He said what? McDonnell drops F-bomb in radio interview
Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell had a moment reminiscent of former U.S. Sen. George Allen’s famous Macaca moment on live radio in Washington, D.C., on Friday, blurting out the f-word during an exchange with WTOP politics analyst Mark Plotkin.
The Friday-morning interview, for WTOP’s “The Politics Program with Mark Plotkin,” hit on a wide range of topics, and was at the issue of transportation funding when Plotkin asked McDonnell if he would “rule out … any increase in the state gas tax.”
McDonnell: “In this economy, Mark, uh, with, uh, in the midst of a recession, I think we cannot raise, we can’t raise taxes. I’ve outlined a number …”
Plotkin: “That’s for your whole four-year term?”
McDonnell: “Yeah, I don’t think we ought to be raising that tax. That’s …”
Plotkin: “So no tax will be raised during your four-year term?”
McDonnell: “I’m going to find other ways to be able to be able to fund transportation. I’ve outlined twelve fucking funding mechanisms that are creative, that are entrepreneurial …”
Plotkin: “Well, name me the largest funding mechanisms?”
McDonnell: “Well, we’re going to move – we’re going to make transportation a priority in the general fund. We’re going to float $4 billion in bonds. Three of them should have already been initiated, because we approved it two years ago. We’re going to dramatically increase the use of the public-private partnerships that I think can generate billions of dollars, if you have good leadership and strong businesspeople and people that know how to get things done.”
There was a noticeable if brief pause from McDonnell after he uttered the word “fucking” and before the word “funding.” Plotkin did not appear to notice the F-bomb – judging by lack of a pause in his followup question asking McDonnell to name the funding mechanisms.
You can listen to the exchange here.
The part of the Q-and-A referencing the gas-tax discussion begins at the 18:52 mark on the player.
The link for the WTOP download for the mp3 – http://icestream.bonnint.net/dc/wtop/politics_program/091109_plotkin.mp3.
The F-bomb drop was first reported on the NotLarrySabato political blog.
- Story by Chris Graham
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[...] — Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell offers the political line of the year: “I’ve identified twelve fucking funding mechanisms.” [...]
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[...] telling WTOP (a fairly credible Washington area news radio station) that he’s “identified twelve fucking funding mechanisms” for Virginia’s perpetually-imperiled transportation [...]
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Big #%%@ deal. If you can’t play it on TV or radio, it’s not Macaca.
Wonder if anybody recorded President Obama’s reaction when he saw the Tea Party crowd in D.C.? Would he have dropped a few bombs?
I like how you notice the radio interviewer didn’t even catch it.
It’s been on CNN, so it is Macaca, or has that potential, anyway.
The “wonder”ing about President Obama’s reaction to the tea-party folks is irrevelant. Would he have dropped a few bombs? On live radio? No. You don’t do that.
As a radio and TV interviewer, my sense is that Mark Plotkin was probably caught off-guard, to say the least, by what McDonnell said. I also happen to think that it was an accidental slip on the part of McDonnell. But it was also clear as day what he said.
What would the reaction from Republicans be if the situation was reversed, and it was Deeds who had dropped the F-bomb on a radio interview?
Rhetorical question. We know what it would be. “Foul-mouthed America-hating liberal socialist communist nazi fornicator sets bad example for kids, should be fined by FCC, disbarred, imprisoned, condemned to eternal damnation.”
A Republican does it, though, and it’s an excuse for another Republican to accuse the president of something, because that’s what you guys do.
I didn’t editorialize in the story above, and went out of my way to find the original source for the audio, link to it, tell folks where to find it in the player, and transcribe the relevant part of the interview to provide as full a context as possible.
This stands in contrast to others on the left side of the news and blog aisle who have played this up quite strenuously for full partisan effect.
For taking a more level-headed approach to reporting on this, I have one response from a Republican reader using this as an opportunity to take a potshot at President Obama.
Lesson learned.
The first response to your piece is most telling”what WOULD Obama have said IF”…..all conditionals.
He didn’t, however, McConnell did.
I realize that the bar is set impossibly low for Republicans now and one must INVENT scenarios where there MAY be parity. But there isn’t. McConnell is a standard issue foul-mouthed hypocrite, bandying “Christian” values when they suit him and generally ignoring them otherwise.
From a report in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch:
“McDonnell’s campaign last night accused the campaign of his Democratic opponent, state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds of Bath County, of pushing the story of ‘this absolutely trivial matter to every blog and media outlet they can think of.’ ”
Link- http://tinyurl.com/qmxl7b.
More from the Republican attack machine. Their guy screws up, again, and it’s not their fault, again, but the Democrats being mean and nasty.
A reader from Augusta County tipped me off to this last night. I spent more than an hour tracking down the original source of the audio after listening to a brief clip from the audio on a left-leaning blog. My sense is that things like this can sometimes be either overplayed or perhaps enhanced or even doctored, and I didn’t want to get caught up in any partisan nonsense.
It would have been fine if the response from the McDonnell campaign had been left at “sorry.” Republicans, apparently, can’t let things end with “sorry.” Their fear of showing a sign of weakness is itself a sign of weakness.
From the political side, Democrats are pushing the theme that Bob McDonnell is a right-wing religious extremist. Now they’re fussing at him for cussing like a sailor. That cuts against the first line of attack.
You can use “hypocrite,” but that’s probably a draw against “trying to make everything macaca.”
While you were at the game Saturday, I had plenty of time to see the breathless posts about the $%$ word. Thus, my thought, big deal and I bet Obama, Pelosi, NLS, et al. said worse when looking at the D.C. rally. Sure, it wasn’t recorded. But it’s not a great leap to imagine it being said.
A Republican candidate drops an F-bomb on a live radio interview, and a right-wing sycophant defends him by saying “it’s not a great leap to imagine” Obama, Pelosi to have said worse when looking at the D.C. tea-party rally.
It’s official now. The GOP has nothing relevant left to say.
But I mentioned tea party rally twice. The real news of Saturday.
That’s gotcha journalism.
I think what Mike is saying here is that I’m engaging in “gotcha journalism” simply by writing about the McDonnell F-bomb.
It would have been “gotcha journalism” if I hadn’t tried to find the original audio source, linked to it and provided a transcript to give full context to the exchange.
I even, as Mike pointed out in his first comment, noted that the interviewer didn’t seem to notice what McDonnell had said.
If I was trying to practice “gotcha journalism,” I would have linked not to the audio of the entire interview but to the shorter soundclip available on other websites, and I would have made the remark out to be McDonnell’s Macaca Waterloo.
I didn’t do that. I took what lefty blogs were making to be a lot more than it is and tried to provide a deeper context.
Mike made this partisan by turning an attempt at an evenhanded approach to reporting on what happened into an excuse for smearing Democrats. The McDonnell campaign has done the same. Just as with the Steve Landes/Nazi-Soviet Union story from earlier in the week, what we’re seeing here is how not to handle a minor controversy.
I didn’t think there was much smoke if any when I first heard about this last night, which is why I approached this story the way I did, going out of my way to, again, provide a deeper context to the comment. I’m now getting the sense from the scorched-earth response we’ve seen today that my original instincts were off base.
I’m the one engaging in “gotcha journalism.” Got another mention of the 9/12 tea party rally into the thread.
You were right, that there’s not much to the story. Some lefty bloggers made a big deal of it, but they weren’t noticed because of all the people in Washington were the real news.
Those marching in Washington Saturday are going to be leaving Democrats (and many Republicans) cussing for years to come.
A slip of the tongue is pretty thin gruel. It won’t satisfy very long in a statewide campaign.
The story didn’t get much mention because it didn’t hit the web until Saturday night. Which is about the worst time of the week, particularly during college-football season, and on the weekend that the NFL is getting under way, to have something “break.”
That’s what makes the McDonnell campaign’s comment to the RT-D … interesting. If the Deeds campaign were managing this, it would’ve waited ’til Monday morning to guarantee full blast-zone coverage.
It likely still ends up on Olbermann Monday night, but aside from making McDonnell one of the “worst persons in the world” for the day, this one blows over pretty harmlessly.
Judging from what I’m seeing on the far-right blogs regarding the lack coverage of the big tea party, they didn’t get the bang for their bucks that they were hoping for. Which reminds me of the complaints from the left back during the Bush years when Code Pink et al protested Bush in Washington and Crawford and didn’t get the attention they wanted.
The fringes will get themselves up in a lather every so often. It’s nothing to cuss for years about.
There I go again, criticizing Democrats. Which means that Republican commenting about me on the NV thinks I should resign as the Democratic Party chair and that Greg Marrow should renounce me.
Olbermann? You have better reach and I’m catching up.
Mike, I mean you no disrespect, but c’mon…your lastworditis is tiresome.
It reads like a 2nd grader in need of the time-out chair.
I thought it was like watching a good service point at the U.S. Open. Chris and I can be like Federer and Nadal at times.
Besides, Chris always gets the last word. Just ask him.
My personal rule on other people’s sites is to give them the last word. Mike usually gives me the last word here, after making his point, as he did here.
It can be quite Federer-Nadal. This one was one of the better ones.
So what if he said “fucking” I say it everyday…. I have a post secondary education! I ‘m not Christian, I’m Agnostic… I don’t think at this point it well be a Macaca moment
I don’t know that the issue would be that he used the word. It would be that he used the word in a live radio interview. I don’t disagree that it’s probably not Macaca.
Seems like an awful lot of words about absolutely nothing; slip of the tongue, Happens to all of us.
If politicians can’t find anything more to criticize than a slip like this, or a 20 year old thesis written in an academic atmosphere, I have to wonder how afraid Deed’s supporters are of the man’s actual policies.
Note, Charles, that the Deeds campaign didn’t bring this up. A blogger did, I found it on several blogs, and tried to do what I think was a better job than they did in providing context to the episode.
The 20-year-old thesis is valid for the purposes of dissecting what a McDonnell administration might be like. This slip of the tongue, not so much.
McDonnell is another evangelic hypocrite. It’s more of the same ‘Do As I Say, Not As I Do’ mantra which is defining the Republican Party.
I make my voting decisions not on party affiliation but on a candidate’s platform and my personal judgment on the fitness of the candidate to govern. This includes experience, personal deportment, and a candidate’s history. A candidate’s associates and who he chooses for endorsements also reveals much.
McDonnell’s “slip of the tongue,” while inconsequential for the average person, gives away unfortunate contradictions in McDonnell’s persona which muddy any value of his carefully crafted campaign facade seen in his TV ads.
His troubling thesis, though 20 years old still has not been denied or addressed by McDonnell point-by-point but only vaguely referred to or lightly shrugged off.
More than his language, his associates are also troubling to me. McDonnell’s looking for endorsement from Newt Gingrich (according to his radio interview) shows his willingness to appeal to constituents interested in immoderate television personalities rather than people with actual substance. Also troubling is McDonnell’s readiness to seek out an endorsement from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a person with a repugnant record and contemptible philosophies.
All of this and more is adding up to a McDonnell who seems more and more to be an embarrassing political animal rather than a man worthy of a vote or respect. It’s a shame that he continues to sully his own character with this behavior. Very sad to see.
I think what came out in the interview is the frustration Jobbing Bob is feeling after his long campaign to be the blow-dried voice of sweet centrist reason (complete with smiling family) has been holed by discussion of his extreme social views as exemplified by his thesis (and his record ever afterward). If Jobbing Bob were as cool as his photo-ops, he would have had his tongue under control. The interview itself was hardly a high-stress situation, and the questions he was being asked were pretty pedestrian. He should have poked them out of the park, but instead he lost it when pinned down. I don’t know a politician comfortable in his or her own shoes who could not have answered a question about the future without resorting to foul language.