CNN Managing Editor Mark Whitaker, in an email to staff on Wednesday, congratulated the network’s own Candy Crowley for her job moderating this week’s presidential debate and dismissed the criticism of her as coming from Romney supporters because “their man did not have as good a night as he had in Denver.”
Republicans and Romney surrogates are not pleased that Crowley fact-checked the Republican nominee mid-debate during an exchange focusing on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Seeking to capitalize on the administration’s meandering statements since the attack, Romney claimed the president waited two whole weeks before labeling the violence an act of terrorism. Obama asserted, correctly, that he’d called the incident an act of terror during his Rose Garden remarks the day after the attack.
“He did, in fact, sir, call it an act of terror,” Crowley interjected during the debate.
“The reviews on Candy’s performance have been overwhelmingly positive but Romney supporters are going after her on two points, no doubt because their man did not have as good a night as he had in Denver,” Whitaker wrote in his memo, obtained by TPM. “On the legitimacy of Candy fact-checking Romney on Obama’s Rose Garden statement, it should be stressed that she was just stating a point of fact: Obama did talk about an act (or acts) of terror, no matter what you think he meant by that at the time.”
Romney adviser Ed Gillespie told TPM’s Benjy Sarlin after the debate this week that Crowley was “wrong” in her assertion about the president. Romney surrogate John Sununu also told TPM that Obama referred to acts of terror, but didn’t specify it was an “act of terrorism.”
Crowley later admitted that the larger argument Romney made, that the administration did not have a clear or coordinated explanation for the attack, was valid.
Read Whitaker’s full email, first reported by TMZ:
Let’s start with a big round of applause for Candy Crowley for a superb job under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. She and her team had to select and sequence questions in a matter of hours, and then she had to deal with the tricky format, the nervous questioners, the aggressive debaters, all while shutting out the pre-debate attempts to spin and intimidate her. She pulled it off masterfully.Â
The reviews on Candy’s performance have been overwhelmingly positive but Romney supporters are going after her on two points, no doubt because their man did not have as good a night as he had in Denver. On the legitimacy of Candy fact-checking Romney on Obama’s Rose Garden statement, it should be stressed that she was just stating a point of fact: Obama did talk about an act (or acts) of terror, no matter what you think he meant by that at the time. On why Obama got more time to speak, it should be noted that Candy and her commission producers tried to keep it even but that Obama went on longer largely because he speaks more slowly. We’re going to do a word count to see whether, as in Denver, Romney actually got more words in even if he talked for a shorter period of time.
