McCain Lied to David Letterman and Skipped His Show, He Instead Does Interview with Couric Down Hall

John McCain is a frequent guest of David Letterman's. So when McCain personally called Letterman and canceled his appearance just before the show was to be recorded, Dave was not to happy. In fact, he thought something didn't smell right. Letterman rightly pondered the question: Why doesn't Palin just fill in for McCain when he's off saving the U.S. economy. Was it perhaps she wasn't ready to step in as president?

Eonline reported:

The GOP presidential candidate canceled his appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman on short notice, because he apparently told the TV host he was "racing back to Washington" to attend to the current economic crisis.

Letterman was not pleased. But watch what happens when the host and his replacement guest, Keith Olbermann (who teased this bit on his MSNBC show Countdown), learn that Sen. McCain was at that very moment not racing to the airport.

He was being interviewed by Letterman's CBS colleague Katie Couric. Letterman then proceeds to broadcast the live feed of the interview on his show.



Here are a few comments from Letterman, according to AP:

This doesn't smell right," Letterman said. "This is not the way a tested hero behaves. Somebody's putting something in his Metamucil." Letterman called McCain "a true American hero" but told his viewers: "This is not the John McCain I know, by God. It makes me believe something is going haywire with the campaign."

Instead of suspending a campaign, Letterman said, a presidential candidate should go to Washington to deal with a crisis and let his running mate shoulder the burdens of politicking.
"That's what you do. You don't quit. ... Or is that really a good thing to do?" Letterman said, a reference to McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. "What's the problem? Where is she? Why isn't she doing that?" he asked.

Letterman later asked: "Are we suspending it because there's an economic crisis or because the poll numbers are sliding?"

McCain told the CBS show that he was immediately flying back to Washington, Letterman told his audience. Then Letterman showed a TV feed of McCain being made-up for an appearance on news anchor Katie Couric's "CBS Evening News."

"Doesn't seem to be racing to the airport, does he?" Letterman said. "This just gets uglier and uglier."

As McCain spoke to Couric, Letterman shouted at the feed: "Hey, John, I've got a question. Do you need a ride to the airport?"

Letterman later said: "We're told now that the senator has concluded his interview with Katie Couric and he's now on Rachael Ray's show making veal piccata. ... What are you going to do?"