On Thursday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist and conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer criticized the White House after announcing it would be holding a “National Women’s Issues Conference” on April 27-28 in Washington, D.C.
According to Krauthammer, White House spokesman Jay Carney’s response to a question about conference posed by Fox News Channel’s White House correspondent, Ed Henry, was “shameless and over-the-top.”
“According to Jay Carney, it has nothing at all to do with the election,” Krauthammer said. “They actually think they can say that and do it with a straight face and get away with it. I mean, all the administrations use taxpayer money to promote themselves in an election year. But this is pretty shameless and over-the-top.”
He said that this conference stemmed from the recent contraception debate that was given birth by the media.
“Notice how when the president said, ‘This is about a wide range of issues. It isn’t just about’ — and what’s the one thing he named immediately? Contraception. Of course it is about contraception,” Krauthammer said. “It’s because of the way it was handled and the media covered it — it became all of a sudden a war on the women, which is a complete invention.”
Krauthammer cited the media’s coverage of Reince Priebus’ remarks dismissing the claim of a war on women, and said that was evidence that some in the media are on the side of with White House to promote the idea as if it were a matter of fact, ignoring the religious liberty issues surrounding the contraception part of their argument.
“But now you get stories of the mainstream media. I think I saw a headline this morning that said, ‘Republicans claim that there is no war on women,’” Krauthammer continued. “I mean, this is actually in a news part of the paper, which of course is promoting the meme. The idea is that because there was some objection on religious liberty grounds to force Catholic institutions to dispense them for free, it’s a war on women. And the idea of the meme was that they want to deny access to contraception as if Republicans want to shut the door of American pharmacies for any woman looking for contraception. So, the media have collaborated in inventing an issue. Obama sees an opening. He actually said women aren’t an interest group. Of course they are in the eyes of this administration, and that’s why it’s holding the conference.”
