June 20, 2010

The Senate Minority Leader Sunday joined a chorus of Republicans who disagree with Rep. Joe Barton's (R-TX) apology to BP.

Barton shocked fellow Republicans Thursday when he told BP he was sorry that the government was forcing them to pay up for a spill they were responsible for.

"I'm not speaking for anybody else, but I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong and is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize," said Barton.

Fox News' Chris Wallace gave Sen. Mitch McConnell a chance to responded to Barton's comments. "How do you counter the Democrats' argument that Republicans care more about oil companies than they do about the environment?" asked Wallace.

"That's nonsense. I couldn't disagree with Joe Barton more. BP doesn't need an apology. They need to apologize to us and they certainly need to cover all the costs of the clean-up and the economic damages as well. And they're going to," answered McConnell.

The Minority Leader seized on the question as an opportunity to attack Democrats. "It's important to remember the President of the United States, I believe, is the biggest recipient of BP political contributions when he ran," said McConnell.

"I think the administration -- you know, the president, himself, is in charge of developing a contingency plan to deal with oil spills. What happened to it? We know there are skimmers around the world that could be sent here. Where are they? The administration has a role to play in this. They haven't done a very good job so far," he said.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon