NY Times Indicts Jeb Bush for Out-of-Context 'Stuff Happens' Quote, Invites Obama to Pile On

By Clay Waters | October 3, 2015 | 8:07 AM EDT

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was blasted by the New York Times for allegedly dismissing the mass killings by a gunman at an Oregon community college as "stuff happens." The Times then invited President Obama to lambaste Bush's out-of-context two words in a Saturday print story. (Meanwhile, true Democratic gaffe-masters like Joe Biden get an "off-the-cuff" pass from the newspaper.)

Reporters Jonathan Martin and Matt Flegenheimer filed "Jeb Bush Is Criticized for Saying ‘Stuff Happens’ in Reaction to Shootings," on nytimes.com Friday afternoon. Although the Times accused the former Florida governor of having "invited" the firestorm with his comments at a forum in South Carolina, it was the Times and other outlets (including the Washington Post) that poured the gasoline by using the wildly out-of-context quote to paint Bush as being flippant about the Oregon tragedy:

Jeb Bush invited a firestorm on Friday by saying that “stuff happens” in reference to renewed calls for legislative action after tragedies like the mass shooting in Oregon.

“I had this challenge as governor because we had -- look, stuff happens,” he said at a forum in South Carolina. “There’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”

The inelegant phrase immediately set off a wave of criticism from observers suggesting he was playing down the scourge of gun violence and the tragedy on Thursday, in which a gunman killed nine people at a community college in Roseburg, Ore.

Mr Bush, taking questions from the state’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, was speaking about a pattern of proposing legislative responses that he said did not halt the tragedies they were meant to stop.

Asked afterward about the “stuff happens” comment, Mr. Bush said, “it wasn’t a mistake,” and requested that a reporter point out “what I said wrong.”

“Things happen all the time,” Mr. Bush said. “Things. Is that better?”

Asked what he meant, Mr. Bush said he was talking more generally about the tendency to pass laws in response to tragic events.

....

Mr. Bush said he was not referring specifically to Oregon when he said “stuff happens.”

President Obama was quickly invited by the media to pile on, and the Times dutifully relayed Obama's contempt, which turned into a full story in Saturday's paper.

The Washington Post updated its own blog post on the controversy with the full 700-word transcript (reprinted below) of the exchange that provided much needed context. But the post began by also unleashing an aggrieved Obama on Jeb, based on the out-of-context quote.

NYT reporters Michael Shear and Alan Rappeport folded the controversy into Saturday's edition under the jabbing headline, "Obama Rebukes Bush on 'Stuff Happens' Reaction to Oregon Shootings."

Jeb Bush drew a sharp rebuke from President Obama on Friday after the Republican presidential candidate shrugged off any need for government action in the wake of the massacre of nine people at a community college in Oregon.

“Look, stuff happens,” Mr. Bush, the former Republican governor of Florida, said at a campaign event in South Carolina. “There’s always a crisis, and the impulse is always to do something and it’s not always the right thing to do.”

Mr. Obama, who in remarks the night before had denounced Congress and the entire American political system for what he called its numbness to repeated gun massacres, responded: “The American people should hear that and make their own judgments based on the fact that every couple of months, we have a mass shooting. They can decide whether they consider that ‘stuff happens.’ ”

The exchange between Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush reflected the paralysis that has settled over the issue of new gun control legislation in the United States. Virtually no member of Congress issued a statement after the Oregon shootings arguing for or against new gun control measures, and a number of the 2016 Republican presidential candidates were dismissive of new gun control measures as well. After Mr. Obama failed to get Congress to pass even modest gun control legislation after a 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., killed 20 schoolchildren, the president has put more energy into legislation where he can find common ground with Republicans.

....

Bush campaign officials, even before Mr. Obama’s rebuke, insisted that people were unfairly seizing on only part of the candidate’s comments. “It is sad and beyond craven that liberal Democrats, aided and abetted by some in the national media, would dishonestly take Governor Bush’s comments out of context,” said Allie Brandenburger, a campaign spokeswoman.

Perhaps sensitive to online criticism from Friday afternoon, the Times defensively emphasized, a bit wrongly, that they were quoting Bush "in entirety."

In response to a question about whether more prayer in schools might help reduce tragedies like the shooting in Oregon, Mr. Bush, a former Florida governor, said in entirety:

“Yeah it’s a -- we’re in a difficult time in our country, and I don’t think more government is necessarily the answer to this. I think we need to reconnect ourselves with everybody else. It’s just, it’s very sad to see. But I resist the notion, I had this challenge as governor, because, look, stuff happens, there’s always a crisis. And the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”

Although Mr. Bush did not say explicitly there was no need for new gun control legislation, it was implicit in his message.

In comments made before Mr. Obama spoke, he also said he had not made a mistake in his initial comments: “Things happen all the time. Things. Is that better?”

Mr. Obama ordered flags at the White House on Friday to half-staff to honor the victims of the shooting.

Here's the full 700-word exchange in its true "entirety," as belatedly posted at the Washington Post. The shootings in Oregon were never directly mentioned. Bush's "stuff happens" remark is at the very end. As The Federalist argued, "The full context of Bush’s remark makes it clear that the former Florida Governor was not shrugging off the tragedy."

Moderator: Now the question. The Second Amendment. This is South Carolina, I don’t want to say anything else beyond that, but I do want to read the Second Amendment. ‘A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ Do you think the Second Amendment bestows individual rights or rights of the militia?

BUSH: I think it bestows individual rights and I think that’s what, and it needs to be protected, and the best place to sort these issues out is the, at the state level. The federal government tries to create these one size fits all rules and it’s -- look, South Carolina’s different than New York City. In Florida, when I was governor, I was the NRA stataesman of the year, one year it was on my highlight reel where Charlton Heston gave me a gun on the stage in front of 15,000 people, that was pretty cool to be honest with you. We, we have – in Florida we believe that concealed weapons permits is a, is a proper thing. We have 1.2 million concealed weapon holders, more than double the next state. We have right to carry, there are all sorts of rules that are appropriate for Florida may not be appropriate in other places, but the basic right is embedded in, it’s a personal right, I mean it’s an individual right to bear arms and that’s, that shouldn’t be infringed by either local, state or federal law for sure.

And this president – you know, the tendency when we have these tragedies that took place yesterday, it’s just heartbreaking to see these things, but this is the broader question of rule-making I think is an important point to make. That whenever you see a tragedy take place, the impulse in the political system, most, more often than at the federal level, but also at the state level, is to ‘do something,’ right? And what we end up doing lots of times is we create rules on the 99.999 percent of human activity that had nothing to do with the tragedy that forced the conversation about doing something. And we’re taking people’s rights away each time we do that, and we’re not necessarily focusing on the real challenge. So if we have people that are mentally ill, to the point where they go into the vortex and they don’t come out and they’re hateful, and they’re in isolation, and they kill people. The impulse in Washington is take personal rights away from the rest of us. And it won’t solve the problem of this tragedy that is just heartbreaking to see. Maybe we oughtta be more connected in our communities. Maybe we oughtta have greater awareness of the mental health challenges that exist all across this country. Maybe there’s a better way to deal with this than taking people’s human, you know, personal liberty away every time we, you know, kind of require people to do something.

Moderator: And I remember right after Columbine. And this is a long, long time ago I was listening to the radio, and they were talking about how schools you’re not allowed to have prayer vigils. But the second – being allowed to pray, I should say, or have, you know, Christian or Jewish or whatever faith-based groups on these public education schools. But then the guy said, you know it’s funny that you send a guy there with an Uzi or a handgun to shoot a bunch of pe

BUSH: Of course.

Moderator:--prayer vigil, whatever the faith-based group is and always to say that you should do that on the front end, maybe you wouldn’t have these tragedies on the back end.

BUSH: Yeah, it’s, we’re in a difficult time in our country, and I don’t think more government is necessarily the answer to this. I think we need to re-connect ourselves with everybody else, it’s just, it’s very sad to see. But I resist the notion – and I did, I had this, this challenge as governor, because we have, look, stuff happens, there’s always a crisis, and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.