Trent Lott Destroys DiFi

RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites from Sunday, Fox News Sunday. Trent Lott was sharing the stage with California Senator Dianne Feinstein. Chris Wallace said, ‘Senator Lott, since the president is willing to allow his aides to talk to Congress, how do you defend — or do you defend — his insistence they testify in private, not under oath, no transcript being made?’

LOTT: Are the Democrats in the Senate interested in information or confrontation? In my mind, I think if the president would agree for his close advisers in the White House to testify before Congress under oath, he’d be making a huge mistake. There is a thing called executive privilege. The president should pay attention to the precedents they set for their successors. Going back to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, I mean, you have a right to have executive privilege there. Frankly, if you just don’t think the, you know, U.S. attorney is particularly to your liking, you ought to be able to remove him.

RUSH: Well, that didn’t sit too well. Wallace said, ‘Senator Feinstein, doesn’t it say something that here you are, you’ve been looking at this for weeks, you’ve got 3,000 documents, and there’s still no ‘there’ there in this story?’

FEINSTEIN: The ‘there’ there is why were they dismissed — and you know, every day something new comes out. The attorney general in Michigan, Margaret Chiara —

WALLACE: The US attorney.

FEINSTEIN: Excuse me! The US attorney in Michigan has held a press conference and said she was dismissed clearly for political reasons.

WALLACE: But that’s all right.

LOTT: Horror of horrors.

FEINSTEIN: That’s fine.

LOTT: My goodness, how were they selected in the first place? And I have found that U.S. attorneys forget quite often how they got where they are. You know, all of a sudden they think, ‘Hey, I must be a federal judge. I’m here in perpetuity. I’ll do what I please,’ and dare anybody to tell them, ‘Hey, you’ve got to prosecute more and more aggressively.’ Running around trying to indict some lady that got a grant improperly instead of a billion dollar contractor? You know, you have questions.

RUSH: This is a good point. Lott says, ‘My goodness, horror of horrors, fired for political reasons.’ How were they selected in the first place? These are not judges that get lifetime appointments. They are employees. They serve at the pleasure of the president. They are hired on the basis of politics. Come on, folks, what do you think Clinton was up to when he and Hillary canned 93 US attorneys the first three months of their administration? Politics wasn’t behind it? You think they picked some of their own political people? Which is the prerogative when you win elections. It’s okay. You pay the price when you lose elections. You get people that are not to your liking in offices and positions of power. But with the Democrats, this is just a continuing effort here to criminalize Republican policy, to make it look like it’s a scandal. The Democrats make a history out of doing this.

RUSH: The Democrats’ existence is 100% political. Bush hasn’t replaced enough of these people as far as I’m concerned. Bush didn’t act soon enough in getting rid of some of the institutionalized Clintonoids that are left over — and not only at Justice, but at the Department of Defense, over there at the Pentagon, the state department, and the CIA. It’s all part of the ‘new tone.’ Bush was trying to put politics second, and look what it got him! Zip, zero, diddly-squat. Chris Wallace says, ‘Senator Feinstein, what’s your response here to what Senator Lott just said?’

FEINSTEIN: Six out of the eight of them are involved in public corruption cases, most of those cases against Republicans. They were removed while the investigation or the prosecution was ongoing.

LOTT: But one in California —

FEINSTEIN: Or they were —

LOTT: You wrote a letter about —

FEINSTEIN: Can I finish?

LOTT: Sure, go ahead. I mean, I don’t see where there’s a large number of them involved in corruption cases. I think they were involved — were taking action on death penalty cases, immigration cases.

RUSH: In this case they weren’t taking action on those things, and those things are important initiatives in the administration. They were lagging far behind. This is all such smoke and mirrors anyway, because Clinton and two of his 93 US attorneys, a guy in Little Rock that was replaced by Paula Casey and Jay Stephens in Chicago, who were involved in corruption cases aimed at Clinton. Nobody said a word, and now Mrs. Bill Clinton is out there running around, ‘Well, our firings were entirely justified. We had a right to do it and here’s how our firings differ from these eight,’ and of course, the slavish Drive-Bys with their tongues hanging out (panting), ‘Oh, we love you, Hillary, Mrs. Clinton (panting), give us some cover so we can continue to bash Bush (panting).’ It’s all smoke and mirrors, and it’s all made up.

By the way, as I keep reminding people of this: the US attorney in San Diego pulled off a corruption case? Tell that to Duke Cunningham. Duke Cunningham’s in jail. He’s serving gonzo numbers of years, lost his assets and so forth. But nothing happened here. They’re just trying to criminalize all these policy differences, which is not unusual. This is what Democrats do. They can’t win, folks, on a long-term basis at the ballot box and they’re trying to set themselves up to be institutionally unaffected by elections, by having their own people, as many people as possible, in career positions, that survive regardless who wins elections.