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This might be unprecedented, seeing a White House journalist actually asking probing questions of an Obama functionary; so probing that David Axelrod squirms like BHO caught with a smoke in the Lincoln Bedroom...

TAPPER: So the chamber says no foreign money is paying for any of their political activities.

AXELROD: And I guess my answer to the Chamber is just disclose where your money is coming from and that will end all the questions. The fact is they are spending $75 million in this campaign and they will not disclose where one dime is coming from. And that's the problem with all of these organizations. We have tens of millions of special interest money coming into these campaigns and no record of where its coming from and that should be a concern to every voter in this country.


TAPPER: Their answer would be why should they disclose. No one's disclosing.

AXELROD: Right and they have a point there. We tried to pass a law in the Congress -- every Democrat in the Senate voted for it, every Republican in the Senate voted against it -- that said everyone has to disclose. That all these organizations would have to disclose where their money is coming from whether they are supporting Democratic candidates or Republican candidates. The Republicans blocked that bill and the question to them and their allies is: what are they hiding that they don’t want the American people to see?

TAPPER: But you're asking the Chamber to prove a negative. “Prove that you’re not doing such and such accusation.”

AXELROD: It’s not proving a negative, Jake, because all you have to do to clear up the questions is reveal who your donors are from. The question back to them is why don’t they want to reveal where their money is coming from? I think the answer is, I think if the American people knew where their money was coming from they’d be a lot less apt to listen to the advertising, to read the mail, to respond to the kind of negative campaigns that the Chamber and some of these other organizations are underwriting.

...

TAPPER: But what do you say to people who argue you are demonizing an organization for a charge that nobody knows if it's true or not?

AXELROD: Well I’m not demonizing the Chamber of Commerce. I’m simply suggesting to them that they disclose the source of the $75 million that they are spending in campaigns and put to rest, put to rest the questions that have been, that have been raised.

TAPPER: Isn't that like the whackjobs that tell the president he needs to show them his full long-form birth certificate so he can put to rest the questions that have been raised?AXELROD: The president’s birth certificate has been available to people.TAPPER: The long form?

AXELROD: Someone once in the course of this debate about whether we should have a law to force these organizations to disclose where they’re money is coming from in the campaigns, someone said, and I think they’re right – “the only people who want to keep things secret are folks who have something to hide.” If the Chamber doesn’t have anything to hide about these contributions, and I take them at their word that they don’t, then why not disclose? Why not let people see where their money is coming from?

If Jake keeps this up, he'll not be invited to another White House Press Appreciation Party.