Sonia Sotomayor was in the conservatory with a lead pipe and no mask
By It’s like, how much more Politico Playbook could this be, and the answer is “none”:
Politico’s Playbook newsletter issued a correction on Saturday morning after misidentifying Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s wife, Iris Weinshall, as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The publication claimed that the case of mistaken identity was sparked by a photo sent in by a tipster allegedly taken at the hip D.C. eatery Le Diplomate on Friday night. In Politico’s report, they claimed Sotomayor, after not appearing for oral arguments Friday at the Supreme Court over coronavirus concerns, was dining with Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Our tipster got it wrong, but we should have double-checked,” the correction reads.
The publication never reached out to Schumer’s office. “I did not hear from them prior to publication,” Justin Goodman, Schumer’s top comms aide, told The Daily Beast. Reached for comment, Politico spokesperson Brad Dayspring declined to respond on the record. The Daily Beast was subsequently and accidentally added to a group chat in which he texted two colleagues, “I emailed Mike [Zapler] and Matt [Kaminski] [to] discuss.” Eugene Daniels, who wrote the item, declined to comment through a spokesperson. In a third version of their correction late Saturday, Politico added, “Politico standards require we verify this information…the editor who received the tip failed to do so in this case.” The Daily Beast reported in late November that Politico’s marquee product has been embedded in turmoil.
So not only was this not double-checked, it wasn’t even single-checked. I supposed expecting any of these high-paid Politico writers to know that Sotomayor has a very real underlying health condition that would compel a particularly high degree of skepticism about this story would be too much to ask.
Anyway, I can now present this LGM Playbook exclusive report. Sonia Sotomayor CLAIMED that she did oral arguments from her chambers to keep herself safe, but here’s a picture of her maskless and indoors with Ben Affleck! HYPOCRITE MUCH SONIA?
When I tweeted earlier today reminding people about how racist the coverage of Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings was, it got picked up by Baseball Crank, leading to a lot of playing dumb in my replies. The widespread winger talking point that Sotomayor was “Obama’s Harriet Miers” is my “favorite”:
This chart created by @mattyglesias back in the day might perhaps be helpful pic.twitter.com/PBMm6HnHHZ— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) January 8, 2022