Eric Bolling Explains Why He Repeated Dick Cheney's China-Drilling-Off-Cuba Lie (Three Times)
Reported by Melanie - July 10, 2008 -
Nearly a month after Dick Cheney's June 11 lie to the Board of Directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that China is drilling off the coast of Cuba and his retraction on June 12, Fox's Eric Bolling, who repeated the lie three times, the last as recently as July 1, finally ah, explained himself (July 10, 2008).
Here's what he said. (See video, below.)
Asman, at the end of a segment about oil's price rise today: "Very quickly Eric, you've got a little business to take care of."
Bolling: "Absolutely. You know, I've caused a bit of a stir in the last few days. I talked about Chinese, reports that the Chinese were actually drilling off the coast of Cuba, um, and, you know, I went and I did some homework and I talked to a few drillers. Apparently, what has happened is George Will wrote an article that later Dick Cheney quoted. He has since retracted the comment about the Chinese actually drilling off the coast of Cuba.
"Um, but what happened is it gained some traction with, within the oil drilling community. Now, when I do my homework and I spend some time with these drillers and they came back and said yes, we definitely believe that's going on and all I did was I said you know what? These guys believe it, it seems to be a fairly prevalent belief within the drilling community. That being said, we're going to do our homework. We're going to find out exactly if there's any Chinese drills in the ground. Whether it's through Chinese companies or through other countries or companies putting drills [...in the ground? Inaudible.]."
Comment: What took you so long?! McClatchy debunked Cheney's lie the same day he said it. Republican Florida Senator Mel Martinez took to the Senate floor that day too and said it was "akin to an urban legend." So again, nearly 30 days on you're gettin' with the program? I'm sorry. Knowing Fox as I do and knowing that Neil Cavuto himself told this lie, as did hot shot oil "expert" Phil Flynn - the Washington Post called it "The Myth That Keeps on Giving" - this was, imho, a deliberate effort to plant false information in the mind of the American public. Chances are, a good percentage of the population believes it, so hey, a month on, why not "retract" it? The damage has been done. Unless the retractions are as numerous as the lies, it won't get out there and the public will continue to believe it's true. So thanks, Eric, I guess, but let's have Cavuto and Flynn do the same. Maybe then we can let the public in on the real, true news, instead of propaganda designed to make us think that the Chinese are stealing our oil out from under Florida so we'd better let the oil companies go out there and get it before they do.
Oh, and private note to Eric - You might want to think about using "the Google" when you're doing your "homework." If you'd used "the Google" in this instance, you'd have known this was a lie long before you told it the first time, much less the third time (which reinforces my comment above).
