Governor Jan Brewer’s Lie Proved False By GOP Arizona Mayor On Tarmac

Governor Jan Brewer‘s lie about how President Barack Obama treated her on the tarmac has been proven false by a fellow Republican, Mesa, Arizona Mayor Scott Smith.

Talking Points Memo reported on Brewer’s ever-changing story earlier today:

Brewer said she was there to welcome the president and tell him about what she calls the “Arizona comeback,” her plan to turn around the state’s lagging economy. But the conversation somehow turned to the governor’s book, which was published in November. At some moments during her interviews, Brewer said that the president was the first one to bring up the book. At other points, she said she was the one to ask him about it.

“I asked him if he had read my book, ‘Scorpions for Breakfast.’ And he said that he read an excerpt and he didn’t think that I was very cordial,” Brewer told a conservative radio talk show host in Phoenix. “He was somewhat thin skinned and a little tense to say the least.”

In interview after interview, Brewer used similar language, mocking the president as “thin skinned” and “angry” because he criticized her book. She said Obama walked away from her while she was in mid-sentence. But the governor also made it clear she was caught by surprise at the exchange.

“I was so taken aback by it all. I was trying to be very gracious and listen to him,” Brewer told the host on Phoenix’s KFYI radio station. “I was shocked by his sternness of it all.”

The confrontation just elevated Brewer’s profile even more, while moving the spotlight off the president’s jobs trip and onto her.

Judging by available sales figures, it was also a huge boost for her book, which was written with the help of conservative Jessica Gavora. A short time after the confrontation, Brewer’s “Scorpions for Breakfast” was ranked at 343,222 in Amazon’s book sales. By Thursday morning, it had rocketed to 169.

(Note the racist references to Obama’s skin and him being “angry.”)

But this afternoon, Talking Points Memo revealed a conversation they had with the Republican Mayor Smith, who was staying right there on the tarmac with President Obama and Governor Brewer.

President Obama didn’t exactly walk away from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) during their disagreement on Wednesday on an airport tarmac near Phoenix, said one of the only people to witness the exchange up close. The president simply began talking to the other two elected officials who were there to greet him.

Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa, Ariz., declined to say exactly what he heard Obama and Brewer talk about during their now-infamous tiff next to Air Force One.

But the mayor said he was standing right next to the governor when the exchange took place and Obama didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to leave.

“There was no sense that he was running to or from anything,” Smith told TPM. In fact, he said, the president stayed and had a pleasant conversation with Smith, who’s a Republican, and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, a Democrat.

It was “just the four of us,” Smith said. “Mayor Stanton and I had a decent talk with him.”

The portrayal of a calm, friendly president seems to at least partly contradict what Brewer has said about the encounter in numerous interviews since Wednesday afternoon. She described the president as “tense” and said he walked away from her while she was in mid-sentence. She told a Phoenix television station she felt “a little bit threatened” by the encounter.