Obama, In His Own Words
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}It is our exclusive hour with the president of the United States, Barack Obama.
Obviously, it's not really exclusive — since the President sat down with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and even David Letterman and Univision. Did I see the Cartoon Network on the list, too? No? OK.
And, it's not really even a "sit-down" either, since — yes — he sat down with all of them but not us; not FOX News.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Does the president consider FOX News some sort of enemy? I mean, when he's even offered to sit down with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syria's Bashar Assad and Kim Jong-Il of North Korea.
It makes you wonder.
So tonight I decided to ask the president some questions and use the answers he's already provided. So here's President Barack Obama in an interview you won't see anywhere else — so, in that sense, it is exclusive. No one else is putting any of this together.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}You know, I keep hearing people say that Barack Obama ran as a centrist, but is now governing far further to the left than anyone anticipated. I maintain that but it just isn't true. I contend that Barack Obama told us what he intended to do — every step of the way. Too many of us just didn't listen. We only heard what we wanted to hear.
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Are you listening now? Because I'm about to give you another chance to hear him — to really hear him in his own words.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}OK, let's get right to the health care debate. Much has been said about single-payer health care. The president wants it. The president doesn't want it. Which is it?
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter because, frankly, we historically have had, a employer-based system in this country — with private insurers — and for us to transition to a system like that, I believe would be too disruptive.
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OK, wait a minute — because a few years ago, President Obama said this to the ACL-CIO:
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}OBAMA: I happen to be a proponent of the single payer health care plan — a single payer health care plan — universal health care — that's what I'd like to see.
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That sounds pretty clear to me — I'm quoting: "I happen to be a proponent of the single-payer health care plan — a single-payer health care plan — universal health care."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}It's very difficult to reconcile, if you listen. It makes it even harder when you hear what others — in and around the White House, congressmen, key advisers and special interests — have said:
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REP. BARNEY FRANK, D-MASS: I think if we get a good public option it could lead to single payer and that's the best way to reach single payer.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}REP. JAN SCHAKOWSKY, D-ILL.: And next to me was a guy from the insurance company who then argued against the public health insurance option saying it wouldn't let private insurance compete, that a public option would put the private insurance out of business.
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My single payer friends, he was right. The man was right.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}JACOB HACKER, TIDES: Someone once said to me this is a Trojan horse for a single payer. And I said, well it's not Trojan horse, right? It's just right there! I'm telling you: We're going to get there — over time, slowly — but we'll move away from reliance on employment-based health care insurance as we should, but we'll do it in a way that we're not going to frighten people into thinking that they're going to lose their private insurance.
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So does he want single-payer, universal health care, or just another option for all Americans? The answer to that is obviously fuzzy at best.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}By the way, there is a growing suspicion that President Obama and the congressional Democrat majority might be considering the so-called "nuclear option" to pass a health care bill. That's where the majority in the Senate cuts off any further debate or filibustering by a majority vote, rather than the 60 votes normally needed to end a filibuster.
You may remember that the Republican majority threatened something like this in 2005 when the Democrats repeatedly refused to give judicial nominees an up or down vote. The reaction from Democrats was apoplectic. They threatened to shut down all business in the Senate if the nuclear option was used. The "Gang of 14" intervened with a compromise and neither threat happened. Let's hope that the Democrats remember how outraged they were then and don't use this move against the American people, a majority of whom oppose this bill.
We've been talking on this show for a long time about the people that Barack Obama has surrounded himself with. Why? Because during the debates, when challenged by John McCain on the radical associations he had, Obama told America:
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OBAMA: Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden, or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO. Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Well, we've done that. And I, for one, don't like what I've seen. There was Van Jones, who was so radical, he was forced out. There are many others who still advise the president who shouldn't be anywhere near the president — from Carol Browner to Cass Sunstein, Mark Lloyd, John Holdren and Ezekiel Emanuel.
We have shown you their words and will continue to do that, but tonight, we're focusing on Barack Obama, himself. Why would he associate himself with any radicals, let alone all of these folks:
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}MARK LLOYD, FCC DIVERSITY CHIEF: In Venezuela, with Chavez, really an incredible revolution — a Democratic revolution — to begin to put in place saying that we're going to have impact on the people of Venezuela...
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS, R-MAINE: In a 2007 speech, you said, and I quote, "We ought to ban hunting...."
CASS SUNSTEIN: The statement you quoted is a provocation, an offhand remark in a speech that was another — on another topic.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}COLLINS: Help me with the issue of legal rights for animals.
SUNSTEIN: In terms of my own academic writings, the suggestion, which was meant as a suggestion for contemplation, was that under state law that prevents cruelty to animals, it might that the enforcement by criminal prosecutors could be supplemented by suits by private people protecting animals from violations of existing state law.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}And, let's not forget President Obama's ties and promises to ACORN and SEIU. For the love of Heaven, Jeff Jones of the New York Apollo Alliance — who helped write the stimulus bill — was a co-founder of the terrorist group that bombed the Pentagon?
Doesn't Obama know what these people have said and done in the past? Is it even feasible to have this number of radicals, Marxists, revolutionaries and anti-Capitalists near him? One would have to ask oneself: Is he blind to character? Is he part of the problem or in danger because no one is vetting these people? That's for the American people to decide, but they'll never be given the chance if he only grants interviews to the people that ask him insipid, shallow questions over and over.
President Obama's favorite line when deflecting criticism is, "Bush had 'czars,' why weren't you yelling then?" I was and I have the archives to prove it. But Obama has doubled — at least — the amount of "czars" Bush had and those "czars" didn't have the radical ideology many of these do.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Obama will also say that Bush started us down the path toward socialism — that Bush started the crazy spending, the bailouts. My question to President Obama would be: "I'm sorry, I thought you ran on change. Why are you continuing all of Bush's policies?
Anyone who voted for President Obama should be asking themselves: Did I misunderstand the president because I believed in change or did he misunderstand me?
We should have seen this coming from before his first day in office:
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OBAMA: In five days we are going to fundamentally transform America.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}One reason why you want to have an interview with the president, is you want to get a sense of the man. I don't feel America has really gotten that. People still don't really know who he is — he was JFK, then he was FDR, then he was Abraham Lincoln. While the media was so eagerly putting images of others for us to compare him to, I wondered if it was because they were uncomfortable with who he was.
His dad was a radical, his mom from Kansas. Sweet as I'm sure she was, she went to school in one of the most radical schools in America. His dad left him to go to a radical school in New York. And when he finally moved to Hawaii, he met Frank Marshall Davis — an old-line, '60s radical communist from Chicago. That was his mentor.
Did you have a favorite teacher that was a mentor? What lessons do you still carry around from them today? What part of Frank Marshall Davis does Barack Obama still carry with him? When Obama left Frank, he went to college, but it continued — listen to what he says:
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OBAMA: To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students; the foreign students; the Chicanos; the Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}I'd like to stop talking about the past, but I keep being dragged back into it.
Obama chose his friends carefully back then, the questions that remain unanswered is, does he choose his advisers carefully?
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}VAN JONES: The mainstream white polluters and the mainstream white environmentalists wound up collaborating to put all the poisons in the black community, in the Latino community, in the poor communities. The toxic dumps started moving in one direction — not in my backyard.
JONES: No more broken treaties. No more broken treaties. Give them the wealth! Give them the wealth!
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That sounds radical — redistribution of wealth. But listen to our own president talking about the Constitution:
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OBAMA: The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth.... The tragedies of the civil rights movement was — because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.
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Don't we need to ask some questions?
You need to have some questions answered and maybe that's why the president sat down with others, because they knew they'd ask him things like this:
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DAVID GREGORY, NBC NEWS: Hate to break it to you, but it doesn't look so good for your White Sox here. So I want to know who is your pick to win the World Series?
OBAMA: You know, I am — I think, mathematically, the White Sox can still get in the playoffs.
GREGORY: They can, mathematically. You’re an optimist.
OBAMA: So until they are eliminated, I will make no predictions.
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Thank goodness we know that. Yet no one cares to see the prism that the president is viewing things through.
I told you about some of the softballs they threw President Obama yesterday. But no one asked him about Van Jones. No one asked him about anybody else currently surrounding him in the White House. You know why they don't do that? He doesn't go on shows where they'll ask him those things because then he can never make a mistake like he did with Jeremiah Wright.
Watch this:
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is a church that I have been a member of for 20 years. This is a well-established, typical, historically African-American church on the South Side of Chicago, with a wonderful set of ministries and what I have been hearing and had been hearing in church was talk about Jesus, and talk about faith, and values and serving the poor.
OBAMA: For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course.
KEITH OLBERMANN, MSNBC: Did you know that he had made these statements before the videotape appeared?
OBAMA: You know, frankly, I didn't. I wasn't in church during the time that these statements were made.
OBAMA: Did I ever hear him make remarks that would be considered controversial while I sat in the church? Yes.
OBAMA: I did not hear such incendiary language myself, personally, either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew.
OBAMA: Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely.
OBAMA: Had I heard those in the church, I would have told Reverend Wright that, you know, that I profoundly disagreed with him. They didn't reflect my values and they didn't reflect my ideals.
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Wouldn't it be nice to have a reporter asking him, which — which story is it? Because it's important today on this stuff.
George Stephanopoulos was one — the only one out of five interviewers with the president who even mentioned ACORN. And listen to this:
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GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: How about the funding for ACORN?
OBAMA: You know, if — frankly, it's not really something I followed closely. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a lot of federal money.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Both the Senate and the House have voted to cut it off.
OBAMA: You know, what I know is what I saw on that video was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you are not committing to — to cut off the federal funding.
OBAMA: George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to.
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Where is the quote that I had? Does anybody have it? Do we have that as full screen yet, the quote on ACORN? I love that. Oh, it's coming up later. Yes, OK. That one doesn't work. What he just said yesterday doesn't work.
But there was no pushback from Stephanopoulos, who — by the way — has a daily conference call with the White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He doesn't mention ACORN's massive tax fraud, the defrauding of the United States of America — that's kind of big; offering to help bring illegals across the border who are 13 and are going to be sold into slavery for sex — that's kind of big; six different cities — that's kind of big; with taxpayer-funded organizations — that's pretty big, too.
Isn't this the organization that promised he would — that they would have a role setting his agenda at the table in the White House?
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OBAMA: Before I even get inaugurated, during the transition, we're going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda! We're going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America!
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I think there should have been a follow-up question, George. I'm not a journalist, you are. And they wonder why we're marching on Washington. Hello!
By the way, he's also tied closely to SEIU, which ACORN founder Wade Rathke is also closely tied to:
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OBAMA: I have spent my entire adult life working with SEIU. I'm not a newcomer to this! I didn't just suddenly discover SEIU.
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You remember that — remember that he's tied right there — he'll spend his whole life with SEIU. Just remember that.
Then there is AmeriCorps or is it AmeriCorps? I'm not really sure what the president is describing here:
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OBAMA: We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.
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Really? Wow. Why do we need that? I mean, I've asked that question on the show before and we never really gotten an answer to it. But — maybe somebody else will ask that question. I'm counting on that mainstream media to ask those questions.
By the way, here is the quote that I was looking for. This is from Sam Graham-Felsen, President Obama's — his campaign blog, he said this about ACORN in November, 2007. Are you ready?
"I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it. We appreciate your work."
Hmm. Yes, he's not really paying attention, because he doesn't have any close ties there, I'm sure.
Look, why am I asking these questions? Is it a hidden agenda? Or is the agenda something you can actually get behind yourself? We need to know what the agenda is and who's actually behind it.
So what are we doing this for tonight? It's not having a hidden agenda, that's not what this is about. Even President Obama knows this is not about hidden agendas:
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DAVID GREGORY, NBC NEWS: President Jimmy Carter saying most — not just a little, but most — of this Republican opposition against you is motivated by racism. Do you agree with that?
BARACK OBAMA, UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: No.
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Good — thank you. You know, I love my country, and you love your country. I don't care if you agree with me or disagree. I don't care if you're Republican, Democrat or independent or something else. I don't know what else is left, but you love your country.
You know that our country has some flaws. You knew it when President Bush was president. I don't care what party you were in. But you didn't want the whole system changed, did you?
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OBAMA: We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.
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I'm haunted by that quote from President Obama that we played just a few minutes ago where he talked about, you know — we don't pay attention to the community groups and the community organizing groups that can cobble together the coalition that will bring us the redistribution of wealth.
I think we are looking at that now. Look at what has happened in the last seven months. The U.S. government has taken over and is running giant corporations. We're a trillion dollars deeper into debt, $100 billion every single — what is it, five weeks?
We're talking about transforming the best health care system in the world now. It's flawed, yes, but it's still the best. You know that can't be done with a deficit neutral basis. What are we kidding ourselves for?
Conservative estimates put the cost in the trillions. They're even talking about jamming cap-and-trade down our throats and sending our energy bills skyrocketing, in his own words:
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OBAMA: Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.
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OK. Joe Wilson last week said the president is lying about the whole immigration thing and health care. Well, just last week, he's raised the possibility of amnesty and citizenship for the 20 million people who are already here illegally now:
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OBAMA: If someone is here illegally, they won't be covered under this plan. That is a commitment I'm making. But I also want to make this clear: Even though I don't believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don't simply believe we can ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken.
If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all.
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So he was right — Joe Wilson was lying. No illegal immigrants will get health care. We'll just make them all legal. Problem solved.
America is never going to be the same if President Obama is able to bring these things to pass. Now, you may be for them. You may be against them. Either way, you better get up off the couch, because they will fundamentally transform America. And you know what? We have a lot of problems in this country. And some things do need to change: corruption, responsibility, accountability, health care — health care is one of them.
But I think the last thing it needs is to be run by the government and the unions. What are you nuts? Do you think you're a number now? Wait until they have control. You think the insurance company gives you a runaround when you call and say, "Hey, can I..."
What do you think that's going to — when the insurance company is the government, how do you think that's going to work out for you? I don't think anybody believes the president when he tells them, "Oh, we've got problems. Doctors are removing tonsils and they don't have to do that. They're cutting off the feet of diabetes patients."
If this were a movie, you would never believe that. The president is treating us like morons and the problem with health care is that the system treats us like morons and not like human beings. We're numbers.
The government is going to make that better?
The president looks at community organizing and unions as the solution, but I believe Americans understand the solution is the individual American. Obama and those in Congress don't trust your church, your faith; but Americans trust their church over the weasels in government.
Our politicians treat our military with contempt. Did you hear what Bret just said? Americans trust our military over the politicians.
You see, wouldn't it be nice to have somebody sit down one-on-one with the president and tell him, "Mr. President, these policies don't make sense. Could you explain them to me in a way where there is no double-talk or rhetoric?"
Mr. President, you have got to stop listening to the media, to celebrities and the elites, because I got news for you: It wasn't the farmers that got us into this mess. It's the media, the celebrities and the elite.
We have more trust in each other, the American people, than the people we have elected to represent us have in us.
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