[source]
The story took a bizarre twist when the Boston Globe reporter who broke the original story tried to bail Kerry out by saying that after listening repeatedly to his audio tape, he now believes Kerry said he has met with “more leaders” who want him to beat Bush, not “foreign leaders.” Unfortunately, this dodge didn’t occur to Kerry until after he had already told reporters yesterday that:
“I have heard from people, foreign leaders elsewhere in the world who don’t appreciate the Bush administration and would love to see a change in the leadership of the United States.”
Note that this statement is a significant climb-down from the original claim, which was that Kerry had “met with” foreign leaders who “look at you and say…” In other words, Kerry knows the original story was false, and can be shown to be false.
And the press itself tries desperately to spin this in to a non-gaffe, revealing its non-partisan nature.
Now, if they’d taken my advice and just Dowdified in the first place, there wouldn’t be a problem.