Paul Ryan's speech at the Republican National Convention has been condemned from an unexpected source: Fox News.
Yesterday Sally Kohn, a Fox News columnist, blasted vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's speech as 'an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.'
'On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold,' Kohn scoffed.
According to the Huffington Post, the Fox News columnist echoed the views expressed by CNN, The Huffington Post, the Washington Post's Wonkblog and ThinkProgress, each of which found the Republican vice presidential nominee's speech to be full of either outright lies or misleading assertions.
Kohn wrote that although Ryan seemed likable, his misrepresentations and omissions 'caused a much larger problem for himself and his running mate.'
Kohn underlined three major lies in Ryan's speech. First she criticized Ryan for blaming President Obama for the shutdown of a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, that was actually closed during the Bush administration.
She then chastised Ryan for pinning the blame for S&P's downgrade of U.S. debt on Obama, when in fact Ryan is aware that it was Republicans in Congress who helped precipitate the downgrade by threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.
Finally, she wrote that Ryan accused President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, when the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare reimbursement rates (which save Medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget plan.
'The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth,' Kohn wrote.
After the speech several news agencies took immediate issue with Ryan's facts.
'GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan took some factual shortcuts during the Republican convention when he attacked President Barack Obama,' wrote the Associated Press.
'Paul Ryan appeared to suggest that President Obama was responsible for the closing of a GM plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin. That's not true,' wrote the Washington Post.
'Paul Ryan's factually shaky Republican convention speech...is getting slammed for some pretty heavy inaccuracies,' wrote the Business Insider.
'Paul Ryan is the newest new Richard Nixon, a moocher belied,' wrote Esquire.
'I'd like to talk, instead, about what Ryan actually said — not because I find Ryan's ideas so objectionable, although I do, but because I thought he was so brazenly willing to twist the truth,' wrote The Atlantic.
'Paul Ryan's acceptance speech at the Republican convention contained several false claims and misleading statements,' wrote USA Today.
Meanwhile, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a vocal critic of Ryan's budget plans, told Current TV on Wednesday that Ryan's plan would leave 'tens of millions' of people without health insurance.
'How can Ryan get away with this?' Krugman blasted. 'World's greatest nation falls for this flimflam?'
Kohn wrote angrily on Fox News: 'Elections should be about competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.'
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