Attorney General Holder's Week of Missteps
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," May 14, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: From its refusal to call this a war on terrorism to its vocabulary of man caused disasters and overseas contingency operations, this administration has shown a consistent inability to face up to our enemies and in this regard it has been a very tough week, a banner week for Attorney General Eric Holder.
It appears that Mr. Holder, well, is at a loss when it comes to what may have inspired the recent terrorist attacks against the U.S. Now take a look at this exchange that he had with Texas Congressman Lamar Smith during his appearance before the House Judiciary Committee.
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REP. LAMAR SMITH, R-TEXAS: Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?
ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Because of?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}SMITH: Radical Islam?
HOLDER: There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions.
SMITH: But radical Islam could have been one of the reasons?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HOLDER: There are a variety of reasons that —
SMITH: But was radical Islam one of them?
HOLDER: There are a variety of reasons why people do these things some are potentially religious —
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}SMITH: But all I'm asking is if you think among those variety of reasons, radical Islam might have been one of the reasons that the individuals took the steps that they did?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Alright, now that performance was followed shortly by the Attorney General's embarrassing admission regarding his stance on the Arizona immigration law.
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SMITH: Have you read the Arizona law?
HOLDER: I have not had a chance to. I've glanced at it; I have not read it, um —
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}SMITH: It's 10 pages, it's a lot shorter than the health care bill which was 2,000 pages long. I'll give you my copy of it if you would like to have a copy.
It's hard for me to understand how you would have concerns about something being unconstitutional if you haven't even read the law.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HANNITY: Alright, so given this performance. Does Holder have what it takes to serve as America's highest ranking law enforcement official?
And joining me now with reaction to all of that is the former governor of the great state of Arkansas, the host of his own show right here on this channel, Mike Huckabee. Governor good to see you, thanks for being here.
MIKE HUCKABEE, FOX NEWS HOST: Great to see you.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HANNITY: You know, the funny thing is, is before he admitted he wasn't briefed on the law, didn't read the law, the Arizona immigration law, he was on "Meet the Press" saying we're concerned this is — this law is about racial profiling, we may file a suit about this. And then this admission — he never — and by the way its 17 pages if you print it out.
HUCKABEE: Yes.
HANNITY: He admits he never read it.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HUCKABEE: Well, it's — I'll tell you what has happened this week, Eric Holder has made Robert Gibbs look good which I was not sure was possible. But he made Gibbs look good.
HANNITY: Yes.
HUCKABEE: Because he's taken two hits from Congressmen from Texas, I call it Texas two, the Obama administration zero. It was a bad week in admitting —
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HANNITY: Alright.
HUCKABEE: — that he had never read the law.
HANNITY: Here is the problem, though, because the president himself, you know, he has a law background. He's supposed to be the smartest guy in —
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HUCKABEE: A law professor.
HANNITY: A law professor — alright, he never read the law. He's — look, either he didn't read it and he's ignorant and didn't interpreting it properly or he's purposely politicizing it when he said, well, you might go in an ice cream shop —
HUCKABEE: Yes.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HANNITY: — and then we ask him where your papers are.
I've read the law, four specific times —
HUCKABEE: Yes.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HANNITY: — it says specifically you cannot racially profile.
HUCKABEE: I too have read the law and the only way that you would get in trouble in an ice cream parlor if you tried to steal the ice cream —
HANNITY: Yes.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HUCKABEE: — before the officer came in. But other than that —
HANNITY: You can't —
HUCKABEE: — that's not an issue. The unfortunate thing is that this law is becoming this lightning rod for a debate that ought to have been solved by a Congress taking care of securing the borders in the first place.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}What I don't understand is the one Constitutional responsibility of the president and the federal government have is to secure borders. They are not responsible for making you buy health insurance, picking CEOs, owning car companies, bailing out insurance companies and banks. They are responsible for taking care of the border.
But what they are supposed to do they don't what they're not supposed to do, they are doing.
HANNITY: Alright, but I — the sinister side of this, it's having an impact. The board of the LA city council, they're going to boycott Arizona.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HUCKABEE: Yes.
HANNITY: D.C. is now trying to follow suit. This girls' basketball team in Illinois —
HUCKABEE: A terrible situation, yes.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HANNITY: — they won their first conference championship in 26 years they can't — they were selling cookies and having bake sales, they can't go. The All-Star Game may be pulled from Arizona now. So — so the misrepresentation, purposeful misrepresentation is having an impact.
HUCKABEE: Well, that's not fair to Arizona. I do think Arizona is probably going to up spending a lot of money defending itself in court. That's probably going to happen. You can rest assured the ACLU is hoping as soon as this law goes into effect in July that they can find somebody who can claim that they were harassed by the police, that this law was violated, where someone asked them first before a quote, "legal contact".
It could have a chilling effect on people coming forward and telling police officers what they saw in the commission of a crime.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HANNITY: What do you make of the exchange — it's almost like, who's on first? Who — you know —
HUCKABEE: Yes.
HANNITY: — what's on second and I don't know who's on third base.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Listening to Eric Holder, thread this needle, his unwillingness to admit that there were radical or could be radical Islamic terrorist connections to the attempted Times Square bombing.
HUCKABEE: Sean, it's inexplicable why this administration has a hard time understanding that the real enemy America faces is Jihadism carried out by radical Islam. That doesn't mean that we castigate every Muslim in the world as being radical and being a Jihadist.
But you cannot look at what has happened even in places like Little Rock where this guy goes by and shoots two young soldiers at a recruiting station. What happened with the Times Square car bomber; what has happened with the attempted underwear bomber? Every bit of this is Islamic Jihadism.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HANNITY: But — and in every single case there's this rush by the administration to race out there and tell everybody there is no terrorist connection. This is a lone wolf. And every time they turn out to be wrong.
HUCKABEE: This is the polar opposite of what used to be where we had a conspiracy theory every time there was an assassination whether it was John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy and we said there was a conspiracy, it turned out they can only pin it on the lone assassin. In this case they are rushing to try to say it was a lone assassin but it's part of a greater network —
HANNITY: Right.
HUCKABEE: — of pure evil and we just have to call it what it is.
HANNITY: Here's the big question, because of their unwillingness to do so and, you know, their lack of willingness to address that there is a real war with a real enemy that we have really identified, radical Islamists, does that — here's the question: does that weaken, does that create a susceptibility, a vulnerability for the American people? Are we more likely to be an attacked?
HUCKABEE: Well, I think we're more likely to be not only attacked or more likely for — to be unable to defend ourselves or to preempt it because we're so politically correct, we're so afraid, and that's why you have 80-year-old ladies with blue hair and a walker getting the shake down at an airport. And somebody can come right behind them, but we don't want to do anything even though it might be an 18 to 30-year-old —
HANNITY: Nobody gets wanded more than me.
HUCKABEE: No, I do.
HANNITY: Nobody gets wanded — I have a bull's-eye, wand Hannity, it says on my back.
HUCKABEE: Well, then the two of us should never go to an airport together because we'll shut the whole thing down.
HANNITY: Alright, pretty frightening times.
HUCKABEE: It is.
HANNITY: Governor, we'll be watching this weekend.
HUCKABEE: Alright, thanks.
HANNITY: Thanks for being with us.
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