Marcus Feldman: Fox Still Pretending That Former Obama Adviser Larry Summers Said Something He Didn’t
While numerous news outlets have already issued corrections for misrepresenting comments economist Larry Summers, a former Obama economic adviser, made about extending the Bush tax cuts, Fox News is still pretending that Summers said something he didn’t. During an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning, Summers warned that “we’ve got to make sure that we don’t take the gasoline out of the tank at the end of this year,” adding, “That’s got to be the top priority. We’ve got to make sure that we keep providing energy to the economy.” The Wall Street Journal , the New York Times , and others took those comments to mean that Summers had endorsed extending the Bush tax cuts. In fact, as both outlets later admitted, Summers said no such thing. In fact, the misrepresentation is particularly glaring considering that immediately after his comments about “making sure there’s the energy to keep the economy growing,” Summers specifically alluded to the fact that the wealthy should pay their fair share of taxes. From the MSNBC interview : MIKA BRZEZINSKI (co-host): Larry Summers, let’s start with you. You heard Bill Clinton talking about the tax cuts. We had terrible unemployment numbers coming out last week. What would you advise the president to do at this point? SUMMERS: Look, the real risk to this economy is on the side of slowdowns, certainly not on the side of overheating. And that means we’ve got to make sure that we don’t take the gasoline out of the tank at the end of this year. That’s got to be the top priority. We’ve got to make sure that we keep providing energy to the economy. And the areas where we’ve done that, like manufacturing with the support for the automobile industry, we haven’t had great results but we’ve had much better results. In the areas where we weren’t able to do what we wanted to do, areas like preserving jobs for teachers, areas like construction and investment and maintenance of the country’s infrastructure, you look at the employment report, and we’ve really got terrible results. So the key priority has got to be, for the short run, making sure there’s the energy to keep the economy growing ’cause we’re not going to do anything about the deficit unless we do that.
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Marcus Feldman: Fox Still Pretending That Former Obama Adviser Larry Summers Said Something He Didn’t