NBC's Kristen Welker Laments 2013 As 'A Year To Forget' for Obama's Legacy

December 28th, 2013 10:21 PM

On Saturday’s Today, NBC reporter Kristen Welker was assigned the task of rewinding through President Obama’s year in 2013. The screen graphic was clear: “A YEAR TO FORGET?” The liberals couldn't gin up any happy talk. Obama failed to achieve his liberal goals and his health-care rollout was “botched.”

Welker then turned around and said the Republicans fared no better, and their polls “plummeted” after the government shutdown. The only Republican soundbite in the entire piece was Ted Cruz reading a line from Dr. Seuss.

This is how it began:

LESTER HOLT: As President Obama wraps up 2013 with his family in Hawaii he is likely to move forward after this year which will be remembered by a government shutdown and a health care debacle. Kristen Welker look back at the year on Capitol Hill.

BARACK OBAMA at inauguration: I, Barack Hussein Obama –

KRISTEN WELKER: It was a year that started with great expectations but a few months later, a trio of controversies quickly threatened to detail President Obama’s second-term agenda. Revelations the IRS was targeting conservative groups. And that the Justice Department was seizing the phone records of journalists. Plus the ongoing fallout from the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

HILLARY CLINTON clip: The fact is we have four dead Americans – was it because of a protest or was it because guys were out for a walk one night who decided to go kill some Americans –  what difference at this point does it make?

WELKER: One of President Obama 's biggest policy goals – enacting stiffer gun laws in the Newtown tragedy – failed to go anywhere after a bipartisan bill was narrowly defeated in the Senate.

OBAMA: This was a pretty shameful day for Washington.


WELKER: And his other big priority – immigration policy – didn’t get much further. But it was the president's signature achievement -- health care reform – that ended up becoming his biggest headache. The president forced to apologize over and over for the botched rollout.

OBAMA: I am sorry.

OBAMA: I’d fix it myself, but I don't write code.

OBAMA: We did fumble the ball on it.

WELKER: And for telling Americans:

OBAMA: If you like your plan, you can keep your plan!

WELKER: We now know that’s not true and that now-infamous comment, along with the revelations of the NSA’s massive surveillance program, eroded the public's trust in the president.

Welker didn't elaborate on how bad the polls were for Obama, especially when compared to other second-term presidents. Then Welker tried to insist there was no good news for Republicans in the liberal agenda being blocked and Obama's polling collapse:

WELKER: Meanwhile, Republicans didn't fare any better in 2013. The GOP watched their poll numbers plummet after the public blamed them for shutting down the government. It was a failed effort aimed at defunding the president's health care law led by Tea Party Republicans like Ted Cruz who staged a filibuster that will go down in history.

TED CRUZ clip: I do not like green eggs and ham.

At this point in the Bush presidency, liberal journalists were hailing Cindy Sheehan as a Person of the Year candidate and talking impeachment about President Bush over "misleading us into war."