Despite Obama’s Defense, GMA Maintains Their Solyndra Scandal Blackout
For the 33rd consecutive day, ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday omitted any mention of the Obama administration's Solyndra scandal, even though co-host George Stephanopoulos asked the President about it in an interview on Monday and elicited a newsworthy defense of the more than $500 million loan to the now-bankrupt company. Tuesday's show instead focused on other questions from the ABCNews.com/Yahoo online interview, like the best piece of advice the President has received from his wife and whether or not he would stop Bank of America's new monthly debt card fee. Stephanopoulos pressed Obama on Monday about his touting of Solyndra as a cornerstone of his stimulus program not even 18 months before it declared bankruptcy. In fact, he even included the exchange in his segment on that evening's ABC World News. “And for the first time, President Obama had to answer for Solyndra, the solar panel company which failed despite half a million dollars in government loans from the Energy Department,” Stephanopoulos touted on Monday's World News. “President Obama had held it up as a model for green jobs and clean energy.” “Do you regret that?” Stephanopoulos asked the President about the Solyndra loan. “No I don't, because if you look at the overall portfolio of loan guarantees that have been provided, overall it's doing well,” Obama answered. “And what we always understood was that not every single business is going to succeed in clean energy,” he added, noting that “hindsight is always 20/20.” Good Morning America didn't include that exchange but did air Stephanopoulos lobbying the President from the left to “put a stop” to Bank of America's new debit card fee – something NewsBusters reported on yesterday. “More than 40,000 questions came in online for the President, most expressing anxiety and anger about the economy, including outrage about Bank of America's five dollar debt card fee,” Stephanopoulos reported Tuesday morning. “Vicki Menkel wrote, 'Those are the types of things government should get involved in and put a stop to.'” ABC then played his question to the President: “Can you put a stop to that?” “Well you can stop it,” Obama answered, “because if you say to the banks you don't have some inherent right just to get a certain amount of profit, if your customers are being mistreated – and my hope is that you're going to see a bunch of the banks who say to themselves, you know what? This is actually not good business practice.”
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on October 4, 2011. Filed under