Democrat Valerie Plame launched a congressional bid for New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District on Monday and immediately came under fire over multiple false claims she made in her announcement video.
“‘You name a hot spot? I lived it,’ as images of Iraq, Syria, North Korea and Iran flash on the screen,” Fox News reported, adding that Plame, a former CIA operative, “was never stationed in Iran or North Korea.”
The Washington Post came to the same conclusion in a fact-check article, writing: “The ad strongly suggests that Plame was an undercover operative in places such as Iran and North Korea, when that was not the case.”
“Dick Cheney’s chief of staff took revenge against my husband and leaked my identity,” Plame said in her video. “His name? Scooter Libby. Guess who pardoned him last year?”
The Washington Post again was quick to debunk this claim from Plame, writing:
Plame’s name and CIA role was first disclosed in Robert Novak’s column. Novak’s original source was Armitage, and his confirming sources were Rove and a CIA spokesman. Novak’s column led to the firestorm that launched a federal investigation. But no evidence shows that Libby disclosed Plame’s role to Novak.
Journalist Yashar Ali highlighted Plame’s video in a tweet, writing: “Valerie Plame’s launch spot for her campaign for congress: 1. Suggests she was stationed in Iran & DPRK (she wasn’t), 2. References coming from “Ukrainian Jewish immigrants” to deal with accusations of anti-semitism, 3. Uses CIA seal, 4. Makes her campaign about scores to settle”.
Plame, who has faced accusations of anti-Semitism after tweeting “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars,” joined CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Monday night to discuss the accusations.
“You have retweeted or shown interest in articles that are put out by a website that is basically a platform for extremist thought and anti-Semitism. What are you doing having anything to do with a site like that if you want to represent New Mexico as a Democrat?” Cuomo asked in a segment flagged by the Free Beacon. “Why did you do it?”
“Because I didn’t read the article all the way through and I was simply focused on getting out of … the mistake I thought of getting out [of] the Iran nuclear deal, which I thought was a really bad idea, and that’s proven to be true,” Plame responded.
“You’ve shown other interests in that website before,” Cuomo continued. “Why would you have anything do with a website that is operated or at least provided by a guy that’s a Holocaust denier?”
“Because social media and Twitter can be a pretty hateful environment, and it doesn’t exactly lend itself to thoughtful discussion or reading all the way through,” Plame answered. “I made a terrible mistake, and I hurt people whose beliefs I respect and I apologized for it.”
The Free Beacon’s Alex Griswold noted that Plame blamed one of the anti-Semitic stories that she shared on it being a story that “you don’t read all the way through.”
“Her EXACT WORDS were that people should ‘read the entire article,'” Griswold wrote.