Wallace on McCain: NBC 10/15/08

Nicole Wallace, Robert Gibbs and Matt Lauer
"Today" 7:06am
Debate

TRANSCRIPTION
MATT LAUER: [A]bout 60% of people say that they have been turned off by negative attacks by John McCain on Barack Obama. How do you respond to that?

NICOLLE WALLACE: Well, listen. The polls are down. Many--present company excluded--are counting John McCain and Sarah Palin out and John McCain has been here before. The landscape looked pretty similar--actually, far more bleak during the republican primaries. So I think he's talked about how Americans need to take these final three weeks and really ask themselves: do they want someone who has a record of fighting for them? Do they want someone with a record of reform? Or do they want someone who says one thing and does another? And I'll get to your question about negative attacks.

LAUER: Yeah.

WALLACE: Barack Obama has been brilliant and Robert has been brilliant at painting our campaign as the one--

ROBERT GIBBS: You're in trouble.

LAUER: She set you up for something here.

WALLACE: Listen! Listen! The truth is that Barack Obama has spent more millions of dollars on negative attack ads than John McCain and we've lost the spin war.

LAUER: But the perception here, if you listen to this poll, the perception is that John McCain's the one being negative.

WALLACE: Right, right. Sure.

LAUER: So how's it gonna impact the tone tonight? Will John McCain go negative tonight? Can he afford to go negative tonight?

WALLACE: Well, listen. We've never been interested in negative attacks for the purpose of negative attacks, but the truth has to stand on its own tonight. So the truth about Barack Obama's record or of raising taxes on half of small business income in America, the truth about Barack Obama's plan for raising taxes--Barack Obama is measuring the drapes. He and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are planning a liberal democratic takeover of our economy.

[...]

WALLACE: On race, I would just say the poison that was injected by the Obama campaign surrogates on Friday is one that no one should stand for.

NW2 JM NBC 10-15-08 7.06 (JR#552)

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• McCain
• Obama
• Palin
• tracking
• economy

[XSanXPatriciosX]

Wallace is an idiot.

"the truth about Barack Obama!"

The truth is he's better than McCain.

[lstl5]

Robert Gibbs is brilliant and he run a good campaign for Obama.

[mibuttiznum]

I mean, how stupid does she think america is?

That's what the Repubs don't understand. They have alienated themselves from what makes America great.

Its Diversity.

[okiedragonlady2]

Obama is change, McCain has morphed into Bush - can't do the swiftboating, voting for bush tactics, no way, no more, no how. I dread the problems that face the new president - McCain just doesn't get it. Congress won't get much better if all incumbents stay in place - I think we should vote out a lot of the old party politicians - it's been a long time bad ride - no ethics, so much pocket lining crap and both parties are guilty of it.