CNN's Anderson Cooper called out liberal Crossfire host Van Jones Wednesday night for calling President Obama's infamous and repeated pronouncements about all Americans keeping their health insurance plans if they liked them a mere "overstatement."
"If it was Republicans saying that, wouldn't you say it was a lie?" Cooper asked.
Jones, a former green jobs czar for the Obama administration, acknowledged the president had taken a shot to his credibility by failing to keep his repeated promise that his signature health care plan would not cost Americans their insurance coverage if they wanted to keep it.
"I do think that the president was overly broad in his assurances to the American people and I think that was a mistake, and I think that he will pay a price for that in some quarters in terms of his credibility and standing," Jones said.
He went on to try and spin Obama's false promises as a symptom of Washington culture and blamed Republicans for being overly "alarmist" in their attacks on the federal law.
A new NBC/WSJ poll show the law is unpopular with a majority of Americans, and NBC's Chuck Todd reported Wednesday on Obama's dismal approval rating of 42 percent and a public "increasingly losing confidence in his leadership."
A report from NBC Monday revealed that the administration knew since 2010 that millions of Americans would not keep their health insurance since their plans would not meet the new standards of the health care law.
Full exchange:
ANDERSON COOPER: You're calling what the president said time and time and time again while running for office an overstatement. If it was Republicans saying that, wouldn't you say it was a lie?
VAN JONES: Well, I tell you what I will say. I do think that the president was overly broad in his assurances to the American people and I think that was a mistake and I think that he will pay a price for that in some quarters in terms of his credibility and standing, but what I will say is this. There was a context. You had over alarmist rhetoric from one side saying that Stalin was on the march, and then you have the president giving overly extreme assurances on the other side. All of this is a symptom of a deeper problem.