An Obama aide slandered Senator Joe Lieberman.
He accused Lieberman of spreading the Muslim rumor about Obama- He didn’t.
Newsweek, the former news magazine, quoted an Obama staffer on the private conversation Democratic nominee Barack Obama had with Senator Joe Lieberman on the senate floor last week:
In a brief but animated Senate floor confrontation last week, according to a campaign aide who asked for anonymity when talking about private discussions, Obama told Lieberman he was surprised by Lieberman’s personal attacks and his half-hearted denials of the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim. (The aide says Lieberman was “strangely muted” during the exchange; a Lieberman spokesman says the chat was “private and friendly.”)
Mark Hemingway at National Review Online called Senator Lieberman’s office to get more information on the confrontation and found out it was bogus:
So a call to Joe Lieberman’s office was in order. Since Newsweek didn’t make it, National Review Online did. Actual Lieberman spokesman Marshall Wittmann says, “The anonymous Obama campaign staffer’s characterization of the private conversation was entirely false and fabricated.” Another Lieberman aide confirmed, “I was not told that the Obama campaign was selectively leaking the contents of that conversation, or I would have made it clear that that characterization was completely and utterly false. The first time I knew what the Obama campaign was saying was when I saw it in a magazine.” That Newsweek did not ask Lieberman to respond to the specific charges is grossly unfair.
If the Obama folks really want to gain the confidence of Jewish voters they could do a number of things including canning a few more anti-Israel advisors and explaining Obama’s close relationship with a former PLO operative.
But, attacking Jewish Senator Joe Lieberman with lies that he was spreading a Muslim rumor about Obama is not one of them.
ABC’s Political Ticker has more.
