insomnia: *Exclusive!* Cheney caught lying about not meeting Edwards... again!

Insomnia (

insomnia) wrote,
@ 2004-10-06 02:41:00

*Exclusive!* Cheney caught lying about not meeting Edwards... again!
"The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." - Dick Cheney

Not quite. Shortly after the debate, the Kerry campaign provided the media with a photograph that showed this was not the case.

Although it has been mentioned that Edwards and Cheney met before on at least two occasions, there has not been any footage anywhere of the second known meeting on January 7th, 2003.

Well... I found the video footage, and I took some screenshots!

If you watch 32:50 into the January 7th, 2003 edition of "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" (RealPlayer), you will see Dick Cheney opening the Senate for the year, prior to the swearing in of new Senators.

In this video still, you see Cheney on the far left of the screen, facing the new members he is swearing in. On the right, you see John Edwards standing behind Elizabeth Dole, who is being sworn in.

As the camera pans to the right, you now see John Edwards with Bob Dole, who also escorted Elizabeth Dole to her swearing in ceremony.

After the swearing in ceremony, Cheney shook the hands of those attending the proceedings. Although it is not shown in the "News Hour" video, it is likely that the video from CSPAN2 shows Dick Cheney greeting everyone personally and shaking hands... including the hand of John Edwards.

*** Update: I called in to a researcher for the Kerry/Edwards campaign. They apparently have the video of this now, and have also discovered a third such meeting.

dailyKOS says: "Tim Russert is going around saying that Edwards and Cheney met backstage on his show, and shook hands and exchanged pleasantries."... Is Cheney a *four* time loser?! I think KOS is right. These are the kind of visible, eggregious lies that will drag down an otherwise acceptable performance for Cheney.

Looks like I am getting linked to from DailyKos, boingboing, and Oliver Willis this morning. (Says short prayer to the God of image hosting.) ***

(Post a new comment)

	lafinjack 2004-10-06 01:41 pm UTC (link)
	I missed this debate too, is there some scandal related to this statement apart from being wrong? Was he saying it jokingly, or could he have just been mistaken? I'm hardly a Republican supporter, but I'm not out to lambaste anyone who doesn't deserve it, either. (Reply to this)(Thread)

insomnia
2004-10-06 01:50 pm UTC (link)

Cheney was dead serious when he said it. He was trying to imply that Edwards was never around the Senate, whereas he was there all the time... and that he had never seen Edwards there once.

Turns out that Cheney was just flat-out lying. He's not even around the Senate much. He comes over for short meetings every Tuesday, but those meetings are with Republicans only, so it's not that big of a surprise that they don't meet too often.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lafinjack 2004-10-06 02:20 pm UTC (link)
	OK, just checking. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	goulo 2004-10-06 08:08 pm UTC (link)
	During the debate Cheney actually claimed "Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session." In reality, Cheney has served as president of the Senate exactly twice in the past 4 years - the same number that Edwards has, coincidentally! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Great find! (Anonymous) 2004-10-06 02:42 pm UTC (link)
	I am fervently praying someone finds the video of Cheney & Edwards shaking hands at the Dole swear in. (Reply to this)

	granting 2004-10-06 02:56 pm UTC (link)
	Ooops, didn't see you posted that picture on your page already. Sorry about that. Now will the main stream media make a big deal out of it? *That's the question*... (Reply to this)

	the_spinnin_sky 2004-10-06 03:04 pm UTC (link)
	You totally rock. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	aaronfreed 2004-10-06 03:17 pm UTC (link)
	Seconded. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mystified13 2004-10-06 03:24 pm UTC (link)
	Yes! You have the eye of the eagle! (Reply to this)

Bushisms On DVD

jameshat
2004-10-06 03:50 pm UTC (link)

Bushisms the book is now Bushisms the DVD -- hosted by comic uber-genius Brian Unger of The Daily Show. The DVD features Al Franken and others commenting on nucular-strength malapropisms from the presidentiary such as:
# "War is a dangerous place."
# "Karyn is a West Texas girl, just like me."
# "Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning."
Check it out at www.bushism.net

(Reply to this)

	here ya go (Anonymous) 2004-10-06 04:22 pm UTC (link)
	A better picture.. http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/10/cheney-lied.html (Reply to this)

	bostonsteamer 2004-10-06 04:53 pm UTC (link)
	Nice detective work Mark!! (Reply to this)

	Where are the Senate Veterans for Truth? calamityjake 2004-10-06 05:33 pm UTC (link)
	How much do you want to bet this gets noted briefly if at all in prime time while they relentlessly discuss something unimportant like Edwards's breaking the idiotic don't say Kerry rule? (Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: Where are the Senate Veterans for Truth?

insomnia
2004-10-06 06:08 pm UTC (link)

Actually, I think this will be a much bigger issue than anything that the Bush administration bring up. Repeated visual evidence that Cheney lied? Not good. It's the fact that the evidence is so visual that makes it so appealing to the media and so meaningful to Americans. "I don't know you..." "Yes you do!" It's simple and meaningful.

Complex lies don't sell well, usually, even if they're heavily documented. Simple lies though...

Cheney comes off as either a person with no regard for the truth, or as someone too senile to do the job. Both of those are good for Kerry/Edwards.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Where are the Senate Veterans for Truth?

calamityjake
2004-10-06 06:39 pm UTC (link)

It seems, at least so far, that you're right--the exposure of Cheney's lie is all over online media. It certainly helps to have the screenshots you and others have provided. And I think Cheney is definitely coming off as the former (dishonest), not the latter (senile)--if anything, his grasp of policy and details was so much greater than the President's that it made crystal clear who does this administration's dirty work.

Friday ought to be interesting.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	Better picture madhaus 2004-10-06 07:04 pm UTC (link)
	available at The General, click on the little one to see the big one. Linked three screen grabs into one composite. (Reply to this)

	WOOT! lucidondine 2004-10-06 09:08 pm UTC (link)
	Wow, that really was a blatant lie... they don't get much worse than that-- he said that point blank, very directly. I'm going to pass this link around some. (Reply to this)

	freetothink 2004-10-06 09:18 pm UTC (link)
	they were talking about it today on msnbc. showing footage of the dole swear in. (Reply to this)

	gsan 2004-10-06 09:52 pm UTC (link)
	Ya know, if you went after Edwards and Kerry with the same fervor for lying about Halliburton, it'd be a lot more interesting... (Reply to this)

I'm not even a supporter of one or the other...

navydave
2004-10-06 10:15 pm UTC (link)

I don't know the context of his comment... so I can't really go to far over the edge on this...

...These are the kind of visible, eggregious lies that will drag down an otherwise acceptable performance for Cheney.

Good God!... Shaking someones hand at a Senate function is hardly a memorable event. Have you ever Been to any sort of function that mandated by tradition that you shake the hands of all those involved? Ever played little league, where you make the good game handshakes after the game? Do you remember their names and faces a year and a half later? You didn't MEET those people... This is no different.

If you're going to rail, rail about something that Matters...
Not remembering the face that goes with one of the dozens of hands that you had to shake at some function is hardly a condemning oversight. As well rail about him casually adjusting his age a few years or his weight by a few pounds...

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: I'm not even a supporter of one or the other...

insomnia
2004-10-06 10:24 pm UTC (link)

The big issue to me is that Cheney really doesn't go to Congress much, and yet Cheney chose to score political points by implying that Edwards didn't serve and wasn't around.

I mean, he thanked Edwards by name at one such event and ate breakfast on the immediate left of him for two hours... turning around after that and denying ever meeting him is a disingenuous smear. If he wasn't certain about it, he shouldn't have said it in such a speech.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

regulus
2004-10-07 01:38 am UTC (link)

I know I'll recieve all sorts of love on this one, but umm... could it be people are taking things too literally?

At a job I did earlier this year, I passed Matt Damon in a hall, he went one way, I went another. Did I meet him? No. He certainly will never remember me.

Later when I passed Ben Affleck, I shook his hand and chatted for about 3 minutes. Did I meet him? Yes, but I doubt he'll remember me, yet were it not for me, he would still be using some backwater celphone with no security features and Project Green Light would still be in the stoneage as far as the computer infrastructure is concerned.

At noon I meet Wes Craven, sat down and talked about the new living dead movie for about 3 hours. Did I meet him? Yes and likely if he saw me again, he'd very much remember the animate zombie lover that I am.

Point being is, maybe they passed in the hall, maybe they nodded or even shook hands once. Did he meet him, talk and debate about a subject? The photo doesn't show that. Not really, so with all honesty, Dick Cheney can say he didn't meet him until that night and be perfectly justified in saying it.

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	navydave 2004-10-07 05:56 am UTC (link)
	Aha! I didn't have nearly as handy a set of anecdotes to illustrate, but this is what I was getting at too. This little expose' strikes me as political hyperbole at it's best. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

insomnia
2004-10-07 01:41 pm UTC (link)

Edwards and Cheney were at the Prayer Breakfast together, where Cheney made a speech addressing Edwards by name. The two then proceeded to sit right next to each other and converse back and forth for two hours.

When Edwards and Cheney were on the same TV show, reporter Tim Russert noted that Cheney and Edwards met behind the set, where they talked and exchanged pleasantries for quite some time.

When the swearing in for Mrs. Dole happened, Cheney shook Edwards' hand and brief pleasantries were exchanged.

That is not the kind of conduct you'd expect of someone who hasn't met Edwards before. For Cheney, who has only procided over Congress twice, and who only goes to Republican meetings there on occasional Tuesdays, to attack Edwards in such a manner is not only untrue, but inappropriate.

It's hard to believe we're trying to define "met"... it's almost as bad as the Clinton era, and trying to define what "sex" means or what "is" is.

They met. Several times. Cheney lied about it to make a political point. End of story.

They met. Period.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

navydave
2004-10-07 04:08 pm UTC (link)

I don't agree that 'that is not the kind of conduct you'd expect of someone who hasn't met Edwards before'. It's politics. That's exactly the kind of conduct you should expect. You shake everyone's hand. You make nice to everyone. Because you never know when you might need that person. This is the way things are done.

I have read the quote now, and I agree with you that the way he said this was shady and misrepresentative. A considerable chunk of politics, as we tend to run it, is. This is why as a general rule I don't participate in it.

I do not however think that this warrants people running around screaming that the sky is falling for the likes of that lying bastard Cheney...
'If he lied about something as simple as this what Else is he lying about?!?!!'... To me, this smacks of paranoia.

I rather doubt that we're going to come to any sort of altered consensus on this.

I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree. :)

(Reply to this)(Parent)

carlosp
2004-10-07 07:52 am UTC (link)

While I agree with your explanation, I don't find the comparison very compelling in the Cheney-Edwards instance. I would if it weren't Cheney himself who made this claim in the debate. This wasn't an off-the-cuff reference. Believe me, I've worked for politicians -- that little "I preside over the Senate/I've never met you/you have an undistinguished career" rant was prepared in advance, and well-rehearsed. For him to not have commissioned one of his many loyal campaign workers to fact-check something so basic, so able to deflate his point, is a testament to Cheney's legendary arrogance.

Moreover, Cheney himself should have considered the possibility that he might be wrong. After all, there are only 100 Senators. Only a relatively small number have been sworn in by Dick Cheney, and only, what, once since he's been in office? He knows when Edwards joined the Senate. He knows that as the President of the Senate he would have sworn in the new Senators that year. This should have been a slam dunk to fact check. But Cheney was so certain he was right, he couldn't be bothered with the facts. And isn't that really the prevailing attitude of the Bush Administration?

That's why this "oversight" on Cheney's part is so telling.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

insomnia
2004-10-07 01:21 pm UTC (link)

It's especially telling because Cheney is not on the floor of Congress regularly. Far from it. The only time he regularly goes to Congress is on occasional Tuesdays, for REPUBLICAN Congressional meetings... and he doesn't do that very often.

Edwards' attendance record in the Senate was excellent until he started campaigning for office, but even after he started campaigning, his attendance was still better than most of the others who did so. He's made a point of being there for every vote on which he could make a difference.

What you have here is a "gotcha" that was probably written by someone other than Cheney, and that Cheney chose to speak, even though he should have reasonably known it wasn't a true statement.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

navydave
2004-10-07 04:17 pm UTC (link)

I'm curious as to how Cheney's Senate attendence compares to that of past VP's. Is his apparent disregard for his duties there testament to him as an individual, or to the office he holds? Where do you even find such information? (I'm certain it's there, I'm not questioning that you've seen it necesarily; I'm just not much motivated to look for it of my own accord.)
You seem to be perfectly ok with Edwards not showing up because of his campaigning 'job' takes him away. Not so for the Vice President doing His job?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

insomnia
2004-10-07 05:01 pm UTC (link)

"You seem to be perfectly ok with Edwards not showing up because of his campaigning 'job' takes him away. Not so for the Vice President doing His job?"

No, you misunderstood me. Cheney is Vice President and has no compelling need to be over in Congress all that often... and he isn't. That's great and fine and understandable, because if he's a member of the President's team, then by all means he should be doing most of his work over in the White House.

That said, the fact that Cheney does most of his work in the White House and not in Congress means that he is in no position to adequately judge whether a senator is doing his job or not by whether or not he's seen them around. It's dishonest. There's already too much partisan feuding as is, and when the Vice President lies and smears the other side, you have to wonder how he expects to effectively work with that other side should he get elected.

During his first four years in Washington, Edwards had a 99.5 percent voting record. Since the beginning of the 2003 Congress, that dropped to 83 percent, and I wouldn't be surprised if it has gone down even further since... but if you want to run a presidential campaign, you're just not going to be in Washington D.C. everyday.

It's not just a Democrat problem. During his campaign in 2000, John McCain had a 0% attendance record. During the 2000 campaign, Bush had to turn over control of the state of Texas for over 140 days. Certainly Kerry has had spotty attendance too. And the main reason for all of these people not being around? Fundraising.

People hire their governmental leaders to do a job. They don't hire them to fundraise. If we want good attendance out of our politicians during political seasons, we need to look at alternative ways to finance campaigns, or we need to allow members of Congress to phone in their votes or remotely participate.

Personally, I think it would be worth changing 200-year-old traditions if it meant we got a full-time government again.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

I'm surprised noone mentioned

rockjock
2004-10-07 03:52 am UTC (link)

Defending himself against Edwards' attack re: Halliburton, Cheney suggested that Edwards wasn't being truthful, and that after the debate, people interested in the truth could look into it at the non-partisan web site factcheck.com.

Unfortunately, he should have said factcheck.org. The owners of the .com immediately forwarded page requests to another site when their traffic spiked (100 hits/second, according to one site I read). What page were fact checking debate watchers redirected to? GeorgeSoros.com - which has "President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values." as a banner.

Rock on, way to go, Dick! 4 more weeks...

(Reply to this)

	nomi 2004-10-07 03:37 pm UTC (link)
	Just noticed your post is #9 on What's Making Blognews. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	insomnia 2004-10-07 06:00 pm UTC (link)
	Eek! Hello world. If I knew everyone was coming, I would've neatened things up first. At least they aren't all leaving comments. Whewwww... ;-) (Reply to this)(Parent)

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