Entrepreneurial evangelical pastor Rick Warren lied to you. John McCain lied to you.
Pastor Rick Warren’s spoken words opening Saturday’s forum (my direct transcription from audio):
Rick Warren: To allow for proper comparison, I’m going to ask identical questions to each of these candidates so you can compare apples to apples. Now, Senator Obama is going to go first. We flipped a coin, and we have safely placed Senator McCain in a cone of silence.
Lie.
John McCain wasn’t in a “cone of silence.” He wasn’t even at the forum. He was in his own campaign motorcade with his own aides and staffers, driving to the church. While McCain was in the motorcade, surrounded by aides and staffers, the same questions McCain was to be asked were being asked of Barack Obama and broadcast over national airwaves on more than one channel. Do you think there was a cell phone anywhere in the motorcade?
Warren of course would have known McCain was not actually there, sitting in some soundproof room offstage, in some “cone of silence.” It’s a lie.
But, but he’s a man of the cloth! How could a clergyman lie? It’s shocking, isn’t it?
Lest you think this was an offhand comment, let’s look at the beginning of the Warren-McCain “conversation” at the forum that night. At the beginning of John McCain’s time on stage, Rick Warren asked a theatrical question:
Rick Warren: Welcome back to the Saddleback Civil Forum on the presidency. Welcome, Senator John McCain. Now, my first question: was the cone of silence comfortable that you were in just now?
John McCain: I was trying to hear through the wall.
Lie. Lie.
The campaign of John McCain is trying to blow off these lies with bluster, reports the New York Times. Said McCain spokeswoman Nicole Wallace:
The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.
I didn’t know prisoner of war camps performed lie-ectomies. John McCain? Cheat? I think I’ve heard that combo before. Maybe it was in the context of the Keating Five. Or maybe it was all about when he cheated on his first wife. But it can’t have been cheating, because John McCain, a former prisoner of war, is simply incapable of cheating.
Rick Warren and John McCain, Could it be that McCain has found his VP. Both do a great job of lying. Rick Warren, “John McCain is in a Cone of Silence”. McCain wasn’t even there. John McCain ” I had my ear up to the wall but couldn’t hear anything”.No not coming from the wall you couldn’t. Such a funny guy. Both told lies in front of all those Evangelical Christians. Oh! How dare they. But Christians do believe in fairy tales so there you have it. Now does the rest of the country believe them. I’m sure the so called Christians do. As long as the laws of the land are custom made for their beliefs they always will.
Don’t you just love how they seem to think that McCain’s POW status places him above reproach?
Former POWs don’t lie or cheat. That’s outrageous!
Too bad we didn’t grant all the prisoners in Guantanamo POW status, then let them go. Then we could have asked them if they were terrorists. Why not? I mean, it’s not like they would have lied or cheated or anything.
A commenter here ( http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/08/john-mccain-and-the-cone-of-si.html ) reports that McCain asked to “get back to the Supreme Court question” before he was even asked the question at all. If that happened (I didn’t listen), his campaign can’t deny the cheating charges.
Thanks for the tip, Bob. If you look here at Rick Warren’s own transcript for McCain part 1 and part 2, you’ll see that this is indeed true. There’s no reference at all to the Supreme Court (or even to courts in general) with John McCain before he asks to “get back to the Supreme Court question.”
What’s disgusting is to watch the Schusters and the Buchanans continue on with their ‘objective appraisals’ that McCain wiped the floor with Obama.
Doesn’t MSNBC and other ‘mainstream’ media sources owe it to the voters to investigate your claims that he was not in the sound proof room but getting a crash course in how to string his stump lines together and sound so ‘strong.’ Too bad he wasn’t in the Congress when they investigated the quiz scandals of the 50′s. …
If you watch the actual video of the debate, you’ll see that McCain was the one who brought up the need to talk about Supreme Court justices whenever discussing the issue of abortion. He was not referring to a question posed previously, but to his desire to make a point about the Supreme Court in that context. I don’t think this proves anything about him cheating.