{"id":4028,"date":"2005-04-21T13:38:39","date_gmt":"2005-04-21T17:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4028.html"},"modified":"2005-04-21T13:38:39","modified_gmt":"2005-04-21T17:38:39","slug":"mcclellans-non-denial-regarding-the-denver-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mcclellans-non-denial-regarding-the-denver-three\/","title":{"rendered":"McClellan’s non-denial regarding the Denver Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we last heard from the White House on its response to Americans getting removed from public presidential events due to a bumper sticker<\/a>, a top Bush aide seemed to admit that an official working for the White House was directly responsible<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Denver Post’s Diana Carman reported today<\/a> that there’s been some follow-up — and some “White House stonewalling.”<\/p>\n

At Wednesday’s press gaggle, White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked to clarify.<\/p>\n

He denied that the bouncer was paid staff. “My understanding is it was a volunteer and that that volunteer was concerned that these people were coming to the event to disrupt the event, and that’s why he asked them to leave,” he said.<\/p>\n

When asked if the volunteer was acting on the instruction of the White House, McClellan responded, “Not that I’m aware of.”<\/p>\n

Hmmm. So who might be aware? I asked two other White House spokesmen that question Wednesday. They declined to answer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Not that I’m aware of” is one of those phrases McClellan clings to in order to sidestep a jam. He didn’t deny that White House officials ordered the eviction of the Denver Three, only that he’s not personally aware of it.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the “it was a volunteer” tack isn’t working either. At a presidential event, there are a limited number of groups\/institutions that would have volunteers serving in some kind of crowd-control capacity. Was it a volunteer for the state party? Apparently not; the Colorado Republican Party said it had nothing to do with it<\/a>. How about the national party? The Republican National Committee has categorically denied any role whatsoever<\/a>. The local congressman’s volunteer? Rep. Bob Beauprez says his office was left out of the loop<\/a> entirely. A Secret Service volunteer? There is no such thing. A White House volunteer? That doesn’t make a lot of sense, since WH volunteers are in DC<\/i> and don’t travel to work at presidential events. So who, exactly, is McClellan referring to?<\/p>\n

For that matter, volunteers don’t run around Bush events making up their instructions as they go along. Someone gave this guy directions about his responsibilities that day, which apparently included bumper-sticker duty. With this in mind, it’d be great to know who the heavy-handed thug was, but we also need to know directed his actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we last heard from the White House on its response to Americans getting removed from public presidential events due to a bumper sticker, a top Bush aide seemed to admit that an official working for the White House was directly responsible. The Denver Post’s Diana Carman reported today that there’s been some follow-up — […]<\/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-4028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028","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=4028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}