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MOGOP Video: Nixon vs. the Press

October 20, 2009

Painful video highlights everything that is wrong with the Nixon administration

JEFFERSON CITY—Jay Nixon’s Friday press conference was the latest in a series of attempts to distract the media from his role in the May cover-up of dangerous levels of E. coli in the Lake of the Ozarks.  But at least one reporter used the opportunity to seek answers to questions that have been lingering for months. The Missouri Republican Party has posted video of the exchange.

It was a simple question:  Did Nixon attempt to verify the (mis)information he was given by his own staff before telling the press that no one in his office knew about the test results?

But Nixon stammered and stuttered his way through his non-answer, which included an awkward eight second pause as Nixon struggled to find a way to deflect the question.

“These are exactly the types of questions that need to be asked,” said Lloyd Smith, Executive Director of the Missouri Republican Party.  “Missourians deserve to know what Jay Nixon knew and when he knew it.  They deserve to know why members of his staff can keep their jobs after admitting to misleading the press and the public and seriously eroding the credibility of the governor’s office.  And, most of all, they deserve to know the truth.  Instead, Missourians have only gotten spin from a stubborn governor who will do anything to protect those closest to him.”

Nixon aides Jeff Mazur and Jack Cardetti have admitted that they knew about the test results almost immediately, yet Nixon refuses to take responsibility or hold accountable any members of his staff—even those who admitted being part of the conspiracy—for putting hundreds of Missouri families.

“This video shows everything that is wrong with the Nixon Administration—an inability to provide straightforward answers to simple questions and a lack of creativity,” said Smith. “Jay Nixon’s desperate attempt to avoid the questions is enough to make you cringe.”
Excerpt from Tony Messenger’s column in yesterday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

We do know that when the Department of Natural Resources gave Nixon bad information about beaches being closed after bad E. coli tests — the beaches were actually open — that he was too mad for words. The governor was so mad that he suspended his director of the Department of Natural Resources and appointed a longtime aide to do a two-week review to get to the bottom of the situation.

So, it seems natural to ask how the governor’s own staff gave him bad information.

Did it come from spokesman Jack Cardetti, who admitted knowing about the testing results even when he told reporters that nobody in the governor’s office knew of them?

Did it come from chief of staff John Watson, who was the liaison with the DNR and had met with Director Mark Templeton around the time the results were available?

How, indeed, did it come about that Nixon himself passed on incorrect information to the public?

“This is a very busy job,” Nixon said.

“It’s not a single data point,” he continued.

And finally: “I just don’t remember.”

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