Last week when President Barack Obama raised the old tale of how Mitt Romney once put his dog in a car top carrier, the NBC Nightly News gave a sentence to how Obama “took a dig at Romney” and the CBS Evening News didn’t mention it, but on Friday night both newscasts pounced on Romney for daring to make a birth certificate joke.
“Was it a joke?” fill-in NBC anchor David Gregory demanded, teasing a full story: “What Mitt Romney said on the campaign trail today that immediately erupted in controversy.” Reporter Peter Alexander recalled Donald Trump’s tie to Romney and highlighted how “the Obama campaign quickly cried foul, insisting Romney’s decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America.”
CBS anchor Scott Pelley charged Romney “seemed to go out of his way to bring up a discredited charge against President Obama.” Interviewing Romney, Pelley scolded Romney for “a swipe at the President” and pressed: “I wonder why you took it?” Pelley charged “you threw a little red meat at the conservative wing of the party there” before insisting Romney affirm “for the record, you believe that Barack Obama is the legitimate President of the United States?”
Details in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.