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Larry King , B.J. Clinton And Jaunita Broaddrick

Larry King, the fossil, formerly of CNN, is either senile, a liar or both, circa 13 February 2014, from Washington Free Beacon [1]:

Famed former CNN host Larry King said he has never heard of Juanita Broaddrick Thursday in an interview with Steve Malzberg on Newsmax TV.

Broaddrick, a former Arkansas nursing home worker, accused President Clinton of raping her during the late 1970s in a 1998 Dateline interview.

Malzberg was describing a double standard of media coverage during the 2012 conventions, noting left wing pundits dubbed the GOP convention a “convention of rapists” while remaining silent on Clinton’s keynote address despite sexual assault allegations directed against the former president.

“Hold up, hold up. Stop! Bill Clinton was accused of rape?” King interjected.

Circa 8 March 1999, from Daily Howler [2]:

Larry King had just interviewed Kevin Hickey, the 28-year-old son of Juanita Broaddrick; and in the very next segment, he asked poor Gergen to react to what Hickey had said:
GERGEN: Well, Larry, I kept thinking, listening to him as the two of you talked, what mother would tell her son that she’d been raped if it hadn’t happened? That’s what really gave me pause. I think it added to the credibility of the story. It’s possible that they’re participating in some huge frame-up of the president. But he seemed like a plain vanilla kind of guy. He was persuasive. [Gergen’s emphasis]

Would a mother fib to her son about that? Gergen’s tone made it perfectly clear that he thought that was pretty strange stuff.

Here at THE HOWLER, we have no way of knowing if Mrs. Broaddrick’s story is accurate. We’ve said that one of the obvious possibilities is that Mrs. Broaddrick’s charges are true. But when such serious charges are lodged against public figures, we do ask pundits to play it straight–not to issue statements like this because to do so is safe and self-serving.

What kind of a mother would falsely say this? That’s simple–a mother who’s lying. And one would think a man of Gergen’s experience would know that, in real life, people lie all the time. Indeed, evidence overwhelmingly seems to suggest that other Clinton accusers may well have been fibbing. Gergen’s suggestion that no one would lie about this is so silly it deserves our contempt.

So too with the second part of Gergen’s statement, where he discusses Kevin Hickey’s demeanor. Gergen only considers the possibility that Hickey has joined his mom in a plot. But if Broaddrick is telling an inaccurate story, there is no reason to think that Hickey would know it. The fact that Hickey seems “persuasive” doesn’t mean his mother’s story is true.

But Gergen’s reading excited the panel. King questioned Dee Dee Myers:

KING: Dee Dee? You worked for Clinton.

MYERS: I’m certainly not going to raise any questions about the credibility of Juanita Broaddrick or her son, Kevin, who I think told his story quite–

Larry jumped in:

KING: David made a good point. What mother would lie to her son about being raped?

More:

KING: Will you respect me that I have never heard an agenda of any network that I have ever worked at? Will you respect that or are you not believing me?

With respect to Mr. King’s questions: one, I do not respect the fossil and two, I do not believe him. Do you?
King asserted that he never saw.

The veracity of Ms Hickey’s allegation with respect to post is moot.