Who's Lying? John McCain or Andrea Mitchell?

John Aravosis (DC), AmericaBlog.com. From DKos:

From John McCain's appearance last night on Larry King Live, when asked about
Barack Obama's canceled visit to Landstuhl:

KING: Why do you think he didn't go?

MCCAIN: I have no idea except that I know that according to reports that he
wanted to bring media people and cameras and his campaign staffers...

That's not spin, that's a blatant, outright lie, and John McCain knows it's a lie. Here is what Andrea Mitchell had to say about the claim that Obama planned to bring cameras and the press:

MITCHELL: That literally is not true... Now the point is, Obama had no intention of bringing any cameras with him. I was there, I can vouch for that... he wasn't planning to bring an entourage...

So there you have it. John McCain outright lied in his new ad, and he's outright lying in continuing to promote the message of that ad. After Andrea Mitchell weighed in and said that she was there, there isn't any wiggle room anymore. The ad is a lie, McCain is lying. When do McCain's friends in the media plan on calling him out on this. Why has he decided to go so negative? Is he that desperate? Has he given up any notion of being a maverick? Why would John McCain outright lie and then continue to spread the lie? A real media would ask these questions, and they'd certainly be asking them if Barack Obama were the candidate to enter the gutter like McCain has.

From Karen Tumulty, national political correspondent for TIME:

This front-page account in the Washington Post is absolutely consistent with what I know, based on my reporting, about Obama's cancelled visit to Landstuhl. So how many more times are the McCain campaign and the Republicans going to repeat what is a thoroughly baseless charge?

The problem for McCain, as I noted [above], is that if you're going to lie in an effort to defame your opponent, you'd better hope you don't get called on it. McCain and his staff and his surrogates have repeated this lie so many times, including airing a false TV commercial, that McCain can no longer blame it on a mis-speak or a staff screw-up. He said it himself. He approved a TV ad. McCain approved of a coordinated strategy to falsely slime Obama as un-American. That only works if the media is willing to play along. And clearly, now it isn't. McCain is going to have to go into major damage control on this one. But that may not be enough. The maverick has left the building. Whatever moron on McCain's staff came up with the bright idea to lie about Obama's patriotism, to use our troops as political props, is about to witness John McCain's fabled temper. Of course, in the end, McCain approved of this strategy and embraced it, so he has no one to blame but himself.

FactCheck.org: A McCain TV spot falsely insinuates that Obama canceled his visit because "the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras."