[See NewsBusters on Saturday, April 30 for more.] Journalists are always willing to parrot the most vile talking points, whatever it takes to salvage a Democratic president. That’s true with Joe Biden and it was true 27 years ago this week with Bill Clinton. Clinton was facing a newly empowered Republican majority and decided to exploit the tragic Oklahoma City Bombing in order to smear Rush Limbaugh, talk radio and conservatives as somehow responsible. On the April 25, 1995 Today, then-co-host Bryant Gumbel slimed the right, attributing culpability for the deaths of 168 people on April 19,1995.
Talking to guest Oliver North, Gumbel parroted the President's smears: “What did you think of the President’s remarks yesterday and his suggestion that the rhetoric on the radio may be encouraging a climate of violence?” After playing an incendiary quote by G. Gordon Liddy, Gumbel attempted to hold North accountable. The then-talk radio host (and future NRA President) wasn’t having it.