Milbank: Karl Rove’s book ‘nearly made me choke on a pretzel’

By Stephen C. Webster
Saturday, March 6th, 2010 -- 2:06 pm
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danamilbank Milbank: Karl Roves book nearly made me choke on a pretzelEvery reporter loves a good quip. Some are better than others.

If an insta-poll were taken among mediaites at-large, seeking the best quips in mainstream press for Saturday, March 6, 2010, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank would probably take top honors.

In his review of Karl Rove's book "Courage and Consequence," Milbank jokes that Rove's apparent detachment from reality "nearly made me choke on a pretzel."

Astute political observers may recall the January 2002 incident Milbank is referencing here: the time George W. Bush nearly choked to death on a pretzel.

But it's not just a quip on the former commander-in-chief's misfortune; Rove's claims really are enough to make reasonable, cognizant observers do a double take.

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That business about President George W. Bush misleading the nation about Iraq? Didn't happen. "Did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not," Rove writes.

Condoning torture? Wrong! "The president never authorized torture. He did just the opposite."

Foot-dragging on global warming? Au contraire. "He was aggressive and smart on this front."

Milbank also notes that Rove actually believes the Bush administration oversaw "the longest period of economic growth since President Reagan," which is clearly not the case.

It's a claim that Rove has been peddling ever since voters kicked Republicans out of the White House and it has drawn the ire of even some Obama administration officials.

"The day the Bush administration took over from President Bill Clinton in 2001, America enjoyed a $236 billion budget surplus -- with a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion," Obama adviser David Axelrod wrote in a Post op-ed published in January, jabbing back at Rove. "When the Bush administration left office, it handed President Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit -- and projected shortfalls of $8 trillion for the next decade."

Milbank's summary of Rove's reality-challenging scroll goes on citing wild inaccuracies for a few more paragraphs before the writer sarcastically realizes that if Rove's claims are indeed true, everything Milbank had ever written must be false.

"CORRECTION," he writes with sarcasm. "Every article about George W. Bush ever written by Dana Milbank was wrong. The Post regrets the error."

Milbank, who used to make regular appearances on the left-leaning news network MSNBC, is not exactly a favorite media figure for the political right. He made an appearance on the network in 2006 that particularly irked Bush supporters due to his bright orange hunting fatigues and eagerness to discuss the lawyer whose face had so recently cushioned a shotgun blast from former Vice President Dick Cheney. Fringe-right blogger Michelle Malkin labeled him a "clown" for the stunt and hit him for a lack of "objectivity" -- although, in Milbank's defense, he probably just didn't want to get shot.

He's since ceased appearances on MSNBC after a falling out with anchor Keith Olbermann in 2008 over a quote by President Obama that was apparently offered out-of-context.

But the man sure can quip.

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Story comments are below...

  • Marra
    I'm trying to consider who Rove had in mind as his audience when he wrote this; who does he consider his cohort? Perhaps he is writing for the top 1 percenters. The economy was just great for them, best they had ever seen. If his goal was to create an economy and social structure with a great divide between the haves and have nots, he won. Any 'reasoning' to fuel and justify perpectual war, to bring the wages down of most people, to control and manipulate through religion, all of this kept 'the masses' all tied up economically, time and effort-wise, and emotionally-mentally. It continues now, with people investing their personal resources in defeating health care reform; this will just spur the economic demise further of most in the near future. Then it can be blamed on Obama. It is exasperating to see the continuity of Republican efforts and that they are not reported on in a coherent manner. To read the news you would think each week occured in a vacuum, rather than a continuum. We are presumed not intelligent enough to notice. My own decision is to focus on other news this next week, and certainly not buy this book of screed.
  • Chip
    What did he expect Rove to write: "I'm just a glorified turd who manipulated an imbecile and shit on the country?"
  • lapdogd
    So what section are the bookstores and book websites going to put Rove's book in?

    Sounds like a book filled with Fiction.
  • jeff
    And in the Rovian world, security personnel protect the criminals.

    A Texas Republican campaign manager I know, who cut his teeth working in the Lone Star State, and often with Karl Rove, told me that Rove owed his reputation to two things: “direct-mail marketing and an uncanny ability to manipulate federal prosecutors into going after the officeholder his client was trying to unseat.”

    http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-9000...
  • crackbaby
    When will the left realize that it is never useful to use facts against the repigs. They don't care. Commenting on their personal hygiene, looks, weight, mother's looks, father's femininity, etc. is much more powerful against these losers. Oh, and for the weak lefties who "don't want to stoop to their level...etc.", please go back to your rooms and don't come out until you grow a pair.

    Orwell said it well when he explained that the fascists in Spain didn't win because they were allowed to, they won because they had better weapons and bigger armies......please make a note of it.
  • Lyman
    Carl Rove is just another fat little pig.
    They are all bloated and all look the same.
  • Is it in the "fiction" section?
  • PeteWa
    "Milbank, who used to make regular appearances on the left-leaning news network MSNBC, is not exactly a favorite media figure for the political right." or the left.
    Milbank was a Bush toady about 90% of the time.
    Repainting him now as something that he was not is disingenuous to say the least.

    ...but he's right in this one.
  • Third_stone
    There are actually Americans who will buy the book. The literate among us know he will say nothing useful, but some even bought Palin's book. Milbanks? So what? There are many journalists who have reported things we do not want to hear, and many things that were wrong.
    I remember Reaganomics well. Reagan caused a collapse of the economy in the Northwest where I lived at the time. His entire term I spent trying to recover economically, while he borrowed record amounts of money window dressing the economy, and made major strides in deindustrializing America. This was econimics Rove admired? Then Bush, presiding over two terms of falling wages, which played a major part in today's depression. He worked up to it gradually from his first day, helping his friends rob us, rigging giveaways like the medicare prescription scam, looking the other way as illegal immigrants drove wages down, wasting our treasure on killing people by thousands.
    Why is Rove free to write this crap? Where are the prosecutors?
  • ericthefool
    This book will be a best seller. You will see. These manipulators know all the back door tricks; they buy there own books to make it look as though they are selling them. Then the Zombie American people will have to buy it because its on the best seller list...hence rewarding the biggest war criminal, liar that has ever lived.

    ...and the Americans did nothing....
  • Jeebus
    Milbank's .a turdblossom, but even a turdblossom is correct once a day.
  • jeff
    Rove will NEVER be frog marched off to prison. Things like that are meant for OTHERS who are NOT above the law.


    U.S. AGREES TO REPAY HOLLANDS $900,000
    Story excerpt: In what may be the biggest award of its kind, the(karl rove)Justice Department has agreed to pay slightly more than $900,000 to Richard J. Holland Jr. and the estate of his deceased father, Richard J. Holland, for their expenses in a bank-fraud case that was dismissed.


    The senior Holland had been chairman of Farmers Bank in Windsor before he died in April, and his son is the bank's president and chief executive officer. The two were tried in federal court in Norfolk 2 1/2 years ago ...
  • jerrywalters
    f rove, bush, cheney and the horeses they rode in on!
  • CharlieL
    Dana Milbank is hardly a liberal. He carried the water for the Bush administration with VIGOR at times.

    If you don't believe me, just google "dana milbank DSM hearings" and see how well he covered the Downing Street Memos hearings -- perhaps the most important PROOF that Bush/Cheney/Rove et al. were SELLING us a war that would bankrupt our country and kill our friends and children.

    And Dana was just printing whatever Scott McLellan at the White House said he should print.

    Dana can go to hell right along with Rove.
  • PrissyPatriot
    Yes " Milhouse" Milbank was nothing but a moth finally drawn toward the light. But they used him up until he could not carry another drop of water for Bushco-but the country was at war and the damage was done. Good job (dripping with sarcasm)
  • yvonneo
    Why would anyone buy a book written by that creep, rove? He's a vile, malicious creature--and, of course, a liar (and that's one of his better qualities), so why would anyone further enrich this SOB in any way, shape or form by giving him their money for a book full of lies?

    Rove is a criminal (and a tra itor) and at the very least he should be spending his time in prison getting to know his new cellmate and BFF, Bubba. Mmmmm.....although, stringing this POS up from a nearby pole is an appealing alternative.
  • margaretpoa
    Too bad he didn't. One less person to lie us into another ridiculous war.
  • davemartin7777
    "Foot-dragging on global warming? Au contraire. "He was aggressive and smart on this front."

    Philip Cooney, President Bush's chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality...

    Prior to working for the Bush Administration, Cooney was a lawyer and lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute (API), an industry group representing the American petroleum industry.

    Bush administration:

    Cooney joined the George W. Bush administration when he was appointed chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality. On June 10, 2005, Cooney announced his resignation, two days after the story of his tampering with scientific reports broke.

    It was reported that he had altered government climate reports to downplay scientific consensus about climate change. A few days later, it was announced that Cooney would go to work for the oil company ExxonMobil starting in the fall; ExxonMobil declined to describe the nature of Cooney's new job.

    During a March 2007 congressional hearing, Cooney conceded his role in altering reports to downplay the adverse effects of man-made emissions on the planet's climate. "My sole loyalty was to the President and advancing the policies of his administration," he told the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Cooney
  • bufftrucker
    "My sole loyalty was to the President and advancing the policies of his administration," This is a patriot? Where I come from (America) this a TRAITOR!
    Rove deserves to have his neck stretched.
  • theoracle
    There was more to the Bush-choked-on-a-pretzel story.

    Just before Bush choked, VP Dick Cheney had walked into the room, carrying a shotgun under his arm, holding a box of pretzels, handing one to George W. Bush, saying "Here, George, choke on this."

    I believe it was something about succession and Dick Cheney growing impatient.
  • allfactssupportmypositions
    And why was Rove not indicted for lying to the grand jury? Why was he allowed to "correct" his testimony? Because Patrick Fitzgerald was not a prosecutor, he was a loyal Bushie. Think about it. Zero Bush dirt bags went to prison for their act of TREASON pushing back at Joe Wilson. Patrick Fitzgerald did all her could to appear professional while he was limiting the damage.

    And to think of all the members of the press who know who the White House (Plame) leakers were, and kept quiet till after the election. They should also be strung up alongside the entire Bush Gang. TREASON. Ask Joe Wilson. He asked Bush to tell the truth, and they went after his family.

    http://www.RepublicansAreADisease.com

    Who is worse? Rove or Cheney?
  • icenine
    Rove is such a despicable POS. He thinks he can re-write history. I don't doubt he can get his lies written in textbooks down in Texas, along with the Bronze Age creation myths posing as science, but the rest of the world outside of Fundie, redneck America will never buy his bullshit. He deserves to be in jail, very possibly for murder and failing that, at least banished from public.
  • sanchosdad
    gotta love D Milbank. he's smart and he's a liberal. the bush administration must be made up of people with their masters in psychology. in their opinion, they are always right. and of course being psychologists, they can never be proven wrong.

    much like psychologists, they are unwavering in their "facts" until the time comes to be sworn in in front of a judge, then they get amnesia about what happened and its all just an opinion after that.
  • NOT Millbank
    No he's fucking not. He's a racist Skull & Bones "master of the universe" Bilderburg-wannabee who will say and do whatever it takes to keep himself in the money somehow. When MSNBC was paying him, he pretended to be a liberal. I'm really surprised his first reaction was not to go suck KR's dick.
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