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July 19, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:22
July 19, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And greetings to you, conversationalists and music lovers, thrill seekers, all across the bountiful fruited plain Rush limbaugh.
Fun frolic and frivolity for all as well as Where's Brian?
Oh, good.
Turn on the ditto cam, Brian.
We've got so much stuff going on here, folks, you can't imagine.
Let me turn the bars off.
As I was saying, fun frolic and frivolity for all, as well as uh serious discussion of the uh the issues.
Telephone number on the program today, 800-282-2882, and the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
I've got to give you a warning, the Rove story is not over.
Uh, we have some audio sound bites on this.
Uh, found a Joe Wilson piece in the LA Times after the State of the Union address, in which he doesn't even mention Rove.
He doesn't he doesn't even mention Bush's State of the Union speech, I mean.
That didn't happen.
Uh Wilson did not go hog wild on Bush's State of the Union speech uh for months after he wrote his piece in the New York Times and one in the LA Times, and it wasn't as best I can determine.
Now it wasn't until he joined the carry campaign that Joseph Wilson actually began worrying about what Bush said in his State of the Union speech.
I'm not going to lead off with this, but we do have some audio sound bites, as you uh may know, uh, which are the interesting words of an ABC poll on Carl.
Did I not predict this?
They have a poll question on Rome, and it starts on, as you may know.
Uh, and it pretty much buttresses what I said.
Their poll says 75% think Rove should go if he broke the law.
But if you add up all the people that never heard of the issue, aren't following the issue, don't care about the issue, it's about 75% or 80%.
So uh we'll get to all that in due course.
But the buzz, uh, ladies and gentlemen, uh, is that there's a Supreme Court nominee uh to be named this afternoon.
The further buzz is that the uh name will come about 230.
Now, I have to tell you that the people who've been uh giving me this kind of buzz on a number of things uh for a couple of weeks on the Supreme Court stuff have been wrong, uh, which they readily admit, but that is the buzz going around.
The president's uh got a little uh press conference right now with the Australian uh Prime Minister John Howard going on.
I love this John Howard guy.
This guy, one of our staunchest allies in Iraq, and this is uh an interesting press conference.
The uh media, by the way, uh one one other thing in this Rove business before we move back to the Supreme Court, the media is now hung up on the fact that Bush has lowered the threshold over which he would fire somebody, and that's absolutely untrue.
Uh and and it it's I here's the way to understand this, folks.
I think uh what what what's happening here is that the media feels the need to protect its reputation.
I think they're beginning to be worried about their reputation in a number of ways.
Now I know that sounds kind of strange.
How are they trying to protect their reputation by being wrong on this?
They're trying to protect their reputation by trying to force something that is inaccurate and wrong to be accepted as normal.
It's what I said yesterday.
Their reputation's at stake, their reputation for power, and that's what they're attempting to uh maintain and perhaps um uh strengthen.
They're gonna fail, but that's what they're trying to do.
All right, Edith Clement is the uh Judge Edith Clement, U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
It's the Fifth Circuit is the name that's being floated and has been all morning.
Uh as the Supreme Court uh nominee that Bush will announce today.
No word from the White House on when Bush would disclose.
Well, actually, there has been.
There has been some word from the White House.
The White House told reporters in the press room today, uh, keep your jackets on, keep your coats on.
It's gonna be a long day, but we are expecting an announcement today.
So that's that's why everybody's over this.
Uh now there's not much known about Edith Clement.
Uh I've been looking, I've been I I've had staff looking uh for her judicial record uh all morning, and we really can't find much.
Uh I I would have to say that as of now she is a stealth candidate.
Uh now what happened uh yesterday was, as you know, Arlen Spector was called to the White House.
Uh I'm told that the president has been consulting with Robert Byrd.
The White House theory is if they can get Byrd on board, I kid you not.
They have been consulting with Byrd.
If they can get Byrd on board, they think that that will slay a lot of dragons on the Democratic side in the Senate.
Uh Now, what I think this means is that Byrd is such that if you just tell him who the nominee is going to be and bring him in and make him think like he's had a role of support anybody, pretty much, as long as as long as he's perceived to be uh he perceives himself to be uh in the in the loop.
I'm not saying that he got veto power.
And I'm not saying that his names uh that he wanted were suggested.
I'm saying that he's been brought in.
Uh well talked to, uh and and uh had some uh favored uh with uh in an attempt to get this uh passed.
I also think uh we've been speculating here amongst ourselves all morning long that the reason a stealth candidate might be picked is because of the rove controversy, and I don't think the rove controversy has anything to do with it because I think the White House knows that the Libs are gonna treat any nominee the way they treat any nominee, unless it's one of Harry Reed's names, uh, which it isn't going to be because uh she is not on uh anybody's list.
She's she's on one of the uh second or third tier lists.
Here's all that's really known about her, uh, because she's she doesn't have much of a record.
She she uh known as a conservative and a strict constructionist in legal circles.
She uh this is what the AP says, she has eased fears among abortion rights advocates.
She has stated that the Supreme Court has clearly held that the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution includes the right to have an abortion and that the law is settled in that regard.
Now, this is even open to interpretation in this way.
I don't know if she's speaking here as an appellate judge at the Fifth Circuit, meaning, hey, the Supreme Court's the highest law in the land.
I can't touch that here.
Or if she's speaking as a potential Supreme Court nominee.
Don't know.
Uh and I'm not trying to split hairs.
The uh and and I I'm I'm I really can't give you the source for this other than A.P.'s quote.
I don't know to whom she said it.
I don't know where it was said.
Uh I don't know how it appeared before AP uh AP got a hold of it.
Uh so but it it's he can say it's a little bit troubling.
I wish she wouldn't say anything about this, uh, which no judge was saying about this at some point, because that creates uh, you know, a paper trail, at least, and that's what this whole argument at Supreme Court when you talk about the left really boils down to is um is abortion.
Uh we have some audio sound bites from Senators Specter and Senator Kennedy.
Let's go to Spectre first.
This was before the uh the Senate and House softball game yesterday.
Reporter Ed Henry of CNN talked to Arlan Specter and said, so you're looking for a nominee that's gonna keep the ideological balances there now.
There's a lot of talk about the O'Connor seat being a more moderate seat.
Is that the way you view it?
I I uh I do.
I think it's important to keep balance on the court.
And that is in uh in every respect.
And I think that uh uh Americans are are concerned about having somebody who's too far one side or too far to the other side, and uh the balance is critical.
Well, there's so much wrong with this uh in the first place.
There's no s no such thing as balance uh on the Supreme Court referenced in the Constitution.
It's not a political body.
Well, it is, but it's not supposed to be.
You're not supposed to, okay, we got four Lib seats and four conservative seats, and then we got the O'Connor seat.
I mean, that's not what it is.
That's that's not how this is supposed to work.
And that's that's what Spectre's essentially saying.
Okay, we got four, you know, extreme left wingers, got four extreme right wingers, and then we've got uh goddess O'Connor uh and and her throne, and and we must make certain uh ladies and gentlemen that that throne is occupied by a similar moderate.
B. S. You know, it's absolute 100% B.S. Another thing Senator Spector is wrong about when he says he thinks that Americans are concerned about having somebody who's too far one side too far to the other side, and balance is critical.
The pre-vacancy polling data on this shows that a vast majority, almost sixty percent of the American people polled, say that Bush ought to nominate a conservative.
They didn't say I think Bush ought to nominate a balanced candidate.
They didn't say that at all.
The pre the pre-vacancy polls are very clear on this.
So Senator Spector is, I think, off base uh in the substance of his comments on both points.
Next question was well, how was your meeting with the president uh this afternoon, Senator Spector?
Well, there's certainly no uh announcements that I'm gonna make here on the softball field.
And uh I'm not gonna talk about uh timeline either.
I uh did not go to the White House incognito, so it was apparent that I was there.
But uh I'm sure you'll understand if it's the sort of thing I can't talk about uh at least this evening.
So uh but a lot of people were brought in uh yesterday.
A lot of people were talked to.
Uh Clarence Thomas was invited to the state dinner last night for the Indian Prime Minister, he was there.
There were wags buzzing about that.
So um uh uh it's it's all still fluid.
Um really this business about uh about Edith Clement, uh I I don't know what to tell you.
That there just isn't she basically um was appointed by Bush 41.
Uh she was uh to the to the Federal Circuit.
Then Bush 43, I think put her in 2001 where she is now.
And so she's been there basically three, four years, and there's just not a whole lot of a record to look at, and a lot of people think that's on purpose, so the libs will have less to shoot at.
But that's not how the how the libs will work, this folks.
The libs are gonna shoot at whoever.
And the the one of the problems, I think, with having a stealth candidate.
So I think you go for the home run on every pick.
You go for the grand slam and you get it done, get it out of the way the first time around, so the other two become uh a little bit more pro forma when you get those other two.
But here's what here's what I fear, at least at this point.
You have this stealth gun.
I'm not saying she's bad.
I don't know.
I I really I don't know.
There are a lot of if you go to certain websites, you'll find pro and con on her.
I just I don't know enough to tell you, uh, ladies and gentlemen, what I think about this yet.
So but I can tell you that because she doesn't have much of a record and she might be a little bit of a stealth candidate.
What you have here is the libs, and and I think uh even if some of the libs like her, they're still gonna make a big point out of raising a ruckus.
They're still gonna make it look like she ging just con.
She's gonna make it look like uh they're gonna make it look like she's uh the absolute worst thing to come down the pike just to get that on the record, because then they'll be saying, okay, we're gonna let her through, but nobody more conservative than this.
Nobody more conservative than this, Mr. President.
We'll see you on this one, but nobody more conservative on this.
And I'm also gonna say, if I get a little bit suspicious, if she gets a lot of Democrat support right off the get-go, a lot of Democrats in the Senate sign off on this one.
Well, uh, just have to tell you, my natural instincts are gonna be a little red flag will start coming out.
Not sure how high it'll go, but we'll uh setting the table here for what.
And this course could just be all a faint.
It might not be Edith Clement.
We we don't know.
Uh we'll just have to wait and see.
But that's the buzz that's uh circulating even now.
Quick timeout.
We will be back.
Let you hear what Senator Kennedy has to say about all this in just a moment.
Welcome back amidst billowing clouds of fragrant aromatic first and second hand cigar smoke.
It's L. Rushball and the excellence in broadcasting network.
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Senator Kennedy appeared on CNN yesterday.
Dana Bash or Dana Bash, I'm sorry, uh uh asked him uh a couple questions.
First off, she said, Senator President Bush has consulted with about sixty members of the Senate.
That's almost two-thirds.
Even your colleague Senator Byrd, uh, who is a stickler for wanting consultation, issued a statement saying he was quite pleased.
So I told you, Mr. Snerdley, they've they've they've tried to embrace Byrd.
I don't know if they're trying to peel him off.
Uh, but they've they've talked to him and and uh he's he's quite pleased.
Are you pleased with the level of consultation, Senator Kennedy?
Certainly would appear that way, doesn't it?
But uh consultation is a two-way street.
It's a process.
We'll know whether consultation is good when we know the final result.
And consultation is not only uh asking uh members as uh the uh Mr. Card asked me for uh people that uh I might uh suggest, but it's also uh for the uh president to share those uh names uh with the uh prior to the nomination, uh with I would expect uh the ranking members of the judiciary uh committees, and that they ought to be uh included.
And then we'll know uh finally whether this consultation is real consultation or whether it's just been a process without meaning.
And that's why it's so important uh that the president get it right.
I hope he gets it right.
I hope that it'll be a nominee that I could support with enthusiasm.
I sure as hell don't if it's a nominee that I can support that Senator Kennedy can support with enthusiasm.
I'm finished, I'm through, I've had it.
And I know it's not gonna be that way.
This arrogant old fool.
It's just, it's just laughable to listen to these losers sit there and act like they won.
And because they lost, they actually should have won, so because they should have won, they get rights to determine nominees and to consult and all this.
So Bush has reached out.
This ought to show everybody.
Sixty senators.
He's he's brought in, he's embraced Robert Byrd.
Sheets got the warm cocoon-like embrace of George W. Bush is not good enough for Senator Kennedy.
Well, it's an ongoing process.
You know, we haven't been invited up there for happy hour yet.
And that's part of the process.
We haven't been invited up there for dinner.
We haven't been invited up there for cognac and cigars after dinner.
Until that happens, I don't know how seriously we can take this consultant uh consultation process.
Uh you just have to shake your heads at these people.
So the next question, Senator Kennedy, you came back from Club Gitmo.
You visited this weekend.
As you know, other Democrats who've gone down have said, well, maybe it's not as bad as we think.
They're sort of cleaned up their act a bit, if you will.
You feel that way, Senator?
And did you actually get some time with prison guards without their supervisors to get a real sense of what's going on there?
I was impressed by the quality and the dedication, the commitment uh and uh the training that our servicemen and women have there uh today.
But the fact uh is that Guantanamo uh has uh inflamed uh uh terrorists uh all over uh the uh the world.
I've called on uh the Kwandano to be uh close.
I think people have to be brought to justice to detaine.
Throw up, stop the tape a second.
It has not inflamed terrorists all over the world.
They were attacking us and other innocent people long before Club Gitmo or Abu Grab, and you know it, Senator.
You know, it it's it's it's it's an interesting parallel that I I think can be drawn here.
Have you noticed that the frustrating thing about the Joe Wilson story, which is now being called the Karl Rove investigation, is that the media has no interest in what in what Wilson did.
They have no interest whatsoever in what Wilson did.
Their only interest is how the administration has reacted to what Wilson did.
And in the in the war on terror, uh the media has no interest.
And Senator Kennedy in this soundbite has no interest in focusing on what the terrorists do and what the terrorists did.
All he cares about is how we're reacting to what the terrorists did.
So the way we react to 9-11 is causing more terrorism.
It's it's uh it's 180 degrees out of phase, folks.
It's just it's insane.
You know, the terrorists are only doing what they're doing because of what we're doing.
And so our reaction to what they do is more important to Senator Kennedy than what the terrorists do.
And I'm gonna tell you something, Senator.
If you think that's playing with mainstream America, you need to look at some polls and you need to look at the most recent election returns.
Because you'll find out the American people are not wringing their hands over what we are doing in in reacting to terrorism in the way you look at it.
They are interested in kicking ass.
They are interested in kicking butt.
They are interested in in selling this once and for all.
You want to hamstring the American military.
You want to punish the American military and the Czech commander-in-chief.
You want to tie everybody's hands here because it's in things most Americans consider to be utterly irrelevant.
And it's what it's what creates questions in people's minds, Senator, as to where your allegiance lies.
You're more concerned about terrorists and how we're reacting to what they did than in the that in focusing on what the terrorists did.
You know, and that's that's just it's it's crazy.
Let's move on to the next soundbite.
The rest of that one is uh is worthless.
Um uh Dana Bash said, Senator, you say Club Gitmo should be closed.
By the way, do you know why Senator Kennedy actually went to Club Gitmo?
Well, go to Rushlinbaugh.com and go look at the Club Gitmo brochure, and you'll see that Senator Kennedy is part of the entertainment staff down there.
You've heard Senator Kennedy on the commercials.
You know, he goes swimming with these guys there.
Last one ends a dead goat, is his um is his admonition.
So uh Senator Kennedy, unbeknownst to people, has a role down at Club Gitmo, and that isn't part of the entertainment staff.
He's got to go down there and provide these people with uh you know their money's worth as it is.
It's all disguised as a trip down there to find out how they're being mistreated and so forth.
And now it looks like I don't even have time for the last Kennedy bite.
Uh the question that he is asked, you say Club Gitmo should be closed, but where would you put them?
You need a maximum security facility offering up Hyannisport.
Is there some place that uh you think you could put them outside of uh Club Gitmo?
And he mentions Leavenworth.
That's right.
Put these people in Kansas.
Put them in a blue stone a red state, right, Senator?
Put them in Kansas, put them somewhere amongst the U.S. population.
Just incredible.
All right, we'll be back.
Quick break here at the bottom of the hour, and we will continue in moments, mere moments.
Stay with us.
Senator Kennedy blubbers about that the uh the uh way we've treated prisoners at uh Club Gitmo has inflamed terrorists all over the world.
I'm I'm not sure about this, but I would venture to say that there uh have been more people wounded and dead, wounded and killed, because of Michael Isakoff's false report about the Koran being destroyed at Club Gitmo than anything that's actually gone on there.
Just like there probably have been more people die at Chappaquitic than have died at Club Gitmo.
And as we all know, what happened at Chappaquitic did not cause a backlash toward Senator Kennedy from women uh around the country.
We also know this, as it was recently pointed out to me.
Senator Kennedy was embraced by George W. Bush in his first term in writing the education bill.
A lot of good it did.
A lot of good consultation does with these people.
Uh now I I'm I'm told that that Robert Byrd has been embraced and he's been brought into this consultation process because the the the thinking is that Byrd just loves that kind of attention and they want to get him on their side.
Uh we'll have to see uh how all of this uh all this plays out.
Washington Post today has a story by Lois Romano, who I like.
I've I've uh dealt with her over the years.
Uh and I've I've always had pleasant experience with Lois Romano at the Washington Post.
But this story, five from the Fifth Circuit mentioned for Supreme Court.
Now, here's the lead of this story.
Was it all that long ago that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit was on the cutting edge of the civil rights movement, a liberal pocket of scholars aggressively enforcing the Supreme Court's demand for speedy desegregation in the Deep South.
But things have changed mightily in 20 years.
Today, the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit is considered among the most conservative in the land, but it is still at the center of politics and history because five names on Bush's list come from um this court.
So you could say that the Washington Post uh has it has a story here trying to the first little salvo against anybody it might come from this court.
This court used to be good.
This court used to care about the Constitution.
This court really used to be good when it came to civil rights, desegregation and so forth.
But now, now it's among the most conservative in the land.
You yuck.
So they're they're doing their best to cast aspersions on anybody that might come out of the Fifth Circuit as a nominee.
Tom in Chicago, we have our first liberal on the phone today.
He says you are.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Hello.
I'm just calling to let you know that uh earlier in the show you said something about how the media seems to be twisting that Bush changed his position on the leaker that he would fire them.
And I saw him clearly asked Do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone, you know, in the administration found to be involved with this leak?
And he clearly heard it and he clearly said yes.
Uh I believe it was an ABC reporter, but I'm not sure.
Well, uh, I've got both Bush statements here, and I've I've I've I even even the Washington Post, who is it writing about this today?
I for maybe it's maybe it's Terry Hunt in the uh uh AP.
But whoever I read says it is a very, very, very fine distinction, the difference between the two statements.
Uh I myself don't see much of one here.
Bill or Tom, I'm sorry, hang on just a second, and let's let's listen to these.
Um let's let's go back to September 30th, 2003.
Let's start with cut two.
Uh Mike.
This is what the president said about leaks in his administration.
If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.
And uh if the person has uh violated law, the person will be taken care of.
All right.
Um now if let's define something here.
If the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.
What is a violation of the law?
If you violate the law and you're convicted, what does it make you?
Makes you a criminal.
Okay.
That's how that's how I interpret this.
So yesterday, here is the um uh, and I think this bite, by the way, this bite shows the utter disrespect of the White House press corps for the president.
Uh, because they just start laughing uh after he gets his uh answer started.
But the question came from uh, in fact, Terrence Hunt of the Associated Press.
So, Mr. President, you said that you don't want to talk about an ongoing investigation, so I'd like to ask you, regardless of whether a crime was committed.
Well, regardless of whether a crime he never said anything about it unless a crime is committed.
So the question is a bit of a setup.
Regardless of that, it's the press trying to change the goalposts.
It's the media trying to move the goalposts a little closer so they can kick their field goal with a little bit more ease.
And that's what this means.
Regardless of whether a crime was committed, do you still intend to fire anyone found to be involved in the CIA leak case?
Here's what he said.
We have a serious ongoing investigation here.
And it's being played out in the press.
And I I think it's best that people wait until the uh investigation is complete before you jump to conclusions.
And I will do so as well.
I don't know all the facts.
I want to know all the facts.
Best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who's spending time investigating it.
I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know the facts.
And if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.
Okay, so the uh Mike roll off just that last sentence.
That's really all we need here to play these things back and back.
Make a separate cut out of it if you can.
And if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.
Grab soundbite two again, and when I give you the cue, hit that.
Because the president said yesterday, and if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.
September 30th, 2003.
If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.
And uh, if the person is uh violated law, the person will be taken care of.
So uh Tom, what what is the difference there?
Where did he move the goalpost?
Well, I'm talking about I think it was on June 10th, the question I was talking about.
I don't know if you guys have that one.
But uh what I see is that okay, if he did something criminal, he should be in jail.
If he just leaked the name and they can't get the criminal because I know this law is tough or whatever, he should at least be removed just because exposing uh, you know, uh uh whatever they call a knock is unbelievable.
But she wasn't a knock.
This is this is work we're this is Twilight Zone time again.
She wasn't a knock, her boss said she wasn't a knock.
She was never in deep cover.
She wait till you hear the story I've got today.
This woman registered to vote.
Well, uh she registered to vote uh under her covert name, under her agency name to vote for Gore.
She you could almost say she outed herself.
She went to register to vote using her cover name.
So she could vote for Al Gore.
She wasn't undercover.
There has been no crime committed here if you rec if you look at the statute.
You know, you guys are using selective application of what you want to be true.
You ask me, you call and you say the president said something different yesterday than he said before.
I played you the two bites, they sound the same to me.
They sound identical to me, and then you say, well, uh, I think if somebody leaks somebody's name, whether it's criminal or not, he ought to be fired or gotten rid of it.
And if he's criminal, ought to be in jail.
We don't even know what the uh depending on what the statute says or what the conviction would be, whether there's jail time for this or not.
Now you guys want Rove to go to jail.
So you just want to criminalize somebody who beats you.
The real crime for the left is anybody who beats you.
Next thing you know, you're gonna want me in jail.
Oh, except you already do want me in jail.
So, I mean, that but that's as as of yet anyway, that's not how the American judicial system works.
Conservatism is not a crime.
And beating liberals is not a crime, it's a badge of honor.
But this this whole notion of moving the goalposts, as you can hear from the question, Starts with the reporter himself.
Mr. President, you said you don't want to talk about an ongoing investigation, so I'd like to ask you, regardless of whether a crime was committed, do you still intend to fire anyone found to be involved in the CIA leak case?
The president never said that he would fire somebody who simply leaked.
It happens all the time.
If you fired everybody in Washington who leaks, Colin Powell wouldn't have been alive as Secretary of State for more than two days, folks.
Can we be honest?
And neither would his pal Richard Armitage.
We wouldn't have had a Secretary of State after two days if you fired everybody that leaked.
We wouldn't have half the Pentagon.
We wouldn't have half the State Department.
We wouldn't have half the EPA if you put everybody in jail or fired everybody who leaked.
Now you libs are barking up a tree here that uh you're you're gonna be like a cat.
You're gonna get so high up it's gonna take the fire department to come get you out.
Except we control the fire department, we're not gonna come get you.
We're gonna leave you up there and you have to jump or spend the rest of your lives up this tree.
I mean, the idea of saying the goalposts change because of this trick question, which is a lame trick question.
So I'd like to ask you, regardless of whether a crime was committed, you still intend to fire anybody.
He never said he'd fire somebody if a crime was not committed.
He said, if there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person's violated law, that person will be taken care of.
And yesterday he says if someone committed a crime, they'll no longer work in my administration.
How can it be any any more consistent from September 30th of 2003 to uh to yesterday?
Quick timeouts.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
All right, we're gonna, I'm not gonna let this go just yet.
Uh this this this uh uh media claim that uh that the White House has changed the bar, lowered the threshold.
You know, it'd be interesting if the New York Times said the same thing.
If somebody committed a crime, they will no longer work at my newspaper.
A lot Judith Miller.
Oh, and folks, have you seen the editor of the New York Times, Mr. Keller, all concerned about Judith Miller's gastrointestinal tract?
The food in prison is horrible, Dawn, and she's not eating enough of it because it's making her sick to her stomach.
And so Bill Keller said, I had to go there and tell her to eat.
Judy, you must eat.
Uh it's just it's horrible in there.
Horrible.
Horrible.
Apparently she's in a gulag.
She's in the she's in a whatever this this place is.
So they're setting it up that the food is horrible.
She's not dealing with the bad food well, but she's holding up.
She's holding up.
They had to go in there, and they held her, told her to make sure, Judy, that you uh that you eat.
You have to eat.
Sounds like you're talking to a kid.
Uh so here is, well, I don't know if she's in a fetal position yet, but she is chained to the floor and there is hair.
There's loose strands of hair next to where she's chained.
And I'm just kidding, Mr. Snerdley.
I'm just kidding, won't be long before we hear such allegations.
All right, I have three sound bites and maybe four here I want you to play.
We're gonna replay President Bush from yesterday, then President Bush from September 30th.
Uh, in fact, let's reverse that.
We'll go two one, Mike, and then Terry Hunt, who asked the question that actually moved the bar, then got to McClellan later uh in the White House press briefing.
Here is Bush on September 30th.
If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.
And uh if the person has uh violated law, the person will be taken care of.
Here's Bush yesterday.
And if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.
Here's Terry Hunt, who asked the question yesterday at the White House press briefing.
The president seemed to uh raise the bar and a qualifier today when discussing whether or not anybody would be dismissed for in the leak of a CIA officer's name, in which he said that uh if someone has found to have committed crime, they would no longer work in this administration.
That's never been part of the standard before.
Why is that added now?
It's never been part of the standard before.
Let's go back to audio soundbite number two, September 30th, two years ago.
If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.
And uh if the person has uh violated law, the person will be taken care of.
Mr. Hunt, what in the world?
You're a reporter.
I'm doing a better job than you are, and you are there.
You're There every day.
There has been no qualifier added.
There was no qualifier added yesterday.
What he said yesterday is practically identical to what he said on September 30th of 2003.
And to assert to McClellan that uh somebody has to have committed a crime before they won't work in his administration, and that's never been part of the standard.
This is an out and out lie.
I don't know if it's a misinformed lie or a purposeful lie, but Terrence Hunt of the Associated Press is totally misrepresenting this.
Because the press's reputation is at stake.
Their reputation for being able to kill people.
Folks, what have I told you?
You know, you've laughed at me, some of you, and I've talked young journalism students who've called here and said they want to be journalists and ask my advice.
I say, go get a job at some small paper, pick out some community person and destroy them.
And you'll get noticed by the mainstream press faster than any other type of reporting you do.
You pick out some big rich guy in that town where you're working and destroy this guy, or raise questions about his character of any kind, whether it's worth it or not, whether it's valid or not, and you'll get noticed.
Here we got to kill Carl Rove, and they're protecting their reputation to show that they can still bring people down.
Even though they've lost their monopolistic power, it is their reputation on the line here, their ability to cover a story the way they want it covered, their ability to report a story the way they want it reported, their ability to report only the facts that work for them and ignore the facts that hurt them.
Their ability to shape the news that you get every day and thus their ability to shape your opinion every day.
That's their reputation.
It's at stake.
That's why I say these people are engaged in their second or next to last stand.
And they are they're they're got one foot off the cliff, about to fall off the deep end.
When you've got a reporter changing the terms of a president's answer in a question, as her as Terry Hunt did yesterday, I'd like to ask you, regardless of whether a crime was committed.
What happened here?
That's a trick question because you set up the premise in the question, and then whatever the president's answer is, you said, well, he changed what he said.
No, he didn't change what he said.
You changed your question.
You changed the premise from breaking law or not breaking the law.
Will he be fired if he leaked?
And then you took the president's answer and assumed you just want everybody to believe, because you don't think anybody else heard this, that the president answered the way you wanted him answered.
But you, Mr. Hunt, have been caught because what you say happened didn't happen.
And that is so often the case now with the mainstream press.
What they say happened didn't happen.
What they say is going to happen doesn't happen.
What they say has happened didn't happen.
It's breathtaking to watch this.
I love pointing it out to you, folks, as you know.
I love being right.
Happens a lot more often than not, and I love hearing myself speak anyway.
So it's a um it's a win-win quick time out.
We will be back and resume.
Oh.
Wait.
We have to hear from the sitting Buddha.
And that would be Helen Thomas.
Because she was in there, and this this just uh this is a level of respect that's left in the White House press corps.
Helen Helen Thomas just asks Bush uh uh well, listen to the question, you'll get it for yourself.
Two years and he can't call Rove in and find out what the hell's going on.
Why is it so difficult to find out the facts?
It cost thousands, millions of dollars, two years, kind of how many lawyers?
All he's gonna do is call them in.
You just heard from the president.
He said he doesn't know all the facts.
I don't know all the facts.
Two things, Helen.
If the president called Rove in, you wouldn't be there.
So Rove says what he says.
President comes out, hey, Rove just told me he didn't do it.
Are you going to accept it, Helen?
You know damn well you're not going to accept it.
The second thing is, Helen, where was this question during the nine months that Bill Clinton was lying to this country about Monica Lewinsky?
Why didn't you just say, why doesn't he just come out and tell us?
But he didn't.
He did yes, Helen, and he lied.
And that's why you have these investigations with supposedly objective prosecutors who have no political interest in the outcome, just going and getting the facts, because you know it as well as anybody, Helen.
If uh Bush came out and said, I just talked to Carl Carlson didn't do it.
You'd be all over him in double time.
Back after this.
Somebody needs to tell the New York Times, Bill Keller, that if uh Judith Miller's at Club Gitmo, she's eating lemon chicken with rice peel off.
Uh and she'd be eating a lot better than a than this uh this sweat hole in uh in Virginia, wherever she is.
I say we tell the Times to ask for a transfer of Judith Miller to Club Gitmo.
Do it today.
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