Gibbs: No Apology for Hayward

RUSH: Gibbs got an interesting comment today in the White House press briefing. An ABC News correspondent stood up and said, ‘Back in May, Tony Hayward said, quote, ‘The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersal we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.’ After he said that, the president said that he would have fired Mr. Hayward if he said those comments. Now it appears that Mr. Hayward may, in fact, have been right.’ You can’t find the oil. Your government is saying it’s not that big a deal. You, Gibbs, yesterday said it’s the equivalent of ‘a can of Coke’ in the Gulf. ‘Does the administration owe him an apology?’

GIBBS: No.

MAN: (snickering)

GIBBS: I don’t think he was right. Nobody owes Tony Hayward an apology. BP has responsibilities and obligations as the responsible polluting party in this instance. Any apology that is owed is to the disruption to the lives of families, fishermen, hotel owners, people that grew up in and — and understand the beauty that is the Gulf of Mexico. That’s the apology.

RUSH: Well, then I think you better be apologizing yourself, Gibbs, because you’ve done more to harm the economic viability of the Gulf of Mexico than BP did. You and your regime have shut down drilling. That’s the lifeblood of the Gulf of Mexico. ‘No, Tony Hayward, of course we’re not going to apologize! BP is a polluting company out there. No, no, no. They’re the polluting party in this. We don’t need an apology. He wasn’t right.’

Here’s Obama, by the way, back on June 8th, Matt Lauer interviewing Obama on the Today Show. ‘Let me read you some of the things Hayward has said over the course of this disaster. He said, ‘The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume. I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest.’ He doesn’t work for you, but if he did, would you want him out?’

PRESIDENT OBAMA: He wouldn’t be working for me after any of those statements. I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college, uh, seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially had the best answers so I know whose ass to kick.

RUSH: So he ‘knows whose ass to kick.’ It turns out Hayward was exactly right and yesterday Gibbs said so! Whose ‘ass’ do we kick now? I quoted Hayward on that day and I said he was right, and I said he’s a geologist. He’s a Ph.D. geologist. I quoted Hayward and said he was right. I quoted myself and said that I was right. Yesterday Gibbs said (summarized), ‘The amount of oil in there, we can’t find it. You know, 76% of it’s gone; the other part of it’s going to disperse. It’s no more than a can of Coke in there.’ This is a despicable bunch of people, a truly despicable bunch of people.