WaPo Fact-Checker: Obama Didn't Mean To Say 'You Didn't Build That'

There are certain things you can fact check and certain things you cannot, and when Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler is reduced to reading Obama’s mind, that is not a fact check. That’s something more along the lines of pathetic shilling.

Here’s what Kessler is reduced to in order to protect Obama from his own words:

But instead of blaming Obama for bad economics, maybe Romney should have called Obama a plagiarizer. That’s because Obama’s words seem suspiciously similar to a speech last year by Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, which became a YouTube sensation (almost one million views). …

In other words, this is an argument that Democrats have been making for decades, one that Republicans have every right to reject. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, for instance, understood fully that Obama was talking about roads and still thought his logic was faulty.

Romney, however, descends into silly season when he extrapolates Obama’s quote and says that means Obama believes Steve Jobs did not build Apple Computers.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Look at what Obama said — please take special note of what I’ve emphasized because that is the key to this:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

This — “–look,…” — is a change of thought. A reboot to a whole new point, a broader point that has nothing to do with the point Obama was trying to make earlier.

In that sentence the “look” is the jumping off point to a new train of thought in which Obama says declaratively and emphatically:

–LOOK, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

“Look” means pay extra special attention to the point I’m about to make, because this is definitive and bottom line.

Glenn Kessler is probably a pretty nice guy and all, but LOOK: this shilling for Obama has to stop. If Romney had said the GDP grew at .003% when it grew at 1.9% — that’s a fact that can be checked. But to go all the way back to Roosevelt to bail Obama out of his own words — speaking what we all know is the God’s honest truth as to what he really believes — is simply pathetic.

In context, out of context, Obama said to the successful everywhere:

–LOOK, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.

And then for emphasis, Obama repeated it:

 You didn’t get there on your own.

And then Obama mocked, dismissed, and ridiculed America’s successful:

I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.

In other words America’s successful are smug and arrogant and not as smart as they think. Then Obama doubled down in mocking America’s successful:

There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

In other words, the successful only think they work harder than everyone else.

Later, Obama goes back to that point by stating declaratively:

If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Sure, Obama might have been talking about bridges and roads prior, but the President says in no uncertain terms here that:

If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

So LOOK, Mr. Kessler, interpreting what you think Obama said is OPINION, and your assuming Obama meant to say what FDR did is an ASSUMPTION.

Neither is a fact, so stop posting your misguided and false opinions as FACTS. Instead, post this dishonest drivel where it belongs: on the opinion page.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC