Conservative Media Mislead and Outright Lie About Obama’s Detroit Remarks

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In the Washington Times today, an editorial was published taking the President to task for his remarks on the 2012 campaign trail. If you remember, President Obama hit Republican nominee Mitt Romney hard regarding his 2008 op-ed in the New York Times stating that we should let Detroit go bankrupt. Of course, what Romney discussed in his op-ed, and what Obama was talking about on the campaign trail, was the auto industry in the Detroit area. Specifically, General Motors and Chrysler. This was not in dispute at that time and never had been. There was never confusion between the city and the auto industry when they were discussing this topic.

Well, it was announced this week that the city was allowed to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. The city has $18 billion in debt that it is looking to get out from under. There are different ways to look at this, and this is a subject that will be revisited many times, but for some reason, the Times decided that this represented a broken promise on Obama’s part:

Another day and another of President Obama’s campaign boasts bites the dust. While out on the hustings last year, Mr. Obama pummeled Mitt Romney for writing a 2008 op-ed column in The New York Times titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

The Republican nominee sensibly argued that bankruptcy would force the city to go through a drastic — and necessary — restructuring of its finances. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, boasted, “We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. We bet on American workers … and that bet is paying off.” Until Tuesday.

Ugh. I would like to just attribute this to lazy journalism, but I can’t. This is intentionally misleading to try to fool the public to believe that President Obama was always talking about the city itself when he talked about saving Detroit from bankruptcy. It is the worst kind of revisionist history, all to take a stupid cheap shot at the President and try to give another idiotic talking point to conservative pundits over the next few days. Obviously, Fox Nation linked to it right away and it was discussed on Fox News on Wednesday.

This is just plain disgusting and it should be called out as loudly as possible. The Washington Times editorial staff should be ashamed of themselves. However, you know they aren’t. They are too busy patting themselves on the back and getting congratulatory handshakes and phone calls from their Beltway buddies who love that they came up with this today.

Justin Baragona

Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).