Repeating a journalistic trope, Tom Brokaw reacted to Barack Obama’s farewell address by insisting that the President has been “scandal-free” for the last eight years. Appearing on MSNBC, Brokaw gushed over the speech: “This is the kind of speech that got him elected president. And it was that kind of appearance that he made at Boston during in the John Kerry convention that first drew attention to him.”

Brokaw praised Obama: “He's been scandal free, frankly, in the White House. We haven't had that what for a while. There have been some issues around his campaign, but they have not settled on him.”

Scandal free? Has Brokaw forgotten PolitiFact’s 2013 “lie of the year?” The claim that if you like your health care, you can keep it? What about Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and her e-mail scandal? What about the IRS targeting of conservatives, the terrible conditions at Barack Obama’s Veterans Affairs department? Benghazi?

In the December 19 issue of Time, journalist Joe Klein echoed this sentiment, insisting, “There would be little melodrama and absolutely no hint of scandal during [Obama’s] time in office.”

To his credit, Brokaw attempted to be even-handed later in his assessment of Obama, noting of his impact:

TOM BROKAW: They lost control of the Congress, 75 percent of the state houses are in the hands of Republicans with governors and attorneys general out there and he's got a Congress now that is Senate and Republican in the House, as well. So from a political point of view, there's a lot of residue from the Obama era of eight years.

A partial transcript is below:

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