Obama’s Swiftboat Liar Gets Smoked on CNN

Jermoe Corsi, a widely discredited right-wing operative who helped swiftboat Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004, debated Media Matters’ Paul Waldman on Larry King last night. Waldman completely smoked Corsi, confronting him on multiple falsehoods contained in Corsi’s new anti-Obama book. Waldman exposed Corsi for misrepresenting Sen. Barack Obama’s religious upbringing, casting wild aspersions about his current time in the Senate and relying on an expert source with a history of anti-Semitism.

Larry King also deserves credit for prioritizing facts while hosting the debate, rather than playing the reporting game of presenting two sides to every lie. King opened by noting that several of Corsi’s claims have already been proven false — I’m not repeating them in detail here — and pressed Corsi for a history of false, derogatory and bigoted statements. Corsi protested that he had apologized for some of those incidents.

The book now tops The New York Times bestseller list, though not based simply on individual purchases by actual Americans. Instead, as The Times reported, the book is "being pushed along by a large volume of bulk sales," an old political book marketing tactic to inflate perceived interest.

Meanwhile, Kerry, who has been vigorously campaigning for Obama, launched a new website to get Obama’s back. Given Corsi’s record of falsehoods, the real test is when the media will stop giving him airtime.