Last month, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repeatedly made the false claim that Shi’a Iran is training Sunni al Qaeda. In a Washington Post discussion today, a questioner observed, “I’m surprised that more hasn’t been made out of all of the verbal slip ups by McCain.” The Post’s Michael Abramowitz brushed over McCain’s many gaffes, saying the press has sufficiently critical of McCain:
ABRAMOWITZ: I don’t think McCain is being cut a break by the press for verbal miscues: When he confused the Sunni and the Shia, the press was on it immediately.
As Media Matters has documented, media outlets including CNN, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Reuters, and the AP ignored or overlooked over the gaffe in their reporting. Just last week, Abramowitz stuck up for McCain’s premature declarations of Mission Accomplished in Iraq, stating:
ABRAMOWITZ: I think McCain will certainly be attacked over the war during the campaign but I doubt that he will be blamed for “Mission Accomplished” because he was always more sober than than the White House about progress in Iraq.
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