In Today Interview, Bush Calls Lauer Out on His Democratic Spin --9/13/2006

1. In Today Interview, Bush Calls Lauer Out on His Democratic Spin
On Monday's Today, Matt Lauer treated Senator Hillary Clinton with kid gloves but on Tuesday's Today, President George W. Bush, once again, got the hostile treatment from Lauer. However Tuesday's airing of Lauer's long interview with the President taped on Friday, Bush stepped up, even calling Matt out for trying to "justify" the Democratic position. Lauer: "Do you know of any Democrats, that in your opinion, are trying to or would like to appease terrorists?" Bush: "I know Democrats who want to leave Iraq before the job is done and that would be a terrible mistake." Lauer: "But those Democrats don't see the war in Iraq as inseparable from the overall war on terror." Bush: "You can justify what they say I'm just telling you that if this country leaves Iraq before the job is done, if we abandon those 15 million people who said we want to live freely we will have given the enemy a tremendous victory."

2. Today Invites 'Legendary' Jane Fonda to Promote New Radio Network
Jane Fonda, Rosie O'Donnell and Gloria Steinem team up for a new radio network and NBC's Today, not surprisingly, is ready to promote it. On Tuesday, the Today show invited on the "legendary Jane Fonda," as Ann Curry called her, to plug the new Women's Radio Network. In fact, the Today cast couldn't contain their excitement for the "sometimes controversial" activist. Curry raved: "By the way Jane Fonda, you look great. You look marvelous." Lauer echoed: "Yikes! She looks fantastic doesn't she?" After he was done gushing over her looks, Lauer eventually got around to asking about her latest project, but he didn't blink when she claimed her new network with Gloria Steinem and Rosie O'Donnell has "no political agenda" at all.

3. O'Donnell: 'Radical Christianity as Threatening as Radical Islam'
Rosie O'Donnell, the new host of The View, restrained herself for exactly one week before letting fly with her extreme liberalism. On the September 12 edition on Tuesday, in response to fellow co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck's comment that militant Islam is a grave threat, O'Donnell countered that "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America." The comedienne also ridiculed America's response to 9/11: "We were attacked not by a nation. And as a result of the attack and the killing of nearly 3,000 innocent people we invaded two countries and killed innocent people in their countries." AUDIO&VIDEO

4. Letterman's Suggested Couric Sign-Off: 'Putting the 'BS' in CBS'
On Monday's Late Show on CBS, David Letterman read a humorous list of suggested sign-offs Katie Couric could use at the end of the CBS Evening News. Among the proposals: "Three of tonight's stories were fake. Write in if you think you know which ones," "I'm gonna go get my freak on," "Let's turn this mother out again tomorrow," "Til tomorrow, morons," "Return to your sad little lives," "From me to you, suck it" and, my favorite, "Putting the 'BS' in CBS." Couric ended Tuesday's CBS Evening News by showing Letterman reading seven of his ideas, but none of the ones hinting at false stories: "Save us, Superman," "Well, I'm off to the dog track," "That's the deal, Lucille," "Here, kitty kitty kitty," "Keep feelin' the funk," "Oh, Lordy, I gots the news fever" and "I'm Katie Couric, I'm gonna go get me some ribs."

In Today Interview, Bush Calls Lauer
Out on His Democratic Spin

On Monday's Today, Matt Lauer treated Senator Hillary Clinton with kid gloves but on Tuesday's Today, President George W. Bush, once again, got the hostile treatment from Lauer. However Tuesday's airing of Lauer's long interview with the President taped on Friday, Bush stepped up, even calling Matt out for trying to "justify" the Democratic position. Lauer: "Do you know of any Democrats, that in your opinion, are trying to or would like to appease terrorists?" Bush: "I know Democrats who want to leave Iraq before the job is done and that would be a terrible mistake." Lauer: "But those Democrats don't see the war in Iraq as inseparable from the overall war on terror." Bush: "You can justify what they say I'm just telling you that if this country leaves Iraq before the job is done, if we abandon those 15 million people who said we want to live freely we will have given the enemy a tremendous victory."

[This item, by Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Tuesday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters: newsbusters.org ]
The September 12 CyberAlert recounted: While NBC's Matt Lauer baited Senator Hillary Clinton on Monday's Today to admonish the administration and to say we're not safer, he attacked the President for, in fact, trying to make the nation safer. Lauer prompted Clinton: "Are you comfortable that the United States did not break the law in conducting that kind of interrogations in those secret sites?" Then later in the program, Lauer repeatedly pressed Bush over interrogation methods used on terrorists: "The head of Amnesty International says secret sites are against international law." Lauer worried: "Are you at all concerned that at some point, even if you get results, there is a blurring the lines of, between ourselves and the people we're trying to protect us against?"

For more, including video of Lauer's combative exchange with Bush in the Oval Office: www.mediaresearch.org

The following is a complete transcript of the portion of the interview conducted on September 10 outside of the Oval Office with the Rose Garden in the background, and aired on the September 12 Today:

Matt Lauer: "Now to the political battle over the war on terror. There are only eight weeks to go until the midterm elections and while the White House insists last night's presidential address was not a political speech the Democrats are crying foul. Recently I asked President Bush about the widening divide between Republicans and Democrats. In recent speeches you and Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld have, have seemed to indicate that people who are critics of your policy in Iraq are in some ways trying to appease terrorists. Do you know of any Democrats, that in your opinion, are trying to or would like to appease terrorists?"
George W. Bush: "I know Democrats who want to leave Iraq before the job is done and that would be a terrible mistake."
Lauer: "But those Democrats don't see the war in Iraq as inseparable from the overall war on terror."
Bush: "You can justify what they say I'm just telling you that if this country leaves Iraq before the job is done, if we abandon those 15 million people who said we want to live freely we will have given the enemy a tremendous victory. I never questioned anybody's patriotism but I do question their judgment if they say, 'Let's have a timetable for withdrawal,' or 'Let's get out.' Now there are some who believe we shouldn't have been there in the first place and that's fine, I understand that but my job is to make sure people understand the stakes, Matt. I understand it's politics but this war is too important to let politics get in the way."
Lauer: "But if you agree with their premise, for a second, and you're loath to do this, that the war in Iraq and the war on terror, the overall war on terror are separate-"
Bush: "I don't agree with that premise."
Lauer: "I'm just saying, I know you're loath to do that but if you look-"
Bush: "I'm not loath to do it, I just don't do it because it's not true."
Lauer: "If you look at it from their point of view, though, the people who don't think they're the same thing do you know any Democrats who want to cut funding from the war on terror?"
Bush: "I know people who want to cut funding for Iraq and that in itself will weaken our capacity to win the war on terror in my judgment. And that's the debate. Now look, I understand people saying, 'Well Saddam Hussein didn't order the attacks on America. I understand that but one of the lessons of 9/11 is that we have got to deal with threats before they come to hurt us. All of us saw a threat in Saddam Hussein. Not everybody but a lot of people including, including the United Nations Security Council, Matt. And the threat was this. He was a state sponsor of terror, he had used weapons of mass destruction, he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction, he had attacked his neighbors. He killed thousands of his people. He was a threat. He was given the choice and he chose not to and so we enforce the demands of the world. And now the question-"
Lauer: "Put some of those same standards though-"
Bush: "Now the question is will we have the will to succeed in Iraq, now that Saddam's gone?"
Lauer: "Put some of those same standards onto Iran, then."
Bush: "Sure I'd love to."
Lauer: "President Ahmadinejad, how is he different from Saddam? Saddam Hussein, you say, was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, the United States believes that Iran is trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein sponsored suicide bombers in Israel. We know that Iran has an army, Hezbollah to-"
Bush: "You mean it, they might, he might, Iran might have been part of an Axis of Evil?"
Lauer: "Okay, exactly."
Bush: "And so therefore they're, they're both threats..."
Lauer: "Okay but why are we talking diplomacy with Iran and why did we attack Iraq?"
Bush: "No let me, that's a good question. Not every threat as you deal with militarily. As a matter of fact military option is the last option for a president. There's a difference between 17 UN res-, or 16 or however many UN resolutions that there were in Iraq and we're just beginning the diplomatic process here. I certainly hope we never have to use our military again. On the other hand if diplomacy fails the United States is, you know, have to leave all options on the table. I'm confident diplomacy can work particularly if the Europeans and Russia and China continue to send a clear message to the Iranians."
Lauer: "I said the Iranians want to acquire weapons of mass destruction, which is really repeating what your administration has said and given the, the sensitivity-"
Bush: "Yeah we believe that."
Lauer: "-to the accuracy of intelligence, especially after Iraq, do you have a smoking gun? Do you have a firm piece of evidence that proves to you and could prove to the American people that the Iranians, indeed, are enriching uranium for weapons purposes, not for peaceful purposes?"
Bush: "Well I think the most compelling evidence was that which is found by the IAEA, which is international inspection body that there was evidence of an enrichment program going on outside the protocol that the Iranians agreed to."
Lauer: "And so you think that-"
Bush: "So we're worried about the, they'll be developing a bomb and it's very important for the world to take this threat very seriously and we are."

Today Invites 'Legendary' Jane Fonda
to Promote New Radio Network

Jane Fonda, Rosie O'Donnell and Gloria Steinem team up for a new radio network and NBC's Today, not surprisingly, is ready to promote it. On Tuesday, the Today show invited on the "legendary Jane Fonda," as Ann Curry called her, to plug the new Women's Radio Network. In fact, the Today cast couldn't contain their excitement for the "sometimes controversial" activist. Curry raved: "By the way Jane Fonda, you look great. You look marvelous." Lauer echoed: "Yikes! She looks fantastic doesn't she?" After he was done gushing over her looks, Lauer eventually got around to asking about her latest project, but he didn't blink when she claimed her new network with Gloria Steinem and Rosie O'Donnell has "no political agenda" at all.

[This item, by Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Tuesday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters: newsbusters.org ]

Part of the segment on the September 12 Today:

Lauer: "Let's talk about women for a second, okay."
Jane Fonda: "Yes, thank you."
Lauer: "You're starting the Women's Radio Network and a statistic that I found kind of, kind of startling. Women ages 25 to 54 listen to 10 percent less radio today than they did just seven years ago. Why is that?"
Fonda: "Women are leaving radio because radio has left women. 95 percent of radio programmers are men. 85 percent of general managers in radio are men. In order to know how to program for your audience, you have to look like your audience. You have to live like your audience, you have to empathize with your audience and men just don't know how to do it so this is the first all-women-owned, women-managed radio."
Lauer: "So what are you going to present in terms of content? Is this gonna be like Lifetime television was years ago? Is this lifestyle, relationship, romance or is this politics? What is this? What's, what's it gonna be?"
Fonda: "It's gonna be everything. We, we did, last fall in '05 we did some very interesting research, very extensive research and women, number one they want current events including global issues for women. They want to laugh and laugh, laugh doesn't mean fluff. Laugh can be healing. Laugh, laugh is what you do when something really touches a chord with you. Laugh is, can laugh of recognition. Women want to laugh and our, and our first morning drive talk is three women stand-up comics that are also very smart and can talk about current events and be funny about it."
Lauer: "But let me mention, so you're on the board of this. By, you're not planning on doing any on-air stuff right now? Maybe?"
Fonda: "Well I want to do a regular, once-a-week appearance, yeah."
Lauer: "Okay but right now you're behind the scenes board member. Gloria Steinem is on the board of this, Rosie O'Donnell. People may look at those names and say there's a political agenda here?"
Fonda: "All they have to do is listen to our radio and they'll and they'll know that there is no political agenda, www.greenstonemedia.net. We're streaming and you can hear us and really women across the board, conservative women as well as liberal women and men have found something that the like on our shows."

The Web site for the radio service: www.greenstoneradio.com

O'Donnell: 'Radical Christianity as Threatening
as Radical Islam'

[This item by Scott Whitlock was posted, with video, Tuesday afternoon on the MRC's NewsBusters blog. The audio/video will be added to the posted version of this CyberAlert, but in the meantime, to watch the Real or Windows Media video, or MP3 audio, go to: newsbusters.org ]

The segment, which aired at 11:16am EDT, saw Ms. O'Donnell open up and, for the first time as a 'View' host, express her true outlook. The exchange began with Rosie inquiring as to whether anyone watched President Bush's address to the nation. She then read from the speech:
"He had one sentence that I thought struck me. I thought, what did everyone think? 'The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.' And I would say the outcome, really, of America really depends on the battle in the streets of New Orleans, that that city is still decimated and $303 billion have been spent fighting this war. If, literally, a third of that money was put into Katrina and facilitated with honest people who knew how to do it, we wouldn't be in the situation we're in."
O'Donnell may be unaware of this, but $110 billion has been designated for the Gulf Coast clean-up. My math could be wrong, but I believe that's at least a third. Co-host Joy Behar, a fellow liberal, chimed in with this question: "Don't you think it's clear at this point that they don't care about New Orleans? If they cared about it, they would have fixed it already."

The fact that she believes New Orleans should be completely "fixed" in a year is besides the point. 'The View,' a program that is supposed to represent the perspectives of women, is now almost completely in the control of Move-On-type liberals. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the show's token Republican, meekly submitted to the liberal onslaught. She replied simply, "They should give more."

O'Donnell saved her harshest comments for the war on terror. After Hasselbeck had the temerity to mention the threat of extreme Islam, O'Donnell responded with her slap at Christianity: "And just one second, radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America."

This proved too much for even Behar. She replied, in a somewhat bewildered manner: "But, but Christians are not threatening to kill us. There's that difference. This group is threatening to kill us."

Hasselbeck also appeared surprised by O'Donnell's comment. She maintained: "We are not bombing ourselves here in the country." The comedienne had a clever retort for this: "No, but we are bombing innocent people in other countries. True or false?"

There are two points to be made here. First, apparently Rosie believes that the federal government is a branch of "radical Christianity." Secondly, has she never heard of World War II and the innocent civilians that unfortunately died in the struggle against Nazism? Was that war wrong? Showing a loose grasp on international politics, O'Donnell stated that "Iraq and Afghanistan never threatened to kill us. Ever." Again, perhaps Ms. O'Donnell is unaware of exactly where the Taliban trained and plotted. Finally, on the subject of terrorism, no Rosie segment would be complete with out left-wing, bumper sticker rants. She informed her audience of these grand pronouncements:

# O'Donnell: "We will never bring peace at the hands of war....As a species we have to rise above it."

# O'Donnell: "But in life, you have two choices always, faith or fear. A government should lead by faith, never by fear."

# O'Donnell quickly added that, when she said faith, she didn't mean Christianity, but faith in "humanity" and "equality."

It appears as though the honeymoon is over. Viewers should expect more hard-left, blame-America comments from Rosie O'Donnell, "The Queen of Nice."

Letterman's Suggested Couric Sign-Off:
'Putting the 'BS' in CBS'

On Monday's Late Show on CBS, David Letterman read a humorous list of suggested sign-offs Katie Couric could use at the end of the CBS Evening News. Among the proposals: "Three of tonight's stories were fake. Write in if you think you know which ones," "I'm gonna go get my freak on," "Let's turn this mother out again tomorrow," "Til tomorrow, morons," "Return to your sad little lives," "From me to you, suck it" and, my favorite, "Putting the 'BS' in CBS." Couric ended Tuesday's CBS Evening News by showing Letterman reading seven of his ideas, but none of the ones hinting at false stories: "Save us, Superman," "Well, I'm off to the dog track," "That's the deal, Lucille," "Here, kitty kitty kitty," "Keep feelin' the funk," "Oh, Lordy, I gots the news fever" and "I'm Katie Couric, I'm gonna go get me some ribs."

[This item was posted Tuesday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

The full list, as posted Tuesday in the "Wahoo Gazette" daily show blog, by Michael Z. McIntee, posted on the Late Show site:

-- Save us, Superman
-- Suck on that, losers
-- Well, I'm off to the dog track
-- Three of tonight's stories were fake. Write in if you think you know which ones
-- I'm gonna go get my freak on
-- Good night and get laid
-- Peace out, bitches
-- All you creepy old guys can put your pants back on
-- I'm Katie Couric, I'm gonna go get me some ribs
-- That's the deal, Lucille
-- Next stop, Margaritaville
-- Oh, Lordy, I gots the news fever
-- Keep it real, pimps and ho's
-- Let's turn this mother out again tomorrow
-- Here, kitty kitty kitty
-- Keep feelin' the funk
-- Til tomorrow, morons
-- Big up to my peeps in lockdown
-- Return to your sad little lives
-- From me to you, suck it
-- Putting the 'BS' in CBS

For the daily Wahoo Gazette blog: www.cbs.com

-- Brent Baker