Michele Bachmann fails to expose George Stephanopoulos' deceptive game ("Birther", Obama's certificate)

George Stephanopoulos interviewed Michelle Bachmann on ABC News' Good Morning America today (link), discussing in part the "Birthers" issue (see our extensive coverage at Obama citizenship). Neither of them came off very well in the exchange: Stephanopoulos acted (not surprisingly) like a deceptive partisan hack. And, Bachmann failed to show clear thinking by calling him on it.

Stephanopoulos acted the part of a three-card monty dealer, holding up a supposed print out of "the president’s certificate". Bachmann said that the issue would be solved if that were "introduced". Stephanopoulos said that it had been introduced, ending with this exchange:

Bachmann: Well as long as someone introduces it I guess it’s over.

Stephanopoulos: It’s right there.

Bachmann: Yeah, there you go. Because that is not the main issue facing the United States right now.

The problem is that Obama's certificate - whatever it is - has not been "introduced" in anything approaching a legal sense. He's posted a picture of what he claims is his certificate (actually just a "certification of live birth") on his website. The printout that Stephanopoulos is even more questionable: only he got a good look at it; it's unclear whether Bachmann even knew what it was; and, there's no independent verification that Stephanopoulos - an obvious partisan hack - tampered with it.

And, even if we assume that Stephanopoulos held up an accurate printout of what Factcheck posted, major questions remain because FactCheck is not a credible source (see the link). Not only have they misled for Obama in the past, but they edited the supposed pictures of Obama's COLB after initially posting them. And, they didn't note that they'd edited those photos.

Obviously, Bachmann should have called Stephanopoulos on the above rather than enabling him to mislead. And, she should have pointed out that the "Birther" issue is indeed vitally important for the reasons discussed at that link.