On Immigration, Either Obama Or Sen. Kyl Is Lying – The Press Isn't Asking

It’s the question no one from the press is asking. Who is lying?

Over the weekend a video of Sen. John Kyl at a North Tempe town hall meeting shot through the internet like a bullet. The video showed Sen. Kyl revealing to his constituents that President Obama was holding border security ransom for better bargaining position on comprehensive immigration reform.

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The White House responded on Monday morning with a flat denial. Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton said: “The President didn’t say that. Sen. Kyl knows the President didn’t say that.” That last phrase is inflammatory as it flatly claims that Sen. Kyl is deliberately lying about this issue.

Rather than let the matter die as a “he said, he said” story, bloggers scoured the internet for any other corroborating facts to bolster one position or the other. Yesterday, Naked Emperor News uncovered audio from an interview Sen. Obama gave to local public radio in Chicago. In it, he strikes the same juxtaposition of “trading-off” border security for comprehensive immigration reform, exactly as Sen. Kyl suggested:

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Add to that corroborating evidence Sen. John McCain’s words on the floor of the Senate, where he describes meetings with the President on the same subject: “It was made very clear to me… that the President basically conditioned his support for border security to comprehensive immigration reform.”

At what point does the White House press corps start pressing this issue further? The question needs to be asked: “Are Sen. Kyl and Sen. McCain both lying? And how does the president explain his comments made in 2004 on the same subject that corroborate the position being assigned to him by the Senators?”