Melanie Morgan reports from Fox News Green Room:
After the segment was over, I exchanged seats with [Democratic strategist Bob] Beckel. As he was leaving, he slammed the studio door so hard that it almost broke some expensive audio/video equipment, according to the technican who was threading my microphone.
He was STEAMED.
Later, I asked him why he was so upset.
He replied …”because Obama’s people didn’t vet him and now Hillary’s going to win.’
This cam after Beckel had had to discuss Jeremiah Wright with Sean Hannity.
The fact that Clinton surrogate Nita Lowey refused to go after Obama on this suggests that either Team Hillary thinks the damage is being done, and that there’s no need to intervene when their foe is self-destructing, or Lowey was simply unprepared. (Bill Bradley seemed to run rings around her yesterday.)
Shannen Coffin sees some wiggle room in Obama’s statement that he never heard these kinds of statements, and that if he had heard them repeatedly, he would have left the church. (Ronald Kessler and Newsmax say Obama was in attendance for at least one sermon in this vein; but the Obama campaign contends their man was in Florida that day.)
For most, the idea that Jeremiah Wright hid these views and statements from Barack Obama over the course of a 23-year relationship as mentor and pupil strains credulity. Obama just happened to sleep in every week that Wright sounded anti-American or raging notes? Did Wright check to see if Obama was in attendance before deciding what tone to take with his sermon?