November 6, 2015

"Here’s why Marco Rubio’s corporate card saga isn’t really a scandal."

Says WaPo's fact checker.
Rubio’s carefully worded explanation doesn’t quite rise to the level of a Geppetto Checkmark, but it is accurate enough that it does not warrant even a single Pinocchio. Perhaps the release of the 2005-2006 card statements will change the outcome. We’ll be keeping an eye on this issue but based on the information released so far, a mountain’s been made out of molehill,  by the media and Rubio’s opponents.

28 comments:

Bob Ellison said...

Can we jettison the WaPo fact-checker lie already? It's not even worth going there when they're trying to defend big-oil-money-grubbing Monopoly characters. WaPo is bad at this fact-checking business.

Matt Sablan said...

"Rubio’s carefully worded explanation doesn’t quite rise to the level of a Geppetto Checkmark, but it is accurate enough that it does not warrant even a single Pinocchio"

-- So, accurate but fake?

phantommut said...

Surprise! Mudslingers slung mud.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Hillary is still corrupt. Media ignore.

PatHMV said...

How dare he have a "carefully worded" explanation! Doesn't he know that reporters prefer unscripted, off-the-cuff, carelessly written explanations from our presidential candidates, the better to attack them with later?

Grackle said...

Mainstream media covers for pet Republican prior to general election. What a surprise.

False grackle

Rick said...

Note the media's instinctive reactions to political stories. We've been hearing this fiction for a week and the WAPO only looks into it because Rubio put out a contradictory story. Meanwhile any commentary on Clinton or Obama is subjected to years of evaluation before they will even decide whether it's legitimate to report.

Disgusting.

Jim said...

Obama gets so many Pinnochios, that the latest version of his autobiography is, Dreams From My Father; Gepetto.

Temujin said...

The Clintons may be the most corrupt couple to ever hit Washington, and that's quite a feat. Hillary shakes down world leaders and top businesses for millions in 'donations' to their 'foundation', which is nothing more than a clear path to accessing the power the Clintons have or will have.

Marco Rubio bought he and some friends a burger on the State of Florida. GET HIM!

MAJMike said...

Wow. Hillary! ignored 600 email requests for additional security at the Benghazi diplomatic station, quite probably opened State Department correspondence to foreign hacking efforts by the use of a personal home-brew email server, lied about the cause of the Benghazi attack, caused a man to be falsely imprisoned to provide a cover story to hide her abject incompetence, and lied to benefit the Obama reelection effort.

All this, and the LibCong bleat about a credit card bill. Wonder what Debbie Wasserman Schultz's credit card account looks like.

Wince said...
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HoodlumDoodlum said...

From the article (regarding auditors confirming payments on the card were not for personal expenses):

The auditors found that this was the only personal expense that Rubio should have repaid the party for between 2007 and 2009: “We asked to obtain additional information from Mr. Rubio about certain charges. Mr. Rubio provided us with that information and a sufficient explanation to allow us to confirm that the charges we questioned were, in fact, related to RPOF business.”

Holy shit, contrast that with ANY response Hillary Clinton has EVER given to ANY investigation or audit. Rubio gave all the information and explanations requested and cleared the matter up. His "carefully worded" response is completely accurate and his actions were ethical (though not a "best practice" from an accounting/financial controls perspective)...and the Media narrative is that this is evidence he's some kind of crook. It's sickening.

narciso said...

Kessler earned his keep covering up for Arafat, when he was at the Middle East desk, everything else is a snap by comparison,

Wince said...

Progress?

Scandal 2012: Romney is rich, and he was mean as a youth.

Scandal 2016: Rubio is poor; Cason wasn't mean as a youth.

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

Good news! Journalists finally have something to investigate after their long sabbatical!

JAORE said...

Of course the Rubio used State money inappropriately is already "true".

Well at least as true as "women earn $0.72 for every $1.00 earned by men" of "4 of 5 co-eds will be sexually assaulted".

Thorley Winston said...
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traditionalguy said...

Rubio once did not have two pesos to rub together, and now he wants the Bill Clinton eternal politics money machine because he can out talk his opponents. That's why!

And showing up in the U S Senate is low class servant work.

n.n said...

So, the left is sexist?

They must have sincerely hated Sarah Palin. Well, that or a juvenile crush, as evidenced by chasing her around the playground and trying to pull her ponytail.

JackWayne said...

LThe really big lie? That the attacks came from Rubio's opponents. But the WAPO didn't mean Republican opponents not the Democrat candidates. No, he meant the press was making up shit. You know, Rubio's "opponents ".

Gabriel said...

My favorite trope of the fact-checking journalist's oeuvre is the one-drop rule: for statements by progressives, one drop of truth renders the whole true; but for people who oppose progressives, even 100% factual accuracy is not enough to certify the statement as true. Statements acknowledged-to-be-100% factual are rated "true but false".

Thorley Winston said...

The article reads like the writer was hoping to find dirt on Rubio, was upset that there wasn’t any but persisted in trying to spin things in the way that sounded as ominous as possible even to the point of ridiculousness. Take this passage:

Other questionable charges ranged from $25.76 at Everglades Lumber for “supplies,” and $765 at Apple’s online store for “computer supplies.” At the time of the report, Rubio’s campaign did not provide an explanation for these charges. The next day, however, the campaign explained the charges questioned by the news outlets were incurred for business purposes. For example, the $25.76 charge was for office supplies, and the Apple store charge was for a computer hard drive and software to store political files.

We’re told that these charges are “questionable” when in the same paragraph we learn that they were for office supplies, a computer hard drive and software which are pretty routine expenses for any office. An explanation that was provided the day after the question was asked which is a pretty reasonable turnaround time IMO particularly given how often reporters will call someone with a question near the close of business or late on a Friday when they know that they likely won’t reach someone who can respond at that exact moment just so they can print “the Republican candidate’s campaign did not respond to our question.”

DanTheMan said...

"by the media and Rubio's opponents."

Redundant. Just replace "and" with a comma.

rehajm said...

As we learned from Hillary's Benghazi hearings, Pinocchios are irrefutable science to Elijah Cummings. As solid as climate science.

Assume the same for all Democrats.

Zach said...

I think I would go ahead and give the Geppetto checkmark to Rubio on this story. Out of $150,000 in expenses, there are questions about two purchases of office supplies -- one of them for $25 -- and one plane ticket got billed to two accounts (but cleared up later). While it only takes one theft to make a thief, it's pretty clear that there was no theft going on.

BN said...

My friend, who makes a living dealing dope, keeps meticulous records of his expenditures.

Vote for him!

BN said...

Oh... I forgot to mention, his name is Jeb.

BN said...

...not Jeb Bush... but close enough.