Over at Wizbang!, Kevin Aylward points out a slight adjustment to a quote in an AP story that includes Senator John Kerry’s infamous “I actually did vote for his $87 billion, before I voted against it” line. On Wednesday morning, an interview with Kerry and ABC’s Diane Sawyer ran on the “Good Morning America” program. During the interview, Kerry said that the quote “was a very inarticulate way of saying something” and that it was said “late in the evening when I was dead tired.” But, as Aylward links, the Washington Post reported back in March that this quote was said “at a noontime appearance.”
I expect that some mud will fly here, but the most interesting thing is the AP article on the subject, which says “It was just a very inarticulate way of saying something and I had one of those inarticulate moments,” but leaves out the “late in the evening” aspect of the quote. Obviously you can’t say the gun is absolutely smoking, but it certainly doesn’t look too good for the candidate or the wire story. If it’s known as fact that Kerry made the comments while it was daytime, and then counters it saying that it was late at night, causing the gaffe, then the context around the quote is completely removed. Or at least that’s how I see it.
The ABC News coverage of the interview, including the original quotes from the program, can be found here.
1 response so far ↓
1 protein wisdom // Sep 29, 2004 at 12:55 pm
Kerry: ""It just was a very inarticulate way of saying something, and I had one of those inarticulate moments late in the evening when I was dead tired in the primaries and I didn't say something very clearly."
9 more articulate ways John Kerry might have said, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it" "I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I recognized that to have any chance at winning the nomination I was…