There were serious fireworks on the set of ABC's This Week Sunday.
Mostly at odds were George W. Bush aide Mary Matalin and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman with the former eventually telling the latter, "You're hardly credible on calling somebody else a liar" (video follow with transcript and commentary):
PEGGY NOONAN, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Barack Obama was supposed to be this sort of moderate, centrist fellow who looked at Mitt Romney, this extreme, strange fellow. By the time that debate was over, Mitt Romney seemed a completely, moderate, centrist figure who showed up as Mitt Romney the governor, not as Mitt Romney the candidate.
PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: Except that everything he used to claim his centrism wasn't true, so this is a question, does that start to take its toll over the next few months?
NOONAN: I just think that is unjust. I mean to say the very least --
KRUGMAN: When you say, “My plan cover s pre-existing conditions,” when it doesn't, and when your own campaign has admitted in the past that it doesn't, what do you say? That's amazing.
Ouch. That's going to leave a mark.
In reality, Matalin was likely expressing the sentiments of many on the Right sickened by constant media attacks on Romney since Wednesday's debate depicting everything he said as being a lie.
As such, it was marvelous to see one of Obama's supporters in the press called out for it on national television.
This is especially the case given the countless misrepresentations of fact Krugman is regularly exposed for saying.
But Krugman seems totally oblivious to his own falsehoods.
Earlier in the program, he claimed "The press just doesn't know how to handle flat out untruths," seconds before calling factual misstatements by President Obama during Wednesday's debate "minor fudges."
You really can't make this stuff up.
