{"id":13263,"date":"2007-10-17T10:20:07","date_gmt":"2007-10-17T14:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13263.html"},"modified":"2007-10-17T10:20:07","modified_gmt":"2007-10-17T14:20:07","slug":"larry-craig-skates-dissembles-through-nbc-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/larry-craig-skates-dissembles-through-nbc-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Larry Craig skates, dissembles through NBC interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s hard to muster the will to mock Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) anymore. His story has been repeated, scrutinized, and pilloried in every possible way since the details of his bathroom arrest surfaced in August.<\/p>\n

But now that Craig sat down with NBC’s Matt Lauer for an hour-long interview, aired last night, we get a chance to see whether the Idaho Republican has come up with a coherent explanation for the scandal that was supposed to ruin his career.<\/p>\n

It was an unusually awkward interview, with Lauer simply unwilling to pursue Craig with any aggression at all. Consider this exchange<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Lauer: You know that there has to be thousands of people who have heard this story now, senator.<\/p>\n

Craig: Sure.<\/p>\n

Lauer: They’re trying to picture how this– you know, they’re flashing back to every time they’ve ever sat in a bathroom–<\/p>\n

Craig: Oh, I know.<\/p>\n

Lauer: –stall. And they’re trying to think, “Can that happen? How close are you actually to the guy next to you?” And this is that infamous wide stance, which I think what you actually said is, “I’m a wide guy,” is the actual quote you said. But– and they’re thinking, “It’s not that easy to touch the guy’s foot next to you.” And so, how could it have happened?<\/p>\n

Craig: Well, as I– it didn’t happen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lauer didn’t follow-up, but that’s exactly the problem. We know from the police interview with Craig that the senator conceded at the time that his foot touched the officer’s foot in the next stall. When the officer noted that at the time, Craig said, “I won’t dispute that.” Now he’s arguing that the infamous foot-bump didn’t happen at all.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the whole interview basically followed a simple pattern: Lauer struggled to politely bring up uncomfortable issues, and Craig struggled to politely respond with answers that didn’t make a lot of sense.
\n
\nTim Grieve did a nice job summarizing some of the less helpful questions<\/a> Lauer posed.<\/p>\n

* “I want to give you a chance to talk about what has been distorted. But let me take you back a little bit first, Senator, and — and, you know, this is your home. This was where you were raised, on a ranch. You went to school here, one-room schoolhouse. You were in the National Guard in Idaho. You got into politics here. You’ve served the people of Idaho in Washington — what? Thirty years now. What do you remember most about first going to Washington?”<\/p>\n

* “So it sounds like you’re saying some of what goes on in Washington is a bit distasteful to you.”<\/p>\n

* “You walked into that bathroom, Senator. Six minutes later, you were under arrest … and your career was in jeopardy, and your family life was in jeopardy. So how should we handle this? Do you want to tell me what happened?<\/p>\n

* “Mitt Romney, John McCain, Peter Hoekstra, Mitch McConnell, and we have an expression in New York, they threw you under the bus … These are friends, weren’t they? … Well, doesn’t seem as if they are today.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s almost as if Craig hand-picked his interviewer because he assumed Lauer wouldn’t push him too hard. And sure enough, it was softball city.<\/p>\n

The whole fiasco is just, well, sad. It was disappointing that Lauer sat down with a scandal-plagued senator and declined to ask tough questions, but then again, maybe there’s no point to even trying. Craig couldn’t explain his behavior, couldn’t explain why he didn’t tell his wife about the incident, couldn’t explain why he never contacted an attorney, and couldn’t explain his guilty plea.<\/p>\n

One wonders why he even bothered to agree to the interview in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s hard to muster the will to mock Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) anymore. His story has been repeated, scrutinized, and pilloried in every possible way since the details of his bathroom arrest surfaced in August. But now that Craig sat down with NBC’s Matt Lauer for an hour-long interview, aired last night, we get a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}