Gibbs rebukes CNBC's Santelli

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs jumped at the chance Friday to rebuke a CNBC reporter whose attack on President Barack Obama’s anti-foreclosure plan caught fire on the Internet.

Gibbs took on CNBC’s Rick Santelli in unusually personal terms after being asked a question about Santelli’s bracing critique during a regular White House briefing.


“I’ve watched Mr. Santelli on cable the past 24 hours or so. I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives or in what house he lives but the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgages, stay in their jobs, pay their bills, send their kids to school,” Gibbs said. “I think we left a few months ago the adage that if it was good for a derivatives trader that it was good for Main Street. I think the verdict is in on that,” the press secretary said, poking directly at the cable journalist, who reports from the trading floor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Gibbs insisted Santelli was misinformed when he said Obama’s program would amount to a transfer of money from prudent taxpayers to those who had taken reckless risks.

“Mr. Santelli has argued, I think quite wrongly, that this plan won’t help everyone,” Gibbs said. “This plan helps people who have been playing by the rules. ... I would encourage him to read the president’s plan. ... I’d be more than happy to have him come here to read it. I’d be happy to buy him a cup of coffee — decaf,” the press secretary said, in a not-so-subtle jab at Santelli’s frantic style.



Gibbs brandished a copy of a fact sheet about Obama’s plan. “Download it, hit print, and begin to read it,” he said. In all, Gibbs used Santelli’s name six times.

The administration also dispatched two high-level officials onto CNBC to rebut Santelli in more detail, Vice President Joe Biden’s economic adviser Jared Bernstein and Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan.

CNBC hosts pressed Bernstein to explain why Obama’s plan calls for allowing borrowers to refinance loans even if they have less than 20% equity in their homes. “To refinance can save a family $4000, $5000, $6000 a year in an economy that’s been extremely tough,” Bernstein said.

“I don’t know that they deserve to refinance because those are the terms they signed up for in the first place,” CNBC’s Melissa Francis said.



“I think we perhaps have a very different perspective,” Bernstein allowed.

In a later segment, Santelli made clear he still wasn’t buying it.

“Pretty much everybody we know’s 401K is now a 201K. Why did that happen? Oh my God, nobody expected this housing crisis through no fault of our ownership of stock prices was decimated. Why is that any different than his explanation. We want our 401K money back. I want my stock money back,” Santelli said. “The retirement funds of many Americans [are] much larger of a loss than some people on their housing at this point in time.”