Politico Misquotes Its Own Story to Push Obama Narrative on Sequester

Politico Misquotes Its Own Story to Push Obama Narrative on Sequester

Leave it to Mike Allen, one of the White House’s designated spokespeople at Politico, to misquote one of Politico’s own stories in order to push the Obama sequester-end-of-the-world agenda. This morning on Politico’s Playbook, Allen quoted a story from his own website:

Monday, the bulk of the furlough notices will start going out. … [E]stimates include 12 furlough days at the Bureau of Prisons, 13 at the Environmental Protection Agency and 15 at the Agriculture Department. Forced days off will mean cuts in annual pay of about 10 percent. Uniformed military personnel as well as employees … ‘Everything hits the fan on April 1,’ said Scott Lilly, former Democratic staff director to the House Appropriations Committee.

From reading that, you’d imagine that uniformed military and employees will be furloughed. There’s only one problem. The original article at Politico, by Darren Samuelsohn and Ginger Gibson, says precisely the opposite:

Uniformed military personnel as well as employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Postal Service are exempt from the furloughs.

Allen used ellipses to remove the part of the sentence that explained that those people won’t be furloughed. Why? That reflects President Obama’s agenda to push the idea that our military men and women will be forced off the job. 

Allen is, of course, the “man the White House wakes up to,” according to the New York Times. The Times also points out that Allen’s Playbook is the handbook for the Washington elite:

Allen’s e-mail tipsheet, Playbook, has become the principal early-morning document for an elite set of political and news-media thrivers and strivers. Playbook is an insider’s hodgepodge of predawn news, talking-point previews, scooplets, birthday greetings to people you’ve never heard of, random sightings (“spotted”) around town and inside jokes. It is, in essence, Allen’s morning distillation of the Nation’s Business in the form of a summer-camp newsletter.

Good thing for Obama that Allen parrots Obama talking points. Politico’s apparently so in the tank for Obama that they can’t even quote their own stories correctly.

Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the book “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).

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