Now:
“If you’re going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you ought to back it up with facts,” Bush told reporters in the Oval Office.
Then:
On May 3, 2000, Texas Gov. George W. Bush alleged that Vice President Al Gore was once a member of the National Rifle Association. The Gore camp said it could find no evidence that Bush’s claim was true, and NRA spokesman Bill Powers said that he, too, could find no record of Gore’s membership in the organization’s microfiche, but the next day Bush repeated the charge. Pressed by reporters as to how he could make such a claim, Bush said, “He might have been a member, let’s put it that way.”
When asked who told him about Gore’s “membership,” Bush said, “a little birdie.”