Scarborough Disciple Chuck Todd

After President-Elect Obama announced his National Security team this morning, Chuck Todd congratulated Andrea Mitchell for getting a Secretary of State "that would make news daily." He's obviously been taking his News Hackery 101 class from the Dean of the News Hackery Department, Joe Scarborough.


ADDING... More hackery.

David Shuster: Jim, during the campaign, Gates was publicly vocal in criticizing Obama's call for getting combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months. What did we learn to day about how those tensions will play out in the weeks and months to come?

Jim Miklaszewski: Well quite frankly David, I don't think there are any tensions. When Secretary Gates took over here at the Pentagon, two of his major objectives were to, one, start drawing down the number of American forces in Iraq and he has begun that with the commanders on the ground and also to bring down the level of violence, and to hand over a viable Iraq to the incoming administration in January.

And even Obama himself was careful to point out that he wasn't talking about the withdrawal of ALL the troops in 16 months... I don't think there's much difference between Obama and Gates on that... or on Guantanamo.... [Obama] said, "I want to close the damn thing."