US State Department Spokesperson's Jaw Dropping Lie

[Crown]

WARNING: Do not have fluids in your mouth when watching this, you might spit them out all over your keyboard.






Nice to see the press core chortle with incredulity at that statement, my only questions is does she actually believe that or did she think the rest of us are too stupid to know otherwise?

[Borgholio]

Ok now that was just funny. You could see her turn her brain off the instant she was called on it. Sadly, we do have a very long history of fucking around with other nations' governments.

[loomer]

I'm surprised they didn't all immediately burst into extremely long, loud laughter the moment she called it a long-standing policy.

[Bedlam]

Well it's a long standing policy today, but was it a long standing policy yesterday?

We have always been at war with Oceanana

[Iroscato]

Crown, are you sure you didn't just link us to an Onion video? C'mon own up, we won't be mad

[Grumman]

Nice to see the press core chortle with incredulity at that statement, my only questions is does she actually believe that or did she think the rest of us are too stupid to know otherwise?

I think it might have been more along the lines of thesaurus abuse. She wanted a word that conveyed "very", picked "long-standing", and then got bitten in the ass when someone reminded her that words like "long-standing" actually mean things and aren't just sentence decoration.

[Broomstick]

She's too young to have a direct memory of the Central and South American coups, the last of which (if I recall correctly, which I may not) Nicaragua in the 1980's. To her, 20-30 years probably is "long-standing" even if from an international/historical viewpoint it's not.

The more recent meddling has been largely Middle Eastern hasn't it? But less direct than some of the early-to-mid 20th Century bullshit.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Psaki is one of the biggest waste of air morons who's ever lived, so this is about par for the course.

[Crown]

I'm not going to defend Psaki beyond saying the following; she was clearly reading a prepared statement (which opens up another can of worms as to how bad do you have to be to have had time to prepare a counter to a known question in advance and that was the best you could come up with?) and there is a long running history where she has been 'forced' to say things that she herself knows is complete and utter bullshit;



All of this is just theatre.

[General Zod]

I don't suppose there's a text version anywhere?

[Sir Sirius]

I don't suppose there's a text version anywhere?

From http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/3 ... g_standing

TRANSCRIPT

REPORTER: President Maduro last night went on the air and said that they had arrested multiple people who were allegedly behind a coup that was backed by the United States. What is your response?

JEN PSAKI: These latest accusations, like all previous such accusations, are ludicrous. As a matter of long-standing policy, the United States does not support political transitions by nonconstitutional means. Political transitions must be democratic, constitutional, peaceful and legal. We’ve seen many times that the Venezuelan government tries to distract from its own actions by blaming the United States or other members of the international community for events inside Venezuela. These efforts reflect a lack of seriousness on the part of the Venezuelan government to deal with the grave situation it faces.

MATT LEE: Sorry. The U.S. has—whoa, whoa, whoa—the U.S. has a long-standing practice of not promoting—what did you say? How long-standing is that? I would—in particular in South and Latin America, that is not a long-standing practice.

JEN PSAKI: Well, my point here, Matt, without getting into history—

MATT LEE: Not in this case.

JEN PSAKI: —is that we do not support, we have no involvement with, and these are ludicrous accusations.

MATT LEE: In this specific case.

JEN PSAKI: Correct.

MATT LEE: But if you go back not that long ago, during your lifetime even...

JEN PSAKI: The last 21 years?

MATT LEE: Well done. Touché. But, I mean, look, does "long-standing" mean 10 years in this case? I mean, what is...

JEN PSAKI: Matt, my intention was to speak to the specific reports.

MATT LEE: I understand, but you said it’s a long-standing U.S. practice, and I’m not so sure how—depends on what your definition of "long-standing" is.

JEN PSAKI: We will—OK.

REPORTER: Recently in Kiev, whatever we say about Ukraine, whatever, the change of government in the beginning of last year was unconstitutional, and yet you supported it. The Constitution was not—

JEN PSAKI: That is also ludicrous.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I really don't see how this is so "jaw dropping" or even noteworthy.

A random government spokeswoman says the exact kind of generic empty rhetoric that is exactly her job to relay, and fumbles a bit when a reporter dogs her on it. News at 11.

[Korto]

Anyway, you all obviously misheard her. What she obviously meant was "As a matter of long-standing policy, the United States does not support successful political transitions by nonconstitutional means." Successful defined as "Actually takes, and does not turn around later to bite us hard in the arse"
It may be on occasion this policy has failed, and perhaps they have had a few successful transitions, but if they have, they have studied these failures thoroughly to ensure they don't happen again.

[mr friendly guy]

Someone needs to make a meme of Psaki the same way they did with the former Iraqi minister of information.