White House senior adviser David Plouffe on Sunday called out CNN host Candy Crowley for making a "false equivalency" by suggesting both Democrats and Republicans had made the same efforts to hold the debt ceiling hostage to push their agenda.

In a preview of President Barack Obama's second inauguration, Crowley asked Plouffe if it was necessary for the president to engage the American people in political debates by arguing that an "evil motivation" was driving Republicans.

"It's hard to see a president calling for unity when he is suggesting that people who disagree with him don't disagree with him on policy, but disagree with him because they care more about the NRA or they don't care -- in the case of the debt ceiling -- whether the country falls into recession again," Crowley charged.

"Well, on the debt ceiling, it's the truth," Plouffe pointed out. "Think about this, Candy. For the first time in our country's history..."

"Just reminding people that the president himself, when he was in the Senate, voted against the debt ceiling," Crowley interrupted. "So these people that he's suggesting want the country to go into default are doing the same thing he did when he was a senator."

"No," Plouffe replied sternly. "He did vote against it, he's spoken to that. That's a political vote and he's learned from that. But at the time, Congress wasn't threatening to say we're not going to pay our bills unless we get what we want -- deeper cuts in Medicare than are required -- or we're going to tank the economy."

"I mean, this false equivalence needs to stop," he added. "The barrier to progress here is not the president. We need more Republicans in Congress to think like Republicans in the country who are seeking compromise who are seeking balance because we are poised here to really grow."

It seems David Gregory didn't think the media has spent quite enough time beating the dead horse on the embassy attack in Benghazi. I'm not sure what else he thought Obama advisor David Plouffe was going to tell him that he hasn't already read about elsewhere in the media, but he decided to give Fox a hand and ask him about it anyway.

Plouffe to his credit, pushed back and pointed out the fact that the incident has been nothing more than a political punching bag used by Republicans:

GREGORY: Before you go, I want to ask you about what is still a-- both a highly politicized but very important question about this raid in Libya on our consulate in Benghazi that killed our ambassador Chris Stevens. A lot of misinformation about this and a politicization of this in the final days but still important questions that seem to boil down to this, why was security at our consulate so inadequate, particularly when there had been warnings in advance about an attack on the consulate? Why was there such little force nearby to respond to the kind of attack that ultimately took place?

PLOUFFE: Well, David, that’s exactly why the State Department has an accountability review board that’s going to-- right now is undertaking a very thorough investigation. Obviously, as facts come out, those have been released. But, you know, Admiral Mullen and Mr. Pickering, these are-- are respected leaders who are going to see what happened, what lessons can we learn from this?

GREGORY: Why not put out the facts before the election? Are you deliberately waiting until after Election Day before you respond to these questions in a detailed fashion?

PLOUFFE: Absolutely not. You know, all the information, obviously that-- that has been commented on has been, you know, because we’ve released it. The-- an investigation like this is very important. We have to get it right so we can learn lessons here. And-- and I think the president has been very clear. He wants to understand-- make sure the country understands fully what happened, what lessons do we learn from that and hold folks accountable. I will speak for one minute, David, on the politics. It is remarkable. You look back at the 2000 in October. The USS Cole bombing took place in the weeks before that presidential election. Seventeen of our sailors were died or killed tragically. And what president, then Governor Bush said was, we need to speak as one voice. And-- and really for that entire campaign, President Bush then-- then Dick Cheney said we need to speak with one voice. We need to find out what happened here. And I do think the politicization of this has been unprecedented. But the important thing here is we have to fully understand what happened here and take those lessons forward so that we can protect these diplomats who are doing such heroic work.

It seems Obama advisor David Plouffe is about as tired of hearing the type of hyperbolic, over the top attacks from Romney attack dog Rudy Giuliani as I am. Giuliani was out there over the weekend, calling for President Obama to resign, continuing to politicize the embassy attack in Libya and politicizing the response to Hurricane Sandy, because we all know how competent Republicans are when it comes to responding to terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So much of this last week defined by Hurricane Sandy. The president's gotten a lot of praise from people like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Mayor Bloomberg of New York, but it's not unanimous. Some pretty harsh criticism from the former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, on CNN. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GIULIANI: I don't know what the heck he was doing in Nevada while people are still being discovered dead in New York. I mean, if I were the president of the United States, I sure wouldn't be flitting around the Midwest and the West. I feel pretty darn offended seeing my president floating around, campaigning while people are suffering.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Your response?

PLOUFFE: Well, Mayor Giuliani is running around the country campaigning for Mitt Romney and popping off. The people in New York and New Jersey -- Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Christie, Governor Cuomo, Governor Malloy in Connecticut, Governor Tomblin of West Virginia -- they're working with this president and this administration and FEMA every day. And our focus needs to be -- and really the country has been united -- Mayor Giuliani may be an exception to this -- in focus on recovery, making sure we stand by those who've lost so much and need to recover, and this is going to take a long time.

But, you know, the federal government is doing all they can to partner with state and local officials. You know, we flew, you know, equipment, power equipment in C-17s from California to help restore power, getting fuel into the area, direct assistance to help people with lodging and food. So we're doing everything we can to make sure -- and this is going to take a while -- but that we stand by the people on the Eastern Seaboard who've been so affected.

White House senior adviser David Plouffe on Sunday chastised Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan for backing away from his earlier support of defense cuts, saying the Wisconsin congressman "was running away from them with the kind of pace he ran in that fictitional marathon."

Although Ryan voted for a deal that would have triggered significant cuts to defense, he has recently criticized the sequestration plan.

During an interview on Sunday, CBS host Chief White House Correspondent Norah O'Donnell asked Ryan why he was "criticizing the president for those same defense cuts you’re voting for and called a victory."

"I have to correct on you this, Norah. I voted for a mechanism that says the sequester will occur if we don’t cut $1.2 trillion in government," Ryan explained.

"Right, a trillion dollars in defense spending, and you voted for it!" O'Donnell pointed out.

"No, Norah," Ryan replied. "I voted for the Budget Control Act."

"That included defense spending!" O'Donnell pressed.

"Norah, you’re mistaken," Ryan insisted.

After hearing that he had refused to even admit he had supported defense cuts, Plouffe drew a comparison to Ryan's recent false claim that he had run a marathon in less than three hours.

"Interesting to hear Congressman Ryan," Plouffe told O'Donnell. "You asked him questions. He voted for the sequester. He voted for the Budget Control Act. He was running away from them with the pace that he ran in the fictitional marathon that you asked him about."

"Getting our fiscal house in order, dealing with the sequester is very simple. We need compromise," he added. "President Obama is the one person in Washington who is very committed to compromise."

White House senior adviser David Plouffe on Tuesday explained that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had raised massive amounts of money in June because rich people were "trying to purchase the White House."

During an interview on ABC, host George Stephanopoulos asked Plouffe if President Barack Obama was on track to lose after Romney raised $35 million more than him last month.

"Money matters in politics," Plouffe said. "We're running a great campaign. We have millions of volunteers out there registering voters, donating 25 or 50 dollars. But you have to have enough money to run and win your campaign."

"And our big concern is these super PACs," he added. "You've got a few wealthy people lining up trying to purchase the White House for Mr. Romney."

Over the weekend, Romney raised millions of dollars in a single day by holding three fundraisers at the homes of wealthy donors in the Hamptons, including a mansion owned by conservative billionaire David Koch.

"I don't think the common person is getting it," one donor reportedly said. "[M]y college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies -- everybody who's got the right to vote -- they don't understand what's going on. I just think if you're lower income -- one, you're not as educated, two, they don't understand how it works, they don't understand how the systems work, they don't understand the impact."

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday referred to young undocumented immigrants with the word "illegals," a term that many consider to be a slur.

"The president announced a new immigration policy this week to stop deporting illegals who have been brought into this country as children and and who have good records, no criminal records, law abiding," Wallace told White House adviser David Plouffe. "What's changed from last year other than the fact that the president now needs Hispanic voters to get re-elected?"

"Nothing's changed," Plouffe insisted. "The president can't change the law on his own. This is not a permanent fix. This was prosecutorial discretion announced by the Department of Homeland Security, not a change in the law."

"There's one way to fix this permanently -- only one way -- and that's for Congress to pass the DREAM Act, which is something that, unfortunately, Gov. Romney said he would veto if he becomes president," he added. "Gov. Romney essentially said the 11 million people here should just go home, they ought to self deport. So, this is someone you're not going to be able to trust."

"President Romney -- if he's elected -- is not going to fix our immigration system."

In a online video produced for the Drop the I-Word campaign, Baruch College Professor Robert Smith explained why the word is so dangerous in political discourse: “‘Illegal’ functions like a racial epithet. It’s a way of legitimizing violence against a particular group of people because of what they are. That the definition of a hate crime.”

White House senior adviser David Plouffe is making the most direct attempt yet to tie Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to President Barack Obama's health care reforms by referring to him the "godfather" of the law.

Speaking to ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Plouffe dismissed low approval ratings for the Affordable Care Act as a result of Republican "fear mongering."

"Most of the law doesn't take effect until 2012," Plouffe explained. "We've hand hundreds of millions of dollars of propaganda spent against it. Now, you are seeing parts of the law come into effect. Kids between 21 and 26, over 21 million of them, now have health insurance. They can stay on their parents plan because of the health care reform law. You've got over 5 million seniors now getting $600, roughly, for prescription drug assistance. Women are treated equally as men in our system. There are free preventive care like mammograms and cancer screenings."

"So, we just have to tell the story of this," he continued. "One thing I'm confident of is by the end of the decade, we're going to be very glad the Republicans termed this Obamacare. Because when the reality of health care is in place, it's going to be nothing like the kind of fear mongering that was done."

Plouffe added that the White House was "confident" that the Supreme Court would uphold the law.

"You had Democratic and Republican jurists upheld it in lower court decisions, including two very prominent conservative jurists. The mandate is an idea supported by the Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, most famously kind of the godfather of the mandate, Mitt Romney."

Romney, who enacted individual health care mandates while serving as the governor of Massachusetts, has promised to repeal Obama's health care reforms.

(H/T: ABC News)

White House senior advisor David Plouffe on Sunday blasted several Republican presidential candidates after they claimed President Barack Obama was trying to divide America by speaking about an unarmed African American teen in Florida who was gunned down by a neighborhood watch enthusiast.

Responding to a reporter on Friday, Obama said he felt for the parents of slain 17-year-old Trayvon Martin after he was pursued and gunned down by neighborhood watch leader George Zimmerman.

"You know, if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon," the president explained.

By Friday afternoon, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was accusing Obama of trying to divide the country with racial comments.

"That's just nonsense," Gingrich said of Obama's remarks. "Dividing this country up, it is a tragedy this young man was shot."

Also on Friday, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum lashed out at the president.

"And then, his, again, politicizing it, this is not what presidents of the United States do," Santorum told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. "What the president should do is try to bring people together, not use these types of horrible and tragic cases to try to drive a wedge in America."

On Sunday, CNN's Candy Crowley asked Plouffe for his reaction.

"At some points, this Republican primary has been more of a circus show and a clown show. And those two comments are really irresponsible. I would consider them reprehensible."

"The president spoke movingly about this tragedy as a father. He made it clear that there's investigations going on. So, I think those comments were really hard to stomach really, and I guess trying to appeal to people's worst instincts."

Senior White House adviser David Plouffe was out there making the rounds this Sunday, defending President Obama's deficit reduction plan which has Republicans up in arms because he's dared to suggest that the rich should be paying more in taxes. During Plouffe's interview on Fox News Sunday, Wallace did his best to play concern troll for the wealthiest among us, trotting out some of the same tired talking points we've been hearing from Republicans, and repeated constantly on Fox, for some time now.

Chris Hayes debunked one of them this weekend on his show that Nicole wrote about here -- Chris Hayes: Welcome To Inequalistan!:

No sophomore slump for the second weekend of Up with Chris Hayes. On Saturday, Hayes took on the ever-present, but disingenuous, conservative talking point that the top ten percent of income earners pay seventy percent of income taxes. [...]

Nothing says "patriotic American" more than defending the super-rich from a three percent hike to pre-Bush tax levels:

You have to hand it to Brooks--he has a flair for turning reality upside down that George Orwell would admire.

The wealthiest 10 percent pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes in this country because they make more than 70 percent of all the income! Check out Mother Jones charts on skyrocketing income inequality in America.

Over the last decade, as incomes for the very wealthy have soared, their tax rates have fallen. That 31 percent Brooks grouses about is considerably lower than the 37 percent they paid when they controlled less of the nation's money than they do now.

And Paul Krugman debunked the other as Susie noted in her post here -- Let's Look At Class Warfare and The 51% Who 'Don't Pay Any Taxes".

Plouffe did a decent job of pushing back at Wallace's rhetoric, but heaven forbid he was going to let a few facts get in the way of his talking points.

Transcript below the fold.

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From Democracy Now -- "Don’t Punish the Poor" Economist Jeffrey Sachs Slams Obama-GOP Budget Deal:

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reached a last-minute budget deal on Friday, narrowly averting a government shutdown. The deal would cut roughly $38 billion from a federal budget expected to exceed $3.7 trillion this year. We speak to Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "Many of us who supported President Obama just feel that he’s abandoned the field," Sachs says. "He’s left it to the right wing, which wants nothing more than taxes cut for the rich, whereas the American public is saying very clearly, in every opinion survey, one after another, if you want to close the deficit, go after taxes for the rich, raise them, cut military spending, cut the excess profits in the insurance industry and healthcare, do things that would really make a difference—don’t punish the poor."