Jeb Bush wrongly claims Obama didn't host a Republican senator for dinner until 2013

[seafan]

Tampa Bay Times, November 29, 2015

During a recent campaign stop in Atlantic, Iowa, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush told a very detailed story to underscore Democratic President Barack Obama's alleged unwillingness to work with Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

Here's what he said:

"The story I tell all the time is about a Republican senator that was invited by the White House to have dinner with the president. And so he's going up the rickety elevator to go up to the residence, the second floor, and the eager aide to President Obama says with great excitement, 'Senator, you're the first Republican he's had dinner with in the residence since he's been president.' And that's the fifth year."

Obama is so unwilling to work with Senate Republicans, Bush alleges, that he didn't even invite one to dine at the White House until his fifth year in office. Did Obama really wait until 2013 to host a Republican?

Bush's campaign declined to provide more information or sources for the anecdote.

Jeb! has a lying problem.

The White House, meanwhile, referred us to the official White House Visitor Access Records, which are posted online in a series of spreadsheets.

The Visitor Access Records contain extremely detailed — albeit inconsistently organized — entries for hundreds of thousands of White House visits. The 2012 database, for example, included more than 930,000 separate records.

To vet Bush's statement, we filtered these voluminous results first to show only visits in which "POTUS" — that is, the president of the United States — was listed as the "visitee." Then we filtered them further to capture visits to the "Residence" and other White House rooms in which it's conceivable that a private dinner could occur.

Among that filtered database, we searched for Democratic and Republican U.S. senators. Here's what we found.

.....

Read the piece for names.

The bottom line for Jeb!'s utterance:

The ruling

PolitiFact ruling: False Based on our review of visitor logs, there are a handful of instances in which Republican U.S. senators visited the White House residence between 2009 and 2012, including a 2011 dinner attended by Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell. We rate this claim False.

It will be far from the last lie we will hear from this serpent.

[MiniMe]

1. Another rethug creating his own facts

Seems to be a pattern here

[Thinkingabout]

2. Jeb listens to too much FOX lies, when republican repeat after FOX it is

Usually wrong. I would find a better source of information so I could give correct facts.

[gratuitous]

3. You're wrong, Jeb!, but just for funsies . . .

How many Democrats would a President Jeb! Bush appoint to his cabinet? And who?

Back to Jeb!'s stupid story: It has all the hallmarks of an internet fable, including the telling details. The "rickety" elevator in the White House, the eager-beaver aide with the unlikely encyclopedic knowledge of how many Republican Senators have been to dinner at the White House, the Republican Senator with no name. I wonder if a Nigerian Prince promised Jeb! he'd give the campaign a million dollars if Jeb! used this spurious story?