Maureen Dowd Flames Biden Spox for Pressuring Her to Clean Up Biden’s ‘Word Salad’
Screenshot via ABC
The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called out a spokesperson for President Joe Biden for asking her to alter a piece she wrote in order to clear up language from Biden’s ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos.
In a new column published Sunday, Dowd wrote about Biden’s infamous verbal gaffes, referring to them as “word salad.” However, in this particular case, she highlighted what Biden’s campaign staff were doing to try to clean up after them in light of his poorly-received debate performance against former President Donald Trump.
Dowd specifically named Biden campaign spokesperson T.J. Ducklo, who asked Dowd to edit her column from Saturday to reflect the ABC transcript of the Stephanopoulos interview, which had been edited for clarity (as many transcripts are):
In my Saturday column, I quoted Biden’s line to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, about how he would feel if Trump were sworn in as president because he refused to step aside: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”
Now, “goodest” isn’t a word. But my researcher, Andrew Trunsky, and I listened to the video, our ears up against the computer, 10 times, and that’s what it sounded like. We also checked the ABC News transcript and that’s the word they used. Times news reporters and reporters for other news outlets took their cue from the ABC transcript. …
After my column posted Saturday morning, T.J. Ducklo, a Biden campaign spokesman, emailed me to “flag” that ABC News had updated its transcript to read: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”
Ducklo asked if I could “tweak” the column and change the word “goodest” to make my piece “consistent with the corrected transcript,” even though the revised version was also gobbledygook.
When I said we would tell our editor what he thought, Ducklo wrote back: “Yeah again, it’s not what I think. It’s what ABC News, who conducted the interview, thinks. I think it would be quite unusual if the Times asserted the president said something that the news organization who conducted the interview says he didn’t say…”
Andrew and I both emailed Ducklo, asking whether ABC had changed the transcript on its own or if the Biden team had asked them to change it.
“ABC News, like any news organization, makes their own independent editorial decisions,” Ducklo replied to us. “Surely you are not suggesting otherwise.” He emailed again to add: “Had another convo on this. ABC News received the tape and confirmed the error to us. Then made the correction.”
Earlier in the column, Dowd pointed out the additional scrutiny being paid to every word Biden says after his disastrous performance at the debate, which led to a growing number of Democratic allies calling on Biden to end his bid for reelection. Dowd also said the “goodest” kerfuffle might seem small, but called it “a harbinger of tense times between a White House in bunker mode and a press corps in ferret mode.”
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