Sen. Dan Sullivan's spokesman calls me someone who was "once a respected writer."
I don't know where he got that strange notion, but I'd like to offer my thoughts on Mike Anderson's additional complaint that I don't let "facts get in the way of a pre-existing thesis."
He brings this up after a column I wrote last week disputing the notion by Sullivan and Sen. Lisa Murkowski that they support Donald Trump, but don't endorse him. They are hoping to hide behind a synonym, as if a word game gives them distance from the likely GOP nominee.
Responding to that column, Sullivan's spokesman wrote a letter to the editor saying I deliberately misled readers about comments Sullivan made in a cable TV interview.
I did make a mistake in that column, which I'd like to correct and examine in some detail here.
Contrary to Anderson's claim, I had no "pre-existing thesis" on Sullivan's comments regarding whether Trump had made racist remarks about a man he called a "Mexican" judge, who was born in the U.S.
I now know that this sentence in that column was incorrect: "Sullivan, appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Wednesday, said Trump's remarks were wrong, but the senator refused to answer repeated questions about whether Trump's remarks were racist."
What I should have said was: "Sullivan, appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Wednesday, said Trump's remarks were wrong. When asked if Trump's remarks were racist, he refused to answer the first three times, but agreed they were when he was asked a fourth time."
I don't have an excuse for this mistake, merely an explanation.
The interview with Sullivan, posted on the MSNBC website, where I listened to it, did not include the final seconds of the exchange about Trump and the judge, when co-anchor Willie Geist was brought into the discussion and posed the question for the fourth time. That was when Sullivan said the comments were racist.
As to why MSNBC did not post those 10 seconds, Sullivan's spokesman says, "Apparently his answer didn't fit MSNBC's narrative."
It's either that or bad editing. In either case, I take responsibility for not knowing that the file was incomplete.
Lest the Sullivan narrative be portrayed as one in which the senator couldn't wait to brand Trump's comments as racist, however, it's undeniable he spent the rest of the interview in a mighty struggle to avoid using that word.
Two minutes earlier, Scarborough gave Sullivan the chance to make his position clear: "Senator, do you agree with Paul Ryan that the statements that he made about the federal judge were racist?"
Sullivan replied: “Look, the statements were equating ethnicity with bias, which goes against all, everything that we believe in.”
“Would you define that like Paul Ryan, that was a racist statement?” Scarborough repeated.
“Look, I’ll let you guys label it,” Sullivan said.
After hesitating, Scarborough agreed to label the words as racist and asked Sullivan for his view on whether he agreed with the label.
Sullivan did not answer the question.
“I think the statement was clearly wrong and I called for him to retract it,” Sullivan said.
Shifting gears, Sullivan said Trump had recently given a “really, really good energy speech” and the GOP leader should focus on issues with some discipline.
At this, co-host Mika Brzezinski said Sullivan was trying to change the subject, telling people to “Look at the bird. Don’t look at this. Look at the bird.”
“Senator, I don’t want to talk about the bird right now,” she said. “I want to ask you if he’s fit to be president right now if he makes a statement like this and does not retract it? Is he fit to be president?”
“The American people are going to decide whether he’s fit to be president in the next several months. They’re also going to decide whether Hillary Clinton is fit to be president,” Sullivan said.
The Alaska senator criticized Clinton for a bit and a few seconds later, he said he has been “very clear, very direct” on what he considered offensive comments by Trump. He declined to call the comments racist.
The MSNBC clip ended just as Scarborough called in Geist to ask a question. Had I known that Sullivan changed his response about Trump, I would have mentioned it, as that is the most interesting part of the entire exchange.
In the last 10 seconds, Geist asked: “Do you believe Sen. Sullivan that what Donald Trump said about the judge was racist?”
Sullivan paused and said, “I think it’s a racist statement and he should retract it.”
The final answer belonged in the column, no question about it, along with those that preceded it.
Columnist Dermot Cole can be reached at dermot@alaskadispatch.com. The views expressed here are the writer’s own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.