RUSH: Folks, it’s funny the number of people making fun of Obama on 60 Minutes last night. Ron Fournier, who used to be the AP bureau chief and is quoted so much, by the way, when he issues criticisms of Obama. The reason why that makes news is because Fournier used to be one of the guys — I don’t mean to insult him by saying this, but he used to be in the tank. He was like a lot of people were in 2008, just swept up in whatever messianic atmospherics we had with Obama. And of course, like most in the Drive-By Media, the tendency is to align with fellow travelers on the left anyway.
So the reason why, when Fournier deviates from slavish behavior it makes news is because he’s determined to be credible because of this, even though he’s not saying anything any of you haven’t heard from me or others. The fact that he is saying it is news precisely because of the indication it means he’s losing favor with Obama. He tweeted out after last night’s 60 Minutes interview the following. Summarized Obama’s interview with Steve Kroft, which was another softball fest, which is what Kroft has become known for, too. And, by the way, that’s another thing that’s showing up in the Drive-Bys.
Interestingly enough, Steve Kroft — and this is not good for Steve Kroft — Steve Kroft is beginning or has attracted now a reputation. If you’re lib, if you’re a Democrat in power and you want a softball interview, you get Kroft to ask you the questions and it’s guaranteed to be a PR puff piece. And this is another thing that Fournier was reacting to last night. Here’s the way he tweeted his summary of Obama’s appearance last night.
“I, me, my. It’s their fault. I, me, my. It’s their fault. I, me, my. It’s their fault. I, me, my. It’s their fault. I, me, my …”
That’s the assessment, and of course it’s right on the money. Nothing new, the fact that Obama talks about himself and blames everybody else. Of course, to you and me, nothing new. But to have this noted by former avid supporters is, well, I don’t know, it’s funny and interesting at the same time.
But see, here’s, the bottom line, what does it all mean? Real presidents, folks, try to fix problems. What Obama does is try to fix the blame, and now he’s doing it again. He’s blaming all the problems of ISIS on bad intel. It’s amazing. And when it comes to the economy, you know what? Things are gangbusters out there. I mean, we’ve got a roaring recovery. You just don’t feel it and therefore it’s your fault, because he’s done his job. He ended the recession in 2009 and he’s got job creation humming and he’s got the recovery humming and he’s got this economy growing. If you don’t feel it, it’s your problem. That’s essentially what he said.
But how successful — remember when there were no weapons of mass destruction after the invasion of Iraq. Well, there were, but another story. General consensus was that there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction. And of course the reason was bad intel, and it really was. Every intelligence service that’s worth its salt in the world confirmed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. CIA, FBI, MI5, MI6, you name it, everybody said it. And of course Saddam was bragging about all he had ’cause he’s trying to be the kingpin of the Middle East. So he created a massive fabrication or lie, and everybody believed it, and when this was pointed out, that excuse didn’t fly, did it?
Bad intel didn’t fly, didn’t get Bush off the hook. It didn’t mollify the Democrats, Harry Reid, you name it, they weren’t interested in bad intel. It was very helpful for them because they’ve been trying to make the case that the Iraq war was unnecessary, unjust, immoral, waste of time, blah, blah, blah. Here’s Obama, doing and taking same tack that George W. Bush took, and never got Bush off the hook, even with Obama. Obama: Bad intel, not good enough. Presidents cannot rely on bad intel as excuses, Obama said. And now Obama and the Democrats are taking the same tack.
So, anyway, the show prep continued after I familiarized myself with all of that. Last night Obama and his appearance, we’ve got sound bites from it. It was pretty pathetic.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Obama even “acknowledged” that “the US underestimated the rise of ISIS” and “overestimated the abilities of the Iraqi military” to fend off the group in that interview that aired last night on 60 Minutes. The president was asked by softball-asker extraordinaire Steve Kroft about the comments from James Clapper, the director national security.
He has said the US not only underestimated ISIS, it also overestimated the ability and the will of the Iraq military to fight them. And Obama said (summarized), “Yep, yep. That’s true. It’s absolutely true. Jim Clapper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.” Of course you’re not supposed to remember any of the things said previously. “Oh, yeah, they’re the JV team! I’ve wiped out Al-Qaeda.”
All of this, folks, just adds up to another conclusion that is inarguable and that is that everything we’re doing here is political. The reasons that we’re taking on this group, the reasons that we’re going into ISIS and trying to take them out (whatever it is that we’re trying to do) is all political because of poll numbers. See, there’s no principled reason for this operation, and there never has been.
Obama doesn’t really care. Left to his own devices, if there weren’t problems for Democrats’ reelection efforts, we wouldn’t be doing this at all because Obama really doesn’t think this is any big kind of a big problem. “It’s over there, and what happens over there, it’s their business.” In many ways, Obama thinks what happens over there is our fault in the first place because of our support for Israel.
I mean, he’s part of the group that believes we’ve created all of this unrest over there with our superpower status and our arrogance and our bravado running around the world as though we own it. So all of the problems in the world can be traced back, in one degree or another, to the United States.
So if there weren’t any problems with election polls, if there weren’t any problems with Obama’s approval numbers, if there weren’t any problems in polling data show he’s weak on foreign policy and national defense, we wouldn’t even be doing this. So we are doing this, and that means we have to come up with reasons for it — and they’re not principled, strategic military reasons.
They’re all political. When something is political, it’s going to bend and shape and react to political events that are applying pressure on it, externally or internally. Whereas if there were a strict military operation, there wouldn’t be any reason for Khorasan. They wouldn’t make up a group. They’d just say, “Al-Qaeda has come back and we gotta wipe them out,” but we couldn’t because Obama had said we wiped them out.
So it’s unserious, as far as they’re concerned. And the problem is, it is really serious. This is really serious stuff, and it’s not being treated that way. They’re trying to make you think they’re treating it serious. This Jim Clapper guy, he’s got no business being where he is. Jim Clapper, national security director, said the Muslim Brotherhood was non-secular, nothing to worry about — and so did McCain, by the way.
By the way, McCain? This is kind of funny. McCain thinks that Roger Goodell blew it in that Friday press conference. McCain said, “This guy’s got lousy PR. This guy doesn’t know how to do PR. This guy, the first thing you learn in politics is you don’t call a press conference unless you have something to say, and he had nothing to say, so he shouldn’t have called the press conference.”
Is it just me or is it kind of funny to listen to a Republican sound like an expert on PR? (laughing) I saw it and I kind of cracked up. Maybe “ironic” Is not the word. Maybe “unbelievable” is the word.
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