CNN's Soledad O'Brien tries, but fails, to attack Roger Ailes for calling Obama 'lazy'

CNN's Soledad O'Brien tries, but fails, to attack Roger Ailes for calling Obama 'lazy'

Soledad OBrienOn Thursday, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien attempted to attack Roger Ailes for calling Barack Obama “lazy” in a new biography by Zev Chafets, but, John Nolte wrote at Breitbart.com, her attempt failed after she learned that she did not use his entire quote.

“He never earned a penny that wasn’t public money. How many fund-raisers does he attend every week? How often does he play basketball and golf? I wish I had that kind of time. He’s lazy, but the media won’t report that,” Ailes said in an excerpt of the book posted at Vanity Fair.

But the quote didn’t end there.

“’I didn’t come up with that. Obama said that, to Barbara Walters.’ (What Obama said was that he feels a laziness in himself that he attributes to his laid-back upbringing in Hawaii.),” Chafets wrote in the biography.

CNN’s chyron read: “Ailes lets loose. Calls president ‘lazy,’ Biden ‘dumb.'”

Although Ailes said that Biden is “dumb as an ashtray,” he also told Chafets that he liked the man and had a “soft spot” for him.

Nolte posted a partial transcript of the exchange that followed.

The Blaze’s Will Cain: Everyone’s latching on to the fact that [Ailes] called the president lazy. … Roger Ailes did go on to say that ‘I’m only quoting from the president directly.’ He talked about an interview that President Obama gave to Barbara Walters where he said, ‘I grew up in Hawaii, which is pretty laid back’. Roger Ailes wasn’t coming up with that on his own. He made a point of mentioning that.

Soledad O’Brien: So “pretty laid back” to “lazy” is a little bit of a leap to me.

CNN’s John Berman: Barack Obama used the word “lazy.”

O’Brien: Interesting. I didn’t know that.

Cain: He did. Obama said he feels a laziness in himself that he attributes to his laid back upbringing in Hawaii.

O’Brien: Hmm. Interesting.

Nolte wondered how O’Brien missed that part of the excerpt.

“How could she not have read the full paragraph — especially if she intended to take this debate where I think she intended to, which was race,” he wrote.

Nolte’s concerns were not unfounded, as CNN’s Erin Burnett wondered if the remarks were “racially charged or just frank talk” on Wednesday shortly after deriding remarks made by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) during his filibuster.

“This is what liberal bias in the news is all about,” Matthew Sheffield wrote at Newsbusters. “I do not think for a second that Burnett meant to deliberately deride Rand Paul’s concerns. But that is exactly what she did while just minutes later treating as serious the absurd proposition that the president of Fox News is a racist for quoting Obama’s own serious remarks in which he called himself lazy.”

For not doing “even the minimal amount of homework,” Nolte said that CNN “needs to yank O’Brien yesterday.”

Incidents like this are the reason a majority view the so-called “mainstream media” as biased and unethical.

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Joe Newby

Joe Newby

Joe Newby is an IT professional. He has written for Conservative Firing Line, Examiner, NewsBusters, and Spokane Faith and Values.

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