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chatterbox: Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.

Whopper of the Week: George W. Bush

Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, June 15, 2001, at 5:33 PM ET

"'Something will happen when I'm president,' Bush told a Jewish lobbying group a year ago. 'As soon as I take office I will begin the process of moving the U.S. ambassador to the city Israel has chosen as its capital.' The Bush campaign in October slammed Vice President Al Gore for backsliding on the move."

--Al Kamen's June 13 "In the Loop" column in the Washington Post.

"Pursuant to the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 7(a) of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 (Public Law 104-45) (the 'Act'), I hereby determine that it is necessary to protect the national security interests of the United States to suspend for a period of six months the limitations set forth in sections 3(b) and 7(b) of the Act."

--June 11 presidential memorandum delaying the congressionally mandated relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Got a whopper? Send it to . To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.

Whopper Archive:

June 8, 2001: Nepali Prince Regent (subsequently, King) Gyanendra
June 1, 2001: Mary McGrory
May 25, 2001: Ari Fleischer
May 18, 2001: York, Pa., Mayor Charles Robertson
May 11, 2001: Ted Olson
May 4, 2001: Rear Admiral Craig Quigley
April 27, 2001: Ben Affleck
April 20, 2001: South Carolina state legislator Chip Limehouse
April 13, 2001: Gray Davis
April 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
March 30, 2001: Spencer Abraham
March 23, 2001: George W. Bush, Rep. Jennifer Dunn, and/or the Treasury Department
March 16, 2001: George W. Bush
March 9, 2001: Russ Freyman, spokesman, National Association of Manufacturers
March 2, 2001: Paul O'Neill
Feb. 23, 2001: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Feb. 16, 2001: Oscar spokesman John Pavlik
Feb. 9, 2001: Lynne Cheney
Feb. 2, 2001: Bobby Thomson
Jan. 26, 2001: Denise Rich

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