During this Sunday's Meet the Press interview with Rep. Michele Bachmann, it looked like we were going to get some push back from host David Gregory on zombie lie we keep hearing from Republicans and that Gregory himself has repeated, that President Obama is responsible for the bulk of nation's debt.

But sadly the only rebuttal we got from Gregory was to say that "For accuracy the debt exploded under the Bush administration" and then allow Bachmann to continue to lie about which administration's policies was responsible for most that debt.

Steve Benen took Gregory to task back in July of this year here -- The latest in non-existent equivalence and followed up here -- Blame where blame is due and he finished the latter post with this update:

John Cole reminds me that NBC’s David Gregory, just last week, passed along the GOP line uncritically: “It’s the Democrats who have run up the debt since President Obama got into office.” Here’s hoping someone let’s Gregory know about the chart, too.

Judging from his prior interview I linked above with Debbie Wasserman Schultz and this week's interview with Bachmann, I'd say he still hasn't looked at it. I also find it extremely ironic that someone from the political party that seems determined to turn us into a banana republic has the nerve to be accusing anyone else of doing that, but projection seems to be the one thing Republicans are really good at, as Bachmann continues to prove almost every time she opens her mouth.

Rough transcript below the fold.

BACHMANN: When I came into Congress in January of 2007, the country was $8.67 trillion in debt. Today it's $15 trillion. Next year it will be $17 trillion. We're acting like Greece and like Italy and that's what people are frustrated with. They want us to act like a first world nation, not like what President Barack Obama is doing. He’s acting like we’re a banana republic. We've got to get our act together and stop spending money that we don't have.

GREGORY: You're seriously calling the United States acting like a banana republic, compared to the sort of debt issues that the Euro-zone countries have had?

BACHMANN: What I'm doing is saying that the decisions that Barack Obama is making is acting like a banana republic. It's absolutely irresponsible what President Obama is doing to get behind measures to increase spending to such a level that we're going into debt $1.5 trillion every year. This compares to President George Bush. Back in 2007 our debt for the entire year was $160 billion. (crosstalk)

GREGORY: For accuracy the debt exploded under the Bush administration.

BACHMANN: David, do a comparison. I agree with you that there was too much money spent under George Bush, but for the year 2007, the debt for the year, was $160 billion. The debt for this last year was about $1.5 trillion. That's almost ten times more in debt than George Bush and just for the month of, I think it's November this year, it was more than the entire year for 2007. So there's no question that the debt has just skyrocketed under President Obama in comparison to George Bush.

And here are those charts published by the New York Times, the first of second of which Steve Benen linked to his post.