Media declare Gingrich GOP's "ideas man," ignore his frequent falsehoods
Falsehoods offered by Gingrich include:
* During the May 10 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, Gingrich claimed that Democrats have "had control since January of 2007. They haven't passed a law making waterboarding illegal. They haven't gone into any of these things and changed law." However, the Democratically controlled Congress did pass a bill in 2008 that would have banned the use of waterboarding, had President Bush not subsequently vetoed the measure. Gingrich further suggested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who according to a recently released CIA document was first briefed about harsh interrogation techniques in September 2002, could have threatened "to pass a law cutting off the money" for the techniques if she objected to them. But Democrats were not in power until January 2007; Pelosi was the ranking member of the House intelligence committee and a senior minority member of the House appropriations committee in 2002, and House minority leader from 2003 to 2006.
* During a March 25 appearance on Fox News' Hannity, Gingrich falsely claimed that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner proposed to "take over non-bank, non-financial system assets" and that "Congress had passed the authorization in the stimulus bill" to pay bonuses to AIG executives. According to Gingrich, those policies "absolutely moves you towards a political dictatorship."
* In a March 3 Twitter post, Gingrich wrote that his wife, Callista, "pointed out flying into [S]anta [B]arbara you can see the oil rigs off shore," and asserted, "Ironically they have had no spill since 1969." In fact, in just the few months preceding Gingrich's post, there had been at least two oil spills reported in or near the Santa Barbara Channel, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, including one spill in mid-February and another in December 2008 that required a coordinated cleanup effort by the Coast Guard, the California Department of Fish and Game Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR), and the company responsible for the spill.
* In a February 22 New York Times article, reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote that Gingrich "sees the stimulus bill as his party's ticket to a revival in 2010, as Republicans decry what they see as pork-barrel spending for projects like marsh-mouse preservation. 'You can imagine the fun people will have with that,' he said." In fact, the bill does not contain any language directing funds to the salt marsh harvest mouse, or its San Francisco wetlands habitat, a fact that the House Republican leadership aide who reportedly originated the claim has reportedly acknowledged.
* During the February 17 edition of Hannity, Gingrich falsely claimed that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains "$30 million to save a mouse in San Francisco" and "$8 billion for a high-speed rail to Las Vegas for Harry Reid," adding, "[I]f those aren't set-asides, I don't know what you'd call them."
* During the January 22 edition of Fox News' On the Record, Gingrich referred to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) initial "analysis" of the recovery package and purported that it analyzed the entire bill, stating: "Look, the Congressional Budget Office has reported that less than 10 percent of the bill will be spent the first year. Some of it would not be spent for 10 years. This is a bill -- this is not a stimulus package, this is a bigger government, more bureaucracy, more powerful politician package in the guise of a stimulus." In fact, as the initial Associated Press report on the CBO "analysis" noted, it did not take into account all aspects of the recovery plan. While the CBO write-up found that "only $26 billion out of $274 billion in infrastructure spending would be delivered into the economy by the Sept. 30 end of the budget year," it did not "cover tax cuts or efforts by Democrats to provide relief to cash-strapped state governments to help with their Medicaid bills," among other provisions.
* On the January 19 edition of Fox News' Happening Now, referring to President Obama's support for the Employee Free Choice Act, Gingrich claimed that Obama was "going to be for the labor unions taking away your right to a secret-ballot vote before being forced to join a union," echoing a common distortion employed by opponents of the legislation.
* Gingrich has repeatedly criticized Pelosi for using a military jet to travel to and from her congressional district, and has also falsely claimed that former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) "did not get a private plane" following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted, following 9-11, the House sergeant-at-arms, the Defense Department, and the White House agreed that military planes should be made available to the speaker of the House for national security reasons, and Hastert was the first speaker to use one.
* During the November 16, 2008, broadcast of CBS' Face the Nation, Gingrich said that Republicans "who are about to face this question of, how do you get the economy growing again" should ask Republican governors Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Jon Huntsman of Utah, "[H]ow did they get to the lowest unemployment rate in their respective regions?" However, the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics records at the time showed that Gingrich's claim was false. In fact, neither Utah nor Indiana had the lowest unemployment rate in its region, and several states with lower unemployment rates were governed by Democrats.
* During the July 31, 2008, edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Gingrich repeatedly mischaracterized Obama's energy policy, falsely suggesting that Obama's only "energy strategy" was to encourage people to keep the tires on their vehicles properly inflated and asserting that Obama "suggested if we all inflated our tires, that we would solve the problem."
* On the October 10, 2006, edition of Hannity & Colmes, Gingrich falsely claimed that Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) "promise[d] to raise taxes" if Democrats were to take over the House of Representatives in that year's midterm elections. In fact, as Media Matters noted, during a September 26, 2006, interview with host Neil Cavuto on Fox News' Your World, Rangel, who was in line to become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee if Democrats gained a majority in the House, stated that a House controlled by Democrats "would not raise taxes" and "would not roll back" Bush's tax cuts enacted by Congress and set to expire in 2010.
