Gibbs Blasts CNBC Ranter
"I also think that it's tremendously important that for people who rant on cable television – to be responsible and understand what it is they're talking about. I feel assured that Mr. Santelli doesn't know what he's talking about," Gibbs said during the daily White House briefing for reporters, CBS News' Mark Knoller reports.
The White House press secretary did not stop there. Knoller reports that Gibbs went on to criticize the objectivity of cable news reporting.
"If I hadn't worked on the campaign but simply watced the cable news scorekeeping of the campaign – we lost virtually every day of the race...." he said.
Added Gibbs: "If I would have just watched Cable TV – I long would have crawled into a hole and given up this whole prospect of changing the country."
After President Obama announced the details of his housing relief plan in Arizona Wednesday, Santelli, "the government is promoting bad behavior." His increasingly outraged comments drew cheers from the trading floor where he was speaking.
Santelli then challenged the new administration, which he said is "big on computers and technology," to "put up a website and have people vote on the internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize losers' mortgages."