Partisan Politico Gets Ready for Paradigm Shift, Turns Guns on Republicans

Politico reporter Abby Phillip began one piece yesterday by asserting “Republicans jumped Sunday on President Barack Obama’s defense of a proposed mosque […] Democrats meanwhile sought to change the subject.” Judging by Politico‘s and Phillip’s reporting, they intend to help the Democrats do it, turning the spotlight around on the GOP and their apparent issues with Islam.

For most of the day, Politico‘s front page featured Ben Smith’s and Maggie Haberman’s “GOP takes harsher stance toward Islam” followed by Abby Phillip’s aforementioned “GOP keeps mosque flap alive.” But it was Phillip’s other piece on Sunday highlighting the GOP that takes the cake: “Peter King flips on mosques.”

Riffing off a 2007 interview with Politico, Phillip develops the premise for this piece by contrasting New York Rep. Peter King’s (R) supposed 2007 position that “we have too many mosques in this country” with his current statement that “I support mosques, obviously.” But of course, in order to create the basis for this piece, Phillip uses the same dishonest splicing of King’s 2007 statement that Politico‘s Daniel W. Reilly used in 2007 to smear Rep. King.

What King actually said was that there are “too many mosques in this country, there’s too many people sympathetic to radical Islam.” Any English-speaking person understands that what that means is that there are too many mosques in this country sympathetic to radical Islam, and too many people in this country sympathetic to radical Islam.

Here’s how Reilly portrayed it in 2007:

Not only does Reilly splice the two statements out of the same sentence, he puts them in different paragraphs as though they were completely unrelated. King has since repeatedly pointed out the misquote, but that didn’t stop Phillip from bringing Politico‘s smear back from the dead using the same old splice-and-dice:

But unfortunately for Politico, when looking at the original video, this one’s not even close. Rep. King doesn’t even take a breath between the statements:

[youtube BoDpfsQJ-N8&feature nolink]

Abby Phillip, hope you interact well with alpacas.