Whittington: Reporters Are “Insufferable Jerks”

Harry Whittington, who was shot by Vice President Dick Cheney in a hunting accident last year, considers the reporters who covered the mishap a bunch of “insufferable jerks.”

At least that’s what former White House political strategist Karl Rove told the Washington Examiner’s Bill Sammon in his new book, “The Evangelical President.”

According to Rove, Whittington was being ironic when he finally emerged from the hospital to “thank” the reporters who had spent days hyperventilating about the accident. Alluding to journalistic ignorance about the dangers of hunting, Whittington lamented the accident was “not easy to explain-especially to those who are not familiar with the great sport of quail hunting.”

Unaware of Whittington’s subtle rebuke, journalists interpreted the old man’s remarks as vindication of the media. Whittington could only chuckle at coverage of his “thank you.”

“I talked to him afterwards and said, ‘You really did great,” Rove tells Sammon. “He said, ‘I really enjoyed the fact that I insulted the press and they didn’t seem to understand that I’d insulted them.’ He was basically saying: You insufferable jerks.”

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