Beyond that, the media expects us to believe that Obama never expressed interest in who would fill his now-vacant U.S. Senate seat in Illinois. Asked during a press conference (held in Obama’s Chicago transition office!) if he had any contact with the Illinois governor’s office about his replacement in the Senate, Obama replied: “I had no contact with the governor or his office, and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening.”
But that doesn’t quite square with what his senior adviser David Alexrod told a local Chicago news affiliate on November 22: “I know he’s [Barack Obama] talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them.”
Alexrod in a press release on Tuesday, December 9 retracted his previous statement, saying he was “mistaken”: “I was mistaken when I told an interviewer last month that the President-elect has spoken directly to Governor Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy. They did not then or at any time discuss the subject.”
You would think such a blatant contradiction would warrant some tough questions from the media, who should not be satisfied with a simple, “I was mistaken.” Not so.
NBC’s chief political correspondent Chuck Todd defends Axelrod by saying it’s the job of these political spokespersons to make it look as if their boss is “on top of the situation.” From MSNBC’s Morning Joe: “Could an adviser around Obama want to always make it look like Obama was on top of the situation and may have over spoke in that way?”
Can you imagine White House Press Secretary Dana Perino making such a retraction relative to a corrupt political connection to President Bush and the mainstream media simply accepting it and writing it off as “her job”?
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews is on record as stating that it’s his job to make sure Obama succeeds. Obviously he speaks for all of the mainstream media who clearly have no intent of examining Barack Obama’s corrupt political connections. They refused to do it during the campaign. Why should we expect any less from them now?