John McCain told Newsweek that he did not deliver a portion from the prepared text of his speech last Tuesday chiding the media for not giving Hillary Clinton her due. But video from McCain's address shows him giving the line as written.



"The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans," McCain said in a nationally broadcast speech in Kenner, La. "And she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometime received."



Asked about this statement in an interview last week with Newsweek's Holly Bailey and Jon Meacham, McCain interjected, "I did not [say that] — that was in prepared remarks, and I did not [say it] — I'm not in the business of commenting on the press and their coverage or not coverage."



Presented with video showing that the GOP nominee did in fact read the remarks as they were prepared, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said Newsweek's account of McCain's answer is "paraphrased and unclear."



Rogers said he was not questioning the magazine's transcription, but pointing out that they included brackets.



But, given that he was responding to a direct question about a portion of the speech, it's unclear what else McCain could have been alluding to when noting twice that he "did not." That he also pointed out that the same section had been "in the prepared remarks" only clarifies that he was referring to the passage in question.



Newsweek's Bailey said the McCain quote as included in their Q & A posted online was verbatim.



Rogers said McCain "answered the way he did because his point in the speech wasn’t so much to smack the press as to compliment Sen. Clinton for the tenacity and compassion she showed in her campaign, and as he said, he’s never been a fan of complaining about his own press coverage."

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