Krauthammer ignored McCain's solicitation of Hagee endorsement, saying, "[C]andidates are endorsed by hundreds of people"

Summary: On Special Report, Charles Krauthammer said, "The Obama campaign and the Democrats will say that [Sen. John] McCain has his Reverend [John] Hagee, and Obama has his reverend, and they disavowed them, and they're sort of morally equivalent." Krauthammer continued, "The obvious counterargument, which the Democrats refuse to accept, is that presidential candidates are endorsed by hundreds of people, half of whom they don't know, some of whom are scoundrels and rogues whom they then dissociate themselves from." But McCain, by his own admission, actively sought Hagee's endorsement, despite Hagee's numerous controversial comments.

On the May 29 edition of Fox News' Special Report, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said, "The Obama campaign and the Democrats will say that [Sen. John] McCain has his Reverend [John] Hagee, and Obama has his reverend, and they disavowed them, and they're sort of morally equivalent." Krauthammer continued, "The obvious counterargument, which the Democrats refuse to accept, is that presidential candidates are endorsed by hundreds of people, half of whom they don't know, some of whom are scoundrels and rogues whom they then dissociate themselves from." But to suggest, as Krauthammer did, that Hagee was just another McCain endorser, "half of whom [he doesn't] know," is to misrepresent what happened preceding the endorsement. McCain, by his own admission, actively sought Hagee's endorsement, despite Hagee's numerous controversial comments about gays, Catholics, Islam, and women. Moreover, even after McCain was asked about some of Hagee's controversial comments, he still said, "I'm glad to have his endorsement," before eventually rejecting it.

As Media Matters for America noted, during an April 20 interview on ABC's This Week, after McCain said he "strongly condemn[s]" "any comments that he [Hagee] made about the Catholic Church," host George Stephanopoulos stated, "Yet you solicited and accepted his endorsement." McCain replied: "Yes, indeed, I did." Later, when asked if it was "a mistake to solicit and accept [Hagee's] endorsement," McCain replied, "Oh, probably. Sure." But when Stephanopoulos asked McCain, "So you no longer want his endorsement?" McCain responded: "I'm glad to have his endorsement." More than a month after this exchange, McCain rejected Hagee's endorsement following the disclosure of remarks Hagee made in the late 1990s.

From the May 29 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume:

KRAUTHAMMER: The Obama campaign and the Democrats will say that McCain has his Reverend Hagee, and Obama has his reverend, and they disavowed them, and they're sort of morally equivalent.

The obvious counterargument, which the Democrats refuse to accept, is that presidential candidates are endorsed by hundreds of people, half of whom they don't know, some of whom are scoundrels and rogues whom they then dissociate themselves from.

The difference is, it's not a question of endorsement; it's a question of character. What kind of man spends 20 years in a church in which such things as we hear here and we heard from Wright are said, and preached, and cheered?

—M.A.