Mediaite’s J.D. Durkin writes about what he thought he heard Chuck Todd mumble during today’s Meet The Press…
On Sunday’s Meet The Press, host Chuck Todd sat with a handful of Presidential candidates to discuss Saturday’s GOP Debate as well as the news of the sudden passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. As the candidates suddenly find themselves addressing this topic on the campaign trail, Texas Senator Ted Cruz managed to honor the legacy of Scalia himself during the interview, offering the comparison between the recently deceased and GOP darling President Ronald Reagan.
But as the video below indicates, Chuck Todd seems to mutter the words “Oh God” as soon as Cruz goes in on the lofty comparison.
Actually I don’t think it indicates that at all. Todd is too smooth to get caught saying anything like that on the air. Furthermore, that’s not what I heard.
It’s hard to hear what Todd said period. The second word is harder to decipher. What isn’t that hard to decipher is the phonetics of the second word. It has the “ow” sound in it. Now, unless Todd has suddenly come down with a sudden severe speech impediment there is no way he said, “Oh Gowd”. If he did say “Oh God” the phonetics should have pointed to the “aw” sound because that’s the sound of word “God”.
Therefore I believe he didn’t say “Oh God”. So what word has an “ow” sound in it that would make sense in this exchange? Well how about “No doubt”?
Let’s see how that would look in the exchange…
CRUZ: And, Chuck, just as Ronald Reagan was to the Presidency, so Antonin Scalia was to the Supreme Court. He had that big an impact.
TODD: No doubt.
CRUZ: And I think his passing yesterday really underscores the stakes of this election.
Makes sense to me. So I think Durkin got it wrong and Todd wasn’t kvetching at Cruz going into election mode but was actually agreeing that Scalia had a huge impact on the Supreme Court…which anyone regardless of ideological affiliation should agree.
Filed under: MSNBC
