TPM Editor’s Blog

Brown Framed?

Brown Framed?

Sheesh, what has the world come to if you can’t trust the Boston Globe?

Over the last day or so, we’ve been reporting how Mass GOP senate candidate Scott Brown said he was unfamiliar with the “Tea Party Movement”, notwithstanding their campaigning for him and now lots of photos and video of his addressing Tea Party events.

But it seems like the original report in the Boston Globe was just wrong, or at least way overwritten.

The Brown campaign has now provided us with the audio of the exchange the report was based on. And as is often the case, there’s a lot of crosstalk and incomplete sentences. But I think the clear reading of Brown’s statement is not that he’s “unfamiliar” with the Tea Party movement or hasn’t heard of it but that he didn’t accept or wasn’t buying the reporter’s characterization of it.

The audio is clear that Brown did not want to get into a discussion of Tea Partiers or his relationship or connection to the movement. But he wasn’t saying he’d never heard of or wasn’t familiar with the Tea Party movement.

Josh Marshall

Josh Marshall is editor and publisher of TalkingPointsMemo.com.

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