Dick Armey fact check: MoveOn did not run Bush-Hitler ad
In his opening remarks, Armey claimed that Democratic activist group MoveOn.org had "ran those ads" comparing President George W. Bush to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Armey's group FreedomWorks has stayed busy as of late by promoting Democratic lawmakers' town hall meetings and encouraging "forceful" displays against President Barack Obama's allegedly "socialist" health insurance reforms.
Maddow, who has been on a roll in the fight against health insurance reform misinformation, was quick to provide a counter-weight.
"They didn't," she said, shaking her head. "They never ran an ad that compared..."
"You're gonna get a chance to talk," he said with a smile. "I just looked at the MoveOn.org ad ... It ... It was a horrible thing."
(The ad he's speaking about was later linked by FreedomWorks, without qualification.)
Later in the discussion, Meet the Press host David Gregory asked Armey if he would repudiate Nazi imagery as applied to President Barack Obama.
"Absolutely," he said. "I repudiated it when MoveOn.org did that to George Bush. Did anybody here at this table repudiate it?"
Pointing his hands toward Maddow, Army added, "We've just heard it was alright when MoveOn did it. It's not right when anybody does it."
Of course, during the broadcast Maddow did not suggest it was "alright" for MoveOn to compare George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler. She said MoveOn did not make such an analogy.
Instead of taking more time to refute Armey's claim, Maddow glanced at her notes and got back to current affairs.
FreedomWorks, she noted, is associated with the "Tea Party Patriots," which had until Sunday afternoon distributed a video that she said promoted town hall violence "as if that were a good thing."
Maddow added: "Is that what the Health Care Freedom Coalition wants to have done in the health care debate? FreedomWorks is part of that coalition. You can say that you denounce it, but the organization that you head is part of it."
In the clip provided below, she does not explain to the former Republican majority leader how incorrect his claim really is.
However, Maddow is indeed correct.
At no point did MoveOn promote, "run" or even publicly condone the video which Armey's group now circulates. The clip Armey attributes to MoveOn was apparently submitted as part of a contest to help determine how the group should advertise against the Bush administration in the run-up to the 2004 election.
Astute political observers may remember this. In 2003, MoveOn held a contest called "Bush in 30 Seconds." Entries were judged by a panel of celebrities that included Jack Black, Moby, then-comedian (now Senator) Al Franken, famed Democratic strategist James Carville and others.
The Bush-Hitler ad was not chosen. This writer could not even find it among the top 150 user-submitted videos.
Claiming that MoveOn "ran" a Bush-Hitler ad is false. By re-posting the rejected video without disclosing its true origin, FreedomWorks is only perpetuating a lie born this morning on MSNBC.
-- Stephen C. Webster
This video is from MSNBC's Meet the Press, broadcast Sunday, August 16, 2009.
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