Does Dick Cheney Still Think He ‘Controls the Message’ on Meet the Press?
Former Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to discuss on Meet the Press this Sunday the just-released and extra-gruesome Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s terror funplex enhanced interrogation techniques performed during the Bush/Cheney administration:
SUNDAY on #MTP: @chucktodd intvs fmr VP Dick Cheney on the heels of the Senate torture report http://t.co/Wh51cRzBkT
— Meet the Press (@meetthepress) December 11, 2014
Maybe he’ll have read the report by then.
Why MTP? Could be host Chuck Todd got the booking. But, as Glenn Greenwald reminds us, MTP was the VP office’s go-to when the weapons of mass destruction case began to unravel:
Dick Cheney's press aide in 2004 said the best program to do was Meet the Press because they can "control message" http://t.co/9jFkIZVR3a
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 11, 2014
That link heads to a Dana Milbank piece quoting the VP’s old communications director:
Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. Option 1: “MTP-VP,” she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under “pro,” she wrote: “control message.”
“I suggested we put the vice president on ‘Meet the Press,’ which was a tactic we often used,” Martin testified. “It’s our best format.”
Not for nothing, but this does speak to Russertism, the mythology that late MTP host Tim Russert was some sort of Beltway Truth Sentinel until David Gregory disemboweled his show.
[Image via Albert H. Teich / Shutterstock.com / ]
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