NBC's Mitchell baselessly claimed Obama "has the least foreign policy experience of recent presidential candidates ... except Jimmy Carter"

On the July 17 edition of MSNBC Live, discussing Sen. Barack Obama's upcoming trip to Europe and the Middle East, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell asserted: "The bottom line is you have a Democratic nominee, presumptive nominee, who has the least foreign policy experience of recent presidential candidates, of anyone except Jimmy Carter, and he's got to prove himself." But Mitchell did not elaborate on her claim that Obama's foreign policy experience is less than that of the governors who have become president since Carter, including the current president.

Of Obama's upcoming trip, Mitchell said:

MITCHELL: Yeah, there are a lot of pitfalls, and even though some of the McCain people are more than a little bit annoyed at all the attention that the Obama trip is going to get, and, you know, some of my friends at The New York Times wrote a little bit about that today. The bottom line is you have a Democratic nominee, presumptive nominee, who has the least foreign policy experience of recent presidential candidates, of anyone except Jimmy Carter, and he's got to prove himself.

And even John McCain, who is supposed to have all this experience, made mistakes on a congressional delegation when he confused the Shia and the Sunni. So, he's going to be watched very closely, and there are risks as well as potential rewards.

—M.G.