Wallace's "Power Player" Designation For O'Keefe Ignores His History Of Deception | Media Matters for America
Wallace Touted ACORN Sting, Promoted Upcoming Video Release. Wallace began his "Power Player of the Week" segment by touting O'Keefe's ability to go after "big targets" and get "stunning results," regardless of "[w]hether you admire or condemn his tactics." Wallace went on to tout how O'Keefe's ACORN videos "pushed Congress to cut off federal funding," and concluded by noting that a video from "an undercover sting of a public television executive" would be released by O'Keefe in the coming week. From the March 13 edition of Fox News Sunday:
WALLACE: Whether you admire or condemn his tactics, there's no debating that undercover activist James O'Keefe has taken on some big targets and come up with some stunning results. Once again, he's our "Power Player of the Week."
O'KEEFE: We thought it'd be a funny YouTube video and we'd get them to say something silly like "Oh, you guys, that's cute." But we never in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine this.
WALLACE: That was James O'Keefe in 2009, marveling at the impact of his undercover ACORN videos that pushed Congress to cut off federal funding. Now he has struck again, masterminding a sting of NPR executives at what was supposedly a lunch with rich Muslim donors that showed their political bias here against the tea party.
RON SCHILLER [then-NPR Foundation president, video clip]: I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist.
WALLACE: We wanted to know what drives the 26-year-old O'Keefe, who describes himself not as a conservative but a progressive radical. And what we discovered is an outrage with liberal hypocrisy.
O'KEEFE: If you use their rules against them, you can really just tease them and mock them and really destroy them.
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WALLACE: In 2009, when Hannah Giles called and proposed they sting ACORN, O'Keefe was on board.
O'KEEFE: She said, "I can be a prostitute." And that's when I said, "What if I'm a pimp?" And then we said, what if there are 13-year-old girls involved? And we just upped the ante and just made it more ridiculous.
WALLACE: O'Keefe has had problems. Last May, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for posing as a phone repairman to get into Senator Mary Landrieu's office. But now he has a new scalp. The head of NPR was forced out in the latest scandal, and Congress may oblige what that executive said was his secret hope.
SCHILLER [video clip] : It is very clear that we would be better off in the long run without federal funding.
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