We don’t give passes to spokesmen in glasses. (ap photo)
Since Robert Gibbs is elsewhere today doing whatever he does (no one knows for sure), deputy press secretary/hockey fan/vendor of drollery Bill Burton did the honors at the briefing today. He got a question about Sarah Palin’s weekend Twitter activity:
Q: Over the weekend, Sarah Palin tweeted that, “Rahm Emanuel is shallow, narrow-minded, political, irresponsible-as-they-come to falsely claim Barton’s B.P. comment is GOP philosophy. Rahm, you lie.”
Can you give us as unvarnished as possible reaction to that that you may have gotten from Rahm or if not then…
BURTON: I only wish Vice (President) Biden were here today.
(LAUGHTER)
OMG! We all do!
In case you missed it, Biden paid a memorable visit to the briefing on Thursday, where he dutifully talked about stimulus spending then got incredibly animated about Joe Barton. Last week’s post on that is here.
Anyway, the White House is unable to resist a Palin question (remember when Gibbs came out with writing on his hand?) so Burton obliged:
“Well, I think as a leader of the Republican Party, people would be interested in knowing whether or not she thinks that — as Congressman Barton said, that $20 billion set aside in a fund to pay the claims for people who have been harmed by B.P.’s oil spill was a shakedown. I don’t think the American people think that. And I know that Governor Palin spends a lot of time on the speaking circuit. Maybe she didn’t see that a lot of leaders in the party — in her party — were actually going out there and saying, in fact, you know, this was a shakedown and were defending Barton’s comments.”
He added, “We’re satisfied that we’re doing everything we can to take care of the folks in the Gulf region and if she doesn’t want to own Congressman Barton’s comments, that doesn’t surprise me.”
Burton! Saucy.
(Biden photos by ap)
