White House official praises staff for excellent firing of Sherrod

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0710/In_meeting_Messina_praised_Sherrod_handling.html

(...)

But three Democratic sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, singled the White House's initial response to the incident out for praise in the regular 8:30 a.m. staff meeting Tuesday morning. The sources differed on the substance of Messina's praise, but concurred that he had praised the speed of White House communications in response to the flap, which was driven by a misleadingly-edited video posted to Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website.

One source, who is unhappy with the administration's handling of the incident, paraphrased Messina's remarks: "We could have waited all day – we could have had a media circus – but we took decisive action and it’s a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere."

But two other senior officials present at the meeting, who responded to a call to the White House press office, said the gist of Messina's words had been conveyed to POLITICO inaccurately, and that Messina -- a top political operative and senior manager -- was merely speaking in his capacity as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and staff "cheerleader."

Messina was simply praising the White House staff for "communicating well, sharing well, basically rising to the occasion" on the Sherrod story, one official said. "It was an institutional or procedural point."

Messina could not have been praising a White House decision to fire Sharron, the source said, because the decision was made by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

I think I'm going to go make a Key Lime Pie.

:rofl:

good comedy here lately

:headbang:

The RW media

Isn't it time to stop hyping the RW media's persepective?

Helping the smear campaign seems to be your goal in life.

I didn't see anyone casting doubt on yesterday's Politico article that quoted a WH official denying having pressed Sherrod to resign.

FUCK POLITICO and their unnamed sources! :thumbsdown:

I didn't even notice it was politico until too late. Ugh..I don't trust politico nor think they are a trust worthy outlet. However, their post was reaffirmed later by several other outlets.

And makes this point -

"In a closed staff meeting Tuesday morning, a senior administration praised elements of the White House's initial response to a partial video of a speech by a Department of Agriculture official -- a response that the Administration has since reversed.

White House officials yesterday afternoon told reporters they did not press Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to demand the resignation of Shirley Sherrod, but that they stood by the hasty decision; last night, they took credit for pressing Vilsack to rehire her when a fuller video revealed that her remarks had been edited to mean the opposite of what she said."

:hi:

The noxious smell was overpowering almost immediately.