N.Y. Times Retracts Arnold Hitler Bombshell

The New York Times issued a de facto retraction on Saturday after misreporting two days earlier that Arnold Schwarzenegger once said he admired Adolf Hitler for what he did with his power.

In early Friday editions, the so-called paper of record quoted the California gubernatorial front-runner as saying, "I admire [Hitler] for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it." Schwarzenegger's critics used the toxic quote to suggest he approved of the Holocaust.

But an actual transcript of outtakes from Schwarzenegger's 1975 bodybuilding classic, "Pumping Iron," shows that what the actor actually said was exactly the opposite: "I didn't admire [Hitler] for what he did with it."

The incendiary Schwarzenegger quote was corrected by the film's producer, George Butler, during an interview Friday where he admitted he misquoted the GOP front-runner in a 1997 book proposal.

Butler told the Times that the error stemmed from the fact that the book proposal quote, which was widely circulated after the Times and ABC News published the bogus story, had "dropped a few words."

The full and corrected Schwarzenegger quote, which was printed by the Times on Saturday, went like this:

"In many ways I admired people — It depends for what. I admired Hitler for instance because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for his way of getting to the people and so on.

"But I didn't admire him for what he did with it. It is very hard to say who I admired and who are my heroes. And I admired basically people who are powerful people, like Kennedy. Who people listen to and just wait until he comes out with telling them what to do. People like that I admire a lot."

Butler couldn't explain how he made the mistake, telling the Times, "I am amazed that something like that escaped me."

But what's perhaps more amazing is that the Times, ABC News and the rest of the mainstream press ran wih a bogus story they knew could severly damage Schwarzenegger's reputation without verifying the poisonous quote.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
California Governor's Race
Media Bias

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