{"id":8102,"date":"2006-08-02T15:01:53","date_gmt":"2006-08-02T19:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8102.html"},"modified":"2006-08-02T15:01:53","modified_gmt":"2006-08-02T19:01:53","slug":"matthews-forgets-who-was-president-on-911","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/matthews-forgets-who-was-president-on-911\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthews forgets who was president on 9\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know the right likes to blame whatever they can on Bill Clinton, but for Chris Matthews to disparage the former president because he &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/items\/200608020004\">didn&#8217;t stop<\/a>&#8221; the Sept. 11 attacks is painfully silly, even by Matthews&#8217; already-low standards.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a discussion with Mark Green, Democratic candidate for New York attorney general, and KT McFarland, a Republican running for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton&#8217;s (D-NY) Senate seat, about President Bush&#8217;s efforts to protect New York City from terrorism on the July 31 edition of MSNBC&#8217;s Hardball, host Chris Matthews claimed that &#8220;[w]e know&#8221; President Bill Clinton &#8220;didn&#8217;t stop&#8221; the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n<p>Matthews began by asking McFarland, &#8220;How has the president done in protecting this city, since he took office and since he went through all this on 9-11?&#8221; When McFarland responded that &#8220;the fact that we&#8217;ve not had another terrorist incident is example number one&#8221; of Bush&#8217;s success, Matthews invited her to explain &#8220;what foiled the terrorists,&#8221; and did not challenge her response. Yet when Green responded to McFarland&#8217;s claim by stating that &#8220;terrorism around the world has tripled&#8221; and that &#8220;[t]he war in Iraq has increased terrorism [and] isolated America,&#8221; Matthews asked Green if he thought President Bill Clinton &#8220;did a good job of stopping a second attack on the World Trade Center when he was president.&#8221; While Green said that &#8220;we can&#8217;t know,&#8221; Matthews replied that &#8220;[w]e know he didn&#8217;t stop it.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, technically that&#8217;s true, Clinton &#8220;didn&#8217;t stop&#8221; 9\/11. Then again, if my memory is right, Clinton had left office <i>eight months before it happened<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>For that matter, now that I think about it, maybe some should remind Matthews that it wasn&#8217;t Clinton who took a month off despite getting a Presidential Daily Briefing that said &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2098861\/\">Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US<\/a>.&#8221; And it sure wasn&#8217;t Clinton who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/06\/19\/AR2006061901211_pf.html\">told the briefer<\/a> who showed him that PDB, &#8220;All right; you&#8217;ve covered your ass, now.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know the right likes to blame whatever they can on Bill Clinton, but for Chris Matthews to disparage the former president because he &#8220;didn&#8217;t stop&#8221; the Sept. 11 attacks is painfully silly, even by Matthews&#8217; already-low standards. In a discussion with Mark Green, Democratic candidate for New York attorney general, and KT McFarland, a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8102","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=8102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}