AP Chops Off Context to Falsely Suggest Obama Told Celebs They’re ‘Ultimate Arbiter[s]’
From the White House website’s transcript of the event:
In some ways, this election is more important than 2008 — because in 2008, as much as I disagreed with Mr. McCain, he believed in climate change. He believed in campaign finance reform. He believed in immigration reform. And now what we have is a Republican nominee and a Republican Party that has moved fundamentally away from what used to be a bipartisan consensus about how you build an economy; that has said our entire agenda is based on cutting taxes even more for people who don’t need them and weren’t asking for them; slashing our commitment to things like education or science or infrastructure or a basic social safety net for seniors and the disabled and the infirm; that wants to gut regulations for polluters or those who are taking advantage of consumers.
So they’ve got a very specific theory about how you grow the economy. It’s not very different from the one that actually got us into this mess in the first place. And what we’re going to have to do is to present very clearly to the American people that choice. Because ultimately you guys and the American people, you’re the tie-breaker. You’re the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes in. Do we go in a direction where we’re all in this together and we share in prosperity, or do we believe that everybody is on their own and we’ll see how it plays out? [emphasis added]
Fox Nation promoted the AP’s distortion, as did Breitbart.com and NewsBusters.