visa. Now that he’s out threatening census workers, I’m wondering if that wasn’t the whole point. It may be an imperfect analogy, but what cable network wouldn’t hire Hannibal Lecter if they could? He might not be great for journalistic credibility, but I bet people would watch. That’s something CNN needs a whole lot more of.

In all seriousness, though, Erickson characteristically mocks the reaction to his screed, saying “naturally the left is out today saying I was on the air advocating killing census workers.”

That’s  not exactly true, but I wonder what Erick thinks will happen if his millions of readers pull their shotguns on census workers?  The  result will be a lot of census workers crapping their pants, at best. At worst, well, not everyone’s the cool-headed expert firearms handler that Erickson is.

As a liberal who is friends with all 3 of them, this would seem to put me in an awkward position. Far from it. I’m not going to tarnish the pride they must all be feeling by trying to mount some kind of defense. Ed Morrissey, in particular, really needed this to clear his name after he was named Olbermann’s Best Person in the World a few months ago.

Instead. let’s let them speak for themselves. First up is Redeye and Factor regular (“the condescending”) Mary Katherine Ham, who’s collecting her 3rd “Worsts” medal:

I’m glad to see MSNBC has at least moved beyond awarding them for typos, which I think was my last transgression. Ha. Perhaps the “Tweets I Read on Friday Night” segment will get better ratings than the “Check Out My Copy of Strunk & White” segment. Plenty of room to move up!

Zing! However, as our next contestant points out, Keith wasn’t actually the one sitting home on Friday night, forlornly scanning the Tweetdeck. The Washington Times’ Amanda Carpenter (“a modest woman with much to be modest about?”) says:

I just hope Olby gave Think Progress credit for ripping off their cheap shot post. We all acknowledged the “false positive” note from the White House. I asked Think Progress several times on Twitter to update their post, they didn’t and Countdown proceeded with a nothing story.

Amanda, you’ll be glad to know that Keith did credit Think Progress for gathering those Friday night Tweets.

Finally, there’s my good friend Ed Morrissey (“super genius”), whose conservative street cred just went back to 11:

While I’m honored that Keith Olbermann has now made me his Worst Person in the World just a few weeks after being his Best Person in the World, perhaps Keith might do better to simply get a sense of humor and lay off the hyperbole. Maybe the next time his boss Jeffrey Immelt goes to visit Barack Obama after four such visits already, he’ll give Keith a night off and bring him along for a beer and a little perspective.

I know I said I wasn’t going to do this, but I can’t help it. While Goldfarb referenced “Rev. Wright” in his ThinkProgress-snipped Tweet, none of the other 3 actually intimates more than the visitors’ names in their Tweets. While they admirably ‘fess up to being fooled, they technically did not tweet anything that was inaccurate. That makes them all better than me, since I would have definitely played it off as an object lesson to those who re-tweeted me.

At the risk of stealing back some of Ed’s cred, not only did he acknowledge the “false positives,” he even gave President Obama a hat tip for transparency. (Sorry, Ed)

While this trio has a point about the fact that they did correct the offending tweets, it should be noted that Keith is an avowed non-twitterer, so the blame for this omission rests mainly with Think Progress. They took the time to update their post with a link to a Daily Kos pile-on, but not to note the corrections.

And unlike Gawker’s attempt to ambush Watters outside his home in June, this one was fairly successful.

The video is below. Also, Fox Nation published their own video of the ambush which could end up on The O’Reilly Factor Monday, which essentially provides another angle to watch Watters be a cowering hypocrite.

Some background first: In March Watters ambushed Amanda Terkel, an editor at Think Progress. She wrote about the experience, and it started a run on ‘ambush tactics’ stories, including this one from Brian Stelter of the New York Times.

“So you’re trying to ambush the ambusher?” says Watters at the beginning of the video. Then things get a little creepy. “Amanda Terkel? Tell her I said hello,” he says. “Tell Amanda and her boyfriend I say hi. Amanda, how you doing?”

Watters is asked why he wouldn’t be interviewed for the Times story. “I didn’t refuse to comment to the New York Times,” he says, smiling. “Don’t believe everything you read in the New York Times.” Meanwhile, Stelter refuted this on Twitter: “I called Mr. Watters repeatedly at his office #, and he referred my calls to Fox’s PR people. He refused to comment.”

So Watters got a taste of his own medicine – and responded by being evasive, fabricating and generally acting annoyed by the whole process. It sounds a lot like…the people who Watters ambushes.

Even some at The Fox Nation had some harsh words for Watters after seeing the video. Here’s “Bob the Conqueror”: “Jesse Watters, your college called, they want their degree back. It is sitting in your closet next to your dignity.”

Check it out:

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