Handling the Hagee Rejection

By SteveK 

The news of Sen. John McCain’s “thanks, but no thanks” rejection of Rev. John Hagee’s endorsement late this afternoon has become a major topic on the cable news channels.

CNN broke the news at 3:45pmET, with correspondent Brian Todd providing the details. At 4:05pmET, MSNBC reported the story, Headline News followed at 4:11pmET and FNC had it at 4:23pmET. Since then, the story has been widely discussed, including Hagee’s official withdrawal of the nomination.

The rejection came after a video of a Hagee sermon was posted on Talk2Action.org last week, that was picked up by Sam Stein of The Huffington Post yesterday.

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Ahead of the news of the rejection was someone who took on the video last night, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who had promised to address the matter. How? On The Daily Kos.


The person who posted the video on Talk2Action, Bruce Wilson, also wrote a Daily Kos post, explaining the backstory of the video and Huffington Post blog. He urged readers to Digg the story, writing, “Your votes can help this break through the glass ceiling that divides the MSM and the Internet.”

He also started the comments with, “Let’s bust this one into the MSM.”

An anonymous tipster pointed out that Keith Olbermann, responding in the comments section less than two hours later at 5:24pmET, wrote, “Consider It Busted.” He went on to say, “Which of these Hagee quotes will you be talking about tomorrow? We’re throwing it into the McCain stew tonight and I suspect it’ll reappear in the days to come.”

Olbermann did “throw it in,” as promised to the Daily Kos readers, a couple times during his broadcast (as did Verdict with Dan Abrams).

• Related: On FNC’s O’Reilly Factor tonight, recent high profile letter author Ed Gillespie, or as Olbermann calls him in another Kos comment, “Mr. Ed.”

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