Palin: Maddow Was 'Prejudiced' In Her Rand Paul Interview

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin accused MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Sunday of conducting a "prejudiced" interview with Rand Paul, in which the Tea Party candidate infamously aired skepticism about the reach of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Speaking to "Fox News Sunday," the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee said that Paul was being subjected to the same biased media coverage that marked her run for office, before offering her Tea Party-backed candidate a bit of advice.

"One thing we can learn in this lesson that I have learned and Rand Paul is learning now is don't assume that you can engage in a hypothetical discussion about constitutional impacts with a reporter or a media personality who has an agenda, who may be prejudiced before they even get into the interview in regards to what your answer may be," Palin said. "You know, they are looking for the gotcha moment. And that evidently appears to be what they did with Rand Paul, and I'm thankful he clarified his answer about his support for the Civil Rights Act."

Paul sparked several days worth of controversial coverage when he suggested to Maddow that the government had meddled too far into private enterprise in the passage of the Civil Rights Act and other legislation. But contrary to Palin's suggestion, it wasn't an adversarial interview that was the root of the problem. After all, Paul was granted 15 minutes by Maddow to explain his position on the matter. Moreover, he had made the same controversial comments earlier that morning to NPR (which, in turn, served as the basis of Maddow's questioning).

As for the substance of his remark, Palin did her best to avoid actually weighing in one way or another. She was glad Paul clarified his "interpretation of the impacts of the Civil Rights Act," but she wouldn't "speak to each of Rand Paul's positions."

And then, inadvertently, she did. Palin was asked by host Chris Wallace to assess the Obama administration's reaction to the massive oil spill in the Gulf. Two days prior, Paul had been critical of the president for being too tough on BP, the company responsible for the spill. The rhetoric, he said, was "un-American." Palin offered a diametrically opposite analysis, accusing the White House of not being tough enough.

"These oil companies have got to be held accountable when there is any kind of lax and preventive measures to result in a tragedy like we're seeing now in the Gulf. Alaska has been through that. I have lived and worked through that Exxon Valdez oil spill. I know what it takes to hold these oil companies accountable. And we need to see more of that," she said.

"I don't know why the question isn't asked by the mainstream media and by others if there is any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration, and the support by the oil companies to the administration," Palin added, "If there is any connection there to President Obama taking so dog-gone long to get in there and dive in there and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico."

Comments

[NatalieRose Apar]

06:10 PM on 05/31/2010

Sooo... what she's saying is that government intervention is good and necessary when Sarah Palin is the government?

[CharlesDevell]

11:19 AM on 05/28/2010

Rand Paul Suggests Children Of Illegal Immigrants Should Not Be U.S. Citizens

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/rand-paul-children-of-illegal-immigrants-should-not-be-us-citizens-video.php?ref=fpa

The real problem, Paul said, is that the U.S. "shouldn't provide an easy route to citizenship" because of "demographics."

According to Paul, the proportion of Mexican immigrants that register as Democrats is 3-to-1, so of course "the Democrat Party is for easy citizenship."

He added: "We're the only country that I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also."

[JudgeMoonbox]

03:07 PM on 05/30/2010

"Rand Paul Suggests Children Of Illegal Immigrants Should Not Be U.S. Citizens"

How does he deal with the clause in the 14th Amendment that says "All persons born or naturalized in the US... are citizens?"

Many people who oppose the "anchor baby" issue argue that the 14th Amendment doesn't apply because the authors didn't refer to the immigration question. In reality, it superceded a clause that had. The original enumeration clause specifically referred to indentured servants.

Besides, the amendment was written 11 years after a nativist party--the Know Nothings--had made a decent showing in a Presidential election. There was an immigrant neighborhood--Swampoodle--within sight of the Capitol before Union Station construction urbanly renewed them out of there. To think that Congress simply forgot that immigration was an issue is mindboggling.

[feed the enemy]

12:24 AM on 05/28/2010

The teahag schill charges a lot for her free speechifying.

[FacelessDem]

04:39 PM on 05/27/2010

I don't agree with what Rand Paul said about BP.
However I do completely disagree with Rachel's stance on Rand's stance on freedom.

I myself am a colored person, and if I would welcome "colored people not welcome" signs on restaurants.
I want to know where my money is going, and I welcome the education that the owners of a specific restaurant are racists, that way my money doesn't go to them.

I've spoken to many people, and it seems it's only white people that are against this freedom of private businesses, either that or it's people who just don't know how to fight racism.

I've lived through racism, this is not the 60s anymore. Majority of american are not racists so a racist business would not survive let me tell you.

You cannot outsource parenthood to the govt., you have to let people be idiots.

If you think Rand is racist than perhaps it's YOU that is racist because YOU think that majority of americans are racists, because that's the only way a racist business would survive.
It's also possible you guys are trying to be against this only for the purpose of anti-racist symbolism.

[NikEstep]

05:14 PM on 05/27/2010

The civil rights act is not solely about race. Sure, there would be few racist businesses if they were allowed to exist (though I suspect the ones that existed would indeed survive just fine). It also covers sex, income, things like that. Would you be ok with a "Men Only" sign? Or a "No Gays" sign? Rachel was very polite, offered Paul multiple opportunities to stop trying to sidestep the question and answer it honestly, which he did not. Sarah Palin has a problem with this because she herself was often unable to actually answer questions that reporters posed to her. Also, no, I don't think Paul is racist, he made that VERY clear. Instead, he has a view of government that amounts to something like the government of Somalia, where the President cannot leave their equivalent of the White House because it is not safe.

[FacelessDem]

07:02 PM on 05/27/2010

Would I be okay with "men only" signs?
would I be okay with no gays sign

Yes and No. I wouldn't like it but I would like myself and others to know where their money is going.
Secondly, a private business should be allowed to do what they want.
It's a private business, respect their rights.

Rachel was very polite?
She said "they didn't ask for this"
that was HORRIBLE!!! What was she implying?

And as far as Rand Paul not giving a straight answer......
Do you think he could have with that Intro?
Re-watch the intro and tell me if anyone would have been capable of just a yes or no answer.

I don't care about Palin, she's an idiot. But I think she's kinda hot for a mom!

[Javalation]

07:45 PM on 05/27/2010

I'm so old that I remember the white only restaurants, motels, schools, front part of the bus and other apartheid restrictions. Gas stations in the south had three restrooms: one marked men, one women and the one around back for colored. Guess which one received the least maintenance. Employment opportunities were limited for people of color, with some existing in a semi slavery state, as a result.

All of this changed as a result of big Government forced action, and the country is a better place as a result. Just as I don't care about a restaurant or motel owners politics, ethnicity or sexual preferences, he shouldn't care about mine. He should provide the same level of service to every patron, and only concern himself with his quality of service and not the other stuff.

[Wayne Wilson]

03:25 PM on 05/27/2010

wow. I NEVER thought I would agree with Sarah Palin on anything in my LIFE. holy moly.

[Javalation]

03:32 PM on 05/27/2010

Did you listen to the interview? She seemed very respectful to me, asked for clarification, and Paul kept attempting to repeat his talking points without clarifying his position. I always get upset with reporters for allowing politicos to dance without answering. Do you think their BS responses should be allowed to slide?

[NikEstep]

05:15 PM on 05/27/2010

Rachel Maddow conducted a very respectful interview. She has gotten much more "gotcha" with other people, but she remained very level headed with Paul.

[PatMcc]

03:21 PM on 05/27/2010

The problems with Paul isn't that he says that he supports the Civil Rights act and would have voted for it, but rather his belief that private business should have the right to deny services based on race (or any other factor that they would chose to discriminate on). His radical beliefs shows who he is and what he stands for.

[Norman Allen]

02:50 PM on 05/27/2010

For the Repugnants and especially our dear Sarah, anyone who does not support their view or is objective in their interactions with them is biased. That is the religious right's attitude: believe like they do or you are not objective. Never mind the constitutional guarantees of the peoples bill of rights!!! Pretty soon they will be just the ossified minority which they should be, relegated to the dusty cobwebs of the past.

[Wayne Wilson]

03:27 PM on 05/27/2010

um, isn't it true though that anyone who doesn't support the dems view of the civil rights act as perfect, holy scripture, is automatically a racist? this whole fiasco is proof of that.

[NikEstep]

05:25 PM on 05/27/2010

Or, as is the case here, people (not just liberals mind you) are questioning Paul's stance on the role of government. He made it clear he is not racist nor did Maddow ever say or imply he was. Paul claims to effectively be the least discriminatory person in the world, which is great, but the belief that other people have the right to discriminate is what is being questioned here. In my opinion, not being discriminatory, but thinking others have the right to, is a problem.

[bap1]

01:17 PM on 05/27/2010

Palin accuses Maddow of being prejudiced. Hmmm. Pot, meet kettle. Hasn't she been demonstrating her own prejudices against liberals, progressives, the "lame-stream media" and just about anybody who doesn't think and worship as she does?

Too bad that exorcism didn't drive out her lifelong-companion demon, hypocrisy.

[DarwinsRadioDNA]

01:10 PM on 05/27/2010

I'd like to know what the then 25 year old Sarah Palin was doing to "work through' the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

[Javalation]

12:48 PM on 05/27/2010

A few days after his slip with Maddow, Paul took a shot at deflecting toward Obama, by suggesting that it was unAmerican to criticize BP. Just think about the mind set required to suggest that businesses should not only be allowed to discriminate against anyone they choose and that it's somehow unAmerican to criticize them even when their cutting corners to save a few bucks is responsible for the worst ecological disaster in our history. This is blind capitalistic fanaticism at its worst. He outlimbaughs them all.

[NJSpinDoctor]

02:16 PM on 05/27/2010

This is a "movement" solely for the benefit of those perverting capitalism; they aren't libertarian or conservative...they're corporatists. Companies--AIG, Citi, Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, BP, you name it--can do no wrong in their eyes, and America would be more complete if we just followed their lead. Other than BP and their willingness to kill their own workers for profits, you need no more evidence that corporations hate Americans than to look at what Goldman Sachs did: They sold their customers on investments that they then bet against for their own insider trading so that it was in their best interests for their customers to fail.

Corporate America wants to be the America Corporation...United States, LLC., if you will. If you want to put the last few decades in context and really understand how we got here, serving corporate masters, look up a character named Prescott Bush. It'll fry your eggs...

[RobinLandseadel]

03:20 PM on 05/27/2010

You mean, of course, "W"'s grandpa, the man who funneled U.S. money into I.G. Farben, makers of Zyklon B, Auschwitz and Bayer Aspirin.

Yup, these folks need a frog-march or two.

[NikEstep]

05:26 PM on 05/27/2010

Completely agree. It should be noted though, the slip wasn't with Maddow, it just continued with her. He had been implying this before his interview with her.

[Nelle]

12:32 PM on 05/27/2010

Sarah Palin and Rand Paul. Two people with both diarrhea of the mouth AND constipation of the mind! Nuff' said.

[mjohnd]

12:22 PM on 05/27/2010

Duh. Don't expect objectivity from Rachel Maddow. Or Rush Limbaugh. Of course they have an axe to grind. They are not journalists, they are entertainers. Geez, doesn't anyone really need to be told this?

[RobinLandseadel]

03:25 PM on 05/27/2010

Rachel Maddow is a journalist. She asks questions the questioned enough time to fully answer without interruption. She asks good questions, the sorts that ought to make the people being questioned feel uncomfortable. She is one of the last of a dying breed, a journalist who follows the rule of that game and respects its etiquette.

[NikEstep]

05:23 PM on 05/27/2010

To compare Maddow to Limbaugh is laughable. Limbaugh doesn't even know what the word "research" means. Maddow, on the other hand, goes into an interview with knowledge and tries to get answers to questions that people have. In this case, Paul made it sound like he didn't support the Civil Rights Act of 1964, so she asked him about that. This was not something she made up, but something Paul got himself into.

[Utah Mountain Man]

11:05 AM on 05/27/2010

maddow is a communist.

[Wayne Wilson]

03:28 PM on 05/27/2010

for sure.

[NikEstep]

05:28 PM on 05/27/2010

How would you figure that? Is it because she went into the interview knowing what Rand Paul had said before and she had the audacity to ask him to clarify what he meant?

[ranjur]

10:19 AM on 05/27/2010

As a consumer, I don't have a right to a proprietor's labor, or his property, I can access these things, when we come to mutually beneficial terms. For whatever reason, if that proprietor deems that he doesn't want to conduct business with me, mutual exchange is impossible. What you do with your own property outweighs society's concern of whether or not you are a bigot. Passing laws against discrimination can't make people less bigoted--an individual has to make those changes.

[edsommers]

10:40 AM on 05/27/2010

Passing laws against descrimination does not make people less bigoted. Passing laws
against discrimination makes it a crime for bigots to act on their bigotry. Few, if anyone
cares what is in the mind of a bigot, so long as the law prevents him from acting as a bigot.

[StephenSmith]

12:56 PM on 05/27/2010

You make it sound like the worst that can happen is that you didn't buy a vase of flowers at the florist. How about the case of a company like Microsoft or Intel deciding they didn't want to sell to people of middle easterners? What if Southwest decided not to fly Koreans? What if a TV station decided not to air ads for minority businesses.

It's easy for Rand Paul or Sarah Palin to make such comments. They are white and rich. What have they been denied? When have they been racially profiled?

[tkidd916]

04:57 PM on 05/27/2010

Aren't you profiling them right now, when you call them white and rich?
Biggotry is not limited to white people.

[bobrsta]

10:12 AM on 05/27/2010

I don't know what Ms. Palin is talking about. I'm a conservative and watched the Maddow interview a couple of times and Mr. Paul danced all around the question and I didn't see him ever answer it directly. In his original interview with the Courier-Journal, he spoke very clearly and I thought eloquently on the conservative viewpoint that government shouldn't be regulating private business in this manner. I wish he had done so again in answering Ms. Maddow's question. He has nothing to hide from, its a legitimate viewpoint for discussion.

[Daniel Guffey]

01:04 PM on 05/27/2010

Libertarians views are like communism, they work in theory.

Take the red pill.

[Javalation]

03:11 PM on 05/27/2010

I also watched the interview and agree that Ms Maddow was trying to get clarification in a very respectful, but persistent, manner. Paul responded with verbose obfuscation... dancing. A few days later, Rand Paul suggested that it was unAmerican for Obama to criticize BP for the oil hemorrhage in the Gulf. Would you agree with this view? Where in the Constitution does it say that the Govt should pass no laws abridging the power of business owners? Actually, where in the Constitution are they even mentioned?