Politics

Wolf bites Weiner in interview: ‘You would know if this is your underpants, for example?’

Matthew Boyle Investigative Reporter
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CNN’s Wolf Blitzer ripped into New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner’s in a Wednesday afternoon interview when the congressman continued to refuse to answer whether or not it was his penis in the photo his official verified Twitter account posted Friday night.

“This is the picture,” Blitzer said, holding up a copy of the photograph for Weiner’s inspection. “I’m sure you’ve seen it by now. Is it you?”

Weiner deflected again, saying he’s hired a firm to “get to the bottom of it.” Blitzer wasn’t satisfied with Weiner’s non-answer, so he asked again. “We just want to resolve it once and for all,” he said. “You would know if this is your underpants, for example?”

“Look, I’ve said the best I can, that we’re going to try to get to the bottom of what happened here,” Weiner answered. “I just want to caution you and you understand this, you’re a pro, that photographs can be manipulated, taken from one place and taken to another place, they can be doctored, and I want to make sure that we know for sure what happened here. It certainly doesn’t look familiar to me but I don’t want to say with certitude.”

Blitzer then circled around and asked it a third time, in a different way. “Have you ever taken a picture of yourself like this?”

Weiner deflected again. “I can tell you that there are photographs,” he said. “I don’t know which have been manipulated and doctored and we’re going to try to find out what happened.”

Blitzer also questioned Weiner’s treatment of CNN’s Dana Bash and of her producer, Ted Barrett, who he called a “jackass” on Tuesday. Blitzer said the congressman “should have done this [interview] yesterday.”

Blitzer challenged Weiner’s claims that Barrett was “yelling” at him. Weiner said he has “certain rights as a human being to be treated with some level of respect” and that he doesn’t want to “relitigate whether he [Barrett] is or is not a jackass. I’ll leave it to someone else.”