Matt Drudge has a link on his site at the moment featuring a photo of Democrat hack Paul Begala above the words, “Ex-Clinton Aide Charges Republicans ‘Want to Kill Us’…” Did Begala really say something that stupid? Well, the article that Drudge links to makes that claim, but a close reading suggests that Begala is being taken out of context.
The quote comes from this CNS News article by Jered Ede. Ede writes,
Begala’s presence on the panel created a stir when he declared that Republicans had “done a p***-poor job of defending” the U.S.
Republicans, he said, “want to kill us.
“I was driving past the Pentagon when that plane hit” on Sept. 11, 2001. “I had friends on that plane; this is deadly serious to me,” Begala said.
“They want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted — that while they didn’t protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won’t have to pay any money on the money they inherit,” Begala said. “That is bulls*** national defense, and we should say that.”
Begala is a very poor speaker, as anyone who watched CNN’s Crossfire can attest. In the last paragraph he switches the pronoun “they” back and forth between Al Qaeda and Republicans without missing a beat or realizing how confusing he’s being.
Since, all we have here for the “Republicans want to kill us” line is the sentence fragment “want to kill us,” its highly likely Begala said something like, “They want to kill us” and Ede mistakenly thinks Begala was referring to Republicans rather than Al Qaeda.
At a minimum, I’d want to see a transcript showing the full context of that “want to kill us” remark before rushing to judgment as Drudge has done.
Source:
Ex-Clinton Aide Charges Republicans ‘Want to Kill Us’. Jared Edge, CNS News, July 15, 2005.