Guests: Eugene Robinson, Howard Dean, Rep. Barney Frank
LAWRENCE O‘DONNELL, HOST: President Obama‘s budget is dead on arrival.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I pledge to cut the deficit in half.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We‘re ready to take this debate on.
O‘DONNELL (voice-over): President Obama‘s budget plan puts him between worried Democrats and uncompromising Republicans.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hot off the presses and already getting a cool reception from Democrats and Republicans.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), MINORITY LEADER: Huge disappointment to those in both parties.
O‘DONNELL: Democrats see too many cuts that hurt children and the poor.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: More than a trillion in cuts.
MARK HALPERIN, MSNBC SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: If a Republican president had proposed them, the left would go absolutely crazy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Grant, 14 million children who are growing up in poverty could soon disappear.
JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC HOST: Taking heating subsidies away from poor people.
O‘DONNELL: Republicans say Obama doesn‘t cut enough.
REP. BOEHNER (R-OH), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We‘re broke.
MCCONNELL: We have to cut even from programs that are good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There‘s very little that we see in this so far that commonality on spending.
O‘DONNELL: The White House depends the cuts and calls new spending investments.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: More money, education would be one, the National Institutes of Health, research for medicine, those kinds of things, energy and some transportation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We think it‘s a responsible plan.
OBAMA: Cut excessive spending wherever we find it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He talked about his principles, about not doing this on the backs of the most vulnerable.
O‘DONNELL: The president gets some Democratic support.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I may lose my job over the fact I say we need to make some changes to Social Security.
REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D), MARYLAND: It strikes the right balance between deficit reduction and plan towards fiscal responsibility.
OBAMA: It‘s going to require Democrats and Republicans coming together to make it happen.
O‘DONNELL: But with the presidential campaign virtually under way, compromise is not what Republicans have in mind.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, “HARDBALL” HOST: The right goes wild.
BOEHNER: I‘ve never seen a more wide open race for the Republican nomination.
NEWT GINGRICH ®, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: The Obama administration is pro-deficit spending and pro-high taxes.
GOV. HALEY BARBOUR ®, MISSISSIPPI: Pursued an agenda bent on fulfilling the pent-up demands of every frustrated liberal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He‘s obviously testing the waters pretty seriously here.
BILL MAHER, TV HOST: Can you even think of a Republican who you would consider voting for in 2012?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O‘DONNELL: President Obama released his spending blueprint for 2012 today. The White House says the new budget would cut the deficit by $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years. The 2011 deficit is projected to hit a record $1.65 trillion.
The president‘s budget includes a five-year freeze on domestic spending, tax hikes on oil companies, and an 11 percent increase in funding to education.
President Obama calls the cuts in his budget tough choices, eliminating Pell Grants for summer school, allowing interests to start building up on federal loans while graduate students are still in school, and cutting some $2.5 billion from a program that helps low-income people pay their energy bills during extreme weather.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: As the bipartisan fiscal commission concluded, the only way to truly tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it, in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes. So, what we‘ve done here is make a down payment. But there‘s going to be more work that needs to be done, and it‘s going to require Democrats and Republicans coming together to make it happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: As if on cue, Republicans immediately attacked President Obama‘s leadership.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCONNELL: The president has said he wants us to win the future. But this budget advocates the future. It spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much. It says that the president does not have the will or the ability to do what we need to do with the money that we have.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Joining me now is former Governor Howard Dean.
Governor Dean, thanks for joining us tonight.
HOWARD DEAN, FORMER DNC CHAIRMAN: Thanks for having me on, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: Governor, I have to say at the outset, I don‘t understand the president‘s budget as a strategic document. It is not going to pass. The Republicans in the House won‘t pass it, just as the Republican budget is dead on arrival, too. It won‘t pass because Senate Democrats won‘t pass it.
So, these are negotiating tools. The president seems to be giving up an awful lot in his initial negotiating tool, isn‘t he?
DEAN: Well, there are some things I disagree with the president‘s budget on, particularly the low-income heating assistance. But the president is being the president, he‘s got to put something that‘s credible before the people of the country, and I think he has done that.
When you look at the Republicans, they have really made a huge mistake. They spent their entire time since they‘ve been here fighting about abortion and health care, and they haven‘t done a damn thing about jobs or balancing the budget.
And then they come out with the budget cut list and it‘s sort of a hate list. They hate the environment. So, they cut that. They hate science. So, they cut that. They don‘t like people who don‘t vote for them, so, they cut historical black colleges.
I mean, you know, they don‘t have a budget plan and the public knows it.
The president can‘t do that. He has to have a plan. This is a plan.
I think it‘s a little top heavy in defense, frankly. You know, for $2.5 billion off the defense budget isn‘t going to be noticed. And that will keep people warm in their homes, especially in the cold winter that we‘ve had.
But, you know, the president has done something that has to be done. We can argue about the particulars. Congress will argue about the particulars. He‘s showing leadership the Republicans are whining and moaning and doing what they do best which is to complain. But they have nothing constructive to offer.
O‘DONNELL: Governor, speaking of defense, it seems that House Republicans may actually be willing to cut more in defense spending than a Democratic president. Shouldn‘t the president have pushed harder in that category?
DEAN: Well, I think so, because I think they wouldn‘t be quite as many human services cuts. Look, we need to cut spending here. We don‘t need to talk about Social Security. We don‘t need—because that doesn‘t have a direct affect on the deficit. We need to talk about Medicare and we need to talk about revenue increases.
One of the things I like about the president‘s budget is, over the long term, he actually does deal with the deficit. The way he deals with the deficit is to acknowledge that 60 percent of the deficit in 2018 will be a result of Bush tax cuts. And those expire at the president‘s budget. They don‘t. So, in fact, the Republicans have a budget that is much, much larger in terms of its deficit than the president‘s budget.
So, the president—once again, the Democrats turned out to be the party of fiscal responsibility, not the Republicans.
O‘DONNELL: Do you see a philosophy of governing in this budget? Is -
I‘m having trouble with that because I see education in certain ways, but then there are cuts in education. Money is being taken away from education here, and then maybe added on over here. I can‘t see a coherent philosophy expressed in this budget.
DEAN: I do see a general philosophy. I wonder, too. You know, I‘ve done lots of budgets, but I‘ve never done a federal budget. And a federal budget is 100 times more complicated, isn‘t it, than a state budge.
But the philosophy I do think is there. I think the president believes of all the things that are important to make sure that you preserve the investment in education is number one. I wouldn‘t agree with what he‘s doing with interest rates and on the Pell Grants, if that‘s what his philosophy, but I do think you see that come through. And it is consistent with his State of the Union address. He wants to win the future.
So, I do see a philosophy there. But I see some incoherence. I agree with you, I see some incoherence in the things that are actually being done under the hood. But that‘s I think because the budget process is so unwieldy and overwhelming at the federal level that you do things like that. It may not be coherent underneath the hood. But I think there‘s an overall philosophy here that is the president‘s philosophy.
O‘DONNELL: Governor Howard Dean, thanks for joining us.
DEAN: Thanks, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: The Progressive Change Campaign Committee issued this statement regarding the president‘s budget. “Every proposed cut to necessary programs like Pell Grants and heating for low income seniors needs to be judged in the context of the unnecessary tax cuts for Wall Street millionaires that passed at the end of last year, proposing even more tax breaks for Wall Street banks while slashing and burning necessary government programs is right wing radicalism, and no Democratic president should be part of it.”
Joining me now, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services. Thanks for joining me tonight, Congressman Frank.
REP. BARNEY FRANK (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Well, glad to. It‘s an important night.
O‘DONNELL: Congressman, do you think that the president‘s budget is fairly described as right wing radicalism?
FRANK: No. I think it is fairly described as what happens when you are unwilling to make the major reductions in America‘s world-wide military footprint has to be made. If you agree that we‘ve got to continue to not be the world policeman and keep noncombat troops in Iraq, and I am fuzzy on the concept of a noncombat troop, but if you‘re going to continue the enormous level of military spending, the president makes some small cuts in it, but not significant ones.
That‘s pretty much the best you can do. I am troubled. Howard Dean was right on the low income assistance. What I worry about is when investment gets a priority, that efforts to try and keep the poorest and most vulnerable, keep body and soul together for them gets hurt.
But the fundamental point is this. You can‘t continue, I just saw a number. When Bill Clinton left office, the military budget was $300 billion. It‘s now $700 billion. We‘ve got two wars and we‘ve got enormous excesses elsewhere. And until and unless the president is willing to say, look, America can no longer afford this—let me just take Western Europe, Lawrence.
In 1949, Harry Truman did a great thing by going to the defense of the war weakened European countries threatened by terrible tyrant Joe Stalin. There‘s no threat to Europe any more. They‘re not poor any more. Only thing that changed is that tens of millions of dollars of annual American military subsidy.
So, the answer is, there has got to be a much greater recognition of the need to make military cuts. We also shouldn‘t have given Warren Buffett an estate tax cut. To Warren Buffett‘s credit, he didn‘t want it. He opposed it.
So, there was an excess in the spending cuts, in tax cuts for the wealthiest. But the fundamental change has to come by us announcing that America can no longer afford to police the world, particularly people that don‘t need our help.
O‘DONNELL: Congressman Frank, no one knows more about regulating Wall Street than you do. Do you see in the president‘s budget what are being described as giveaways to Wall Street?
FRANK: Well, actually, here, in fairness to the president, he‘s doing the right thing as opposed to the Republicans. What‘s striking here, Lawrence, is in the Republican budget, there are at least three attacks, direct attacks on the effort to provide financial reform. They are underfunding the Security and Exchange Commission.
The president, to his credit, has proposed increases for the Security and Exchange Commission and Commodities Futures Trading Commission. We have had a terrible problem of unregulated derivatives. The bill that we got into law allows for the regulation of derivatives, but not without money. They also have tried to undermine the Consumer Bureau under Elizabeth Warren, the great friend of the consumer, and they‘re trying to limit that spending.
So—and, by the way, relatively small dollars, a couple hundred millions in the SEC. I‘d say relatively small in a budget of over a trillion. So, the president in his budget does provide the funding for the regulatory agencies, and one of the fights we‘re going to have on the floor is the Republicans are trying to re-deregulate derivatives. They‘re trying to stop investor protection. They‘re trying to undermine consumer protection by denying the funds to the agencies that we‘ve newly empowered.
O‘DONNELL: Congressman Frank, the president‘s budget is obviously dead on arrival in a Republican House of Representatives. The Republican House of Representatives budget will be dead on arrival wherever it goes, to the Senate if they pass one.
Where should the president‘s veto line be in negotiating with the Republican House on these budgets?
FRANK: Oh, well, certainly, he should not be going lower in many of the areas that he‘s been. And I, again, to stress the financial services piece, I hope he will make it clear that they‘ve got to have this level of regulatory authority.
The problem, frankly, is, Lawrence, we don‘t know what the Republicans are going to do. You know, here‘s the problem, the Republican leadership has dissolved. The leadership now is the Tea Party people. And so, the problem is, you don‘t know there‘s going to be an ability to negotiate.
I mean, it‘s hard to negotiate with a negotiating committee that consists of John Boehner, Eric Cantor, the mad hatter, and the white rabbit.
O‘DONNELL: Well, if anyone can do it, Congressman Barney Frank can lead the way in the House of Representatives. Congressman Frank, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
FRANK: Thank you, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: Ron Paul wins the straw poll at CPAC and his first order of business is to continue a public feud with Donald Trump over who‘s more electable.
But overshadowing the straw poll is the staff shakeup at the Sarah Palin political team. Is it the clearest sign yet she might seriously be thinking about a White House run?
And later, John Boehner says he knows President Obama is American, but refuses to force anyone else to face that fact.
And Lisa Ling is here to talk about politics and the premier of her new show.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: Coming up, the surprises in the CPAC straw poll. Governor Chris Christie isn‘t even planning to run for the Republican nomination and he beats most of the candidates who will run. And Michele Bachmann tops Sarah Palin. Eugene Robinson is charged with making sense of CPAC for us tonight.
And later, Bill O‘Reilly‘s ambushed producer gets punked.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The winner of the straw poll this year, Congressman Ron Paul gets 30 percent.
(CHEERS)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: For the second consecutive year, libertarian Congressman Ron Paul‘s straight talk propelled him to Conservative Political Action Conference‘s straw poll victory. Ron Paul finished seven points ahead of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. And current New Jersey Governor Chris Christie received 6 percent of the vote. Newt Gingrich got five. And Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitch Daniels all received 4 percent, beating the most recent losing vice presidential candidate who will never be president, Sarah Palin, who got a mere 3 percent.
Write-in candidate Donald Trump received about 1 percent of the vote, despite telling the crowd the unwelcome truth, that Ron Paul has zero chance of winning the general election or the primaries for that matter.
Ron Paul defended himself against Donald Trump this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. RON PAUL ®, TEXAS: I was elected 11 times and somebody said, well, how many times has Donald Trump been elected? Does he have really the right to go and criticize others and say they are unelectable?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Yes, Donald Trump does have that right and he‘s pretty good at exercising because he can count. He‘s actually good with numbers, unlike anyone with CPAC, and he can read polls which clearly speak of the happy hopelessness of the “Paul for President” movement.
Joining me now, MSNBC political analyst and “The Washington Post” columnist Eugene Robinson.
Gene, thanks for joining us tonight.
EUGENE ROBINSON, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Great to be here, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: Gene, let‘s listen to what Rush Limbaugh said about CPAC on his radio show today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: The problem with CPAC, frankly, is that rather than promote traditional conservative principles, maybe even with new strategies, it‘s fine and dandy. Rather than do that, the principles are now up for grabs. The definition of a conservative is up for grabs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Gene, Rush seems to have a point there because by endorsing Ron Paul, CPAC has endorsed a candidate who—let me see—has no problem with gay marriage, who‘s against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He‘s against our alliance with Israel. He is for decriminalizing marijuana.
ROBINSON: Right.
O‘DONNELL: Starts to sound not so conservative.
ROBINSON: Right. Not so conservative, and to go further, he wants us back on the gold standard. Now, I mean, it doesn‘t make a lot of sense until you really look at the confusion that is modern conservativism these days and you kind of see it at CPAC. I mean, Ron Paul gets up to speak and he gets kind of shouted down, and people don‘t like what he‘s saying, and yet, he wins the straw poll because he has that 30 percent.
It‘s a mess, frankly. You said I was going to make sense of it, but that‘s kind of—I feel like, you know, mission impossible. This assignment will self-destruct in 10 seconds.
O‘DONNELL: Why do Romney and all the other candidates treat CPAC so seriously if they know going in, and they should know going in, that they‘re going to lose this poll. They show up, and they give speeches there. They add credibility to an organization that repeatedly produces as their favorite candidate utterly hopeless candidates.
ROBINSON: Right. So, Ron Paul wins the straw poll. But where is the kind of energy and enthusiasm and motive force of the Republican Party right now? It‘s all in the conservative wing.
This is the prom. This is the yearly time to put on your best and come out, and you got to look good at CPAC if you‘re going to consider yourself a presidential candidate—which is why it‘s interesting that although I understand there was Sarah Palin look alike at CPAC, there was, in fact, no Sarah Palin.
O‘DONNELL: Well, now, these people voting for him know—they know very clearly what his position is on the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war. These people are informed about Ron Paul‘s positions. Are we to take some hope from what these conservatives are actually thinking?
ROBINSON: A little bit actually, insofar as we see these views reflected, for example, in the freshman class in the House of Representatives. I have a feeling we‘re going to see some interesting votes that don‘t necessarily go the way that John Boehner and Eric Cantor might want them to go, because I think a number of these Tea Party types who got elected to Congress don‘t like foreign entanglements and would not mind cutting the defense budget, and a few of them might support decriminalization of drugs. It‘s going to be an interesting time.
O‘DONNELL: And Sarah Palin, who did so badly at CPAC, has hired Michael Glassner as her chief of staff, political operative. He worked on the McCain presidential campaign; worked on vice presidential side of it.
Do we take her any more seriously because she‘s hired exactly one possible campaign staffer?
ROBINSON: Not much. If you thought there was some sort of linear design to her process of thought as she decides whether or not to run, then you might say, yes, this is a step towards perhaps running. I‘m not sure that it‘s linear. I think it‘s winding, at best. I don‘t know that she has decided.
So, I wouldn‘t read a whole lot into it. I have a feeling that Todd Palin is still the effective chief of staff of the Sarah Palin operation.
O‘DONNELL: Eugene Robinson of “The Washington Post” and MSNBC—thanks for joining us tonight, Gene.
ROBINSON: Great to be here, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: And a quick programming note: Tomorrow night on THE LAST WORD, my very special guest will be possible presidential candidate, Mr. Donald Trump.
The president was born an American citizen, and he‘s also Christian. That‘s what John Boehner says he believes, but he‘s not going to try to convince fellow conservatives of that. Lisa Ling, host of the new show “Our America” joins me.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: Ahead in this hour: the highest elected Republican in the land says he believes President Obama is an American citizen and a Christian. But John Boehner says it‘s not his job to help his fellow conservatives separate fact from fiction.
And big surprise—facts aren‘t all that important at FOX News. An insider says the network makes stuff up. And when confronted with that, an O‘Reilly producer can‘t think of one thing to say to defend his network.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I believe that Barack Obama‘s religious beliefs do govern his foreign policy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are his religious beliefs?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I believe that he is a Muslim.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You do?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many of you believe that here. Wow. You believe he‘s a Muslim?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
O‘DONNELL: And you think that‘s having impact on what he says and does?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fundamentally, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jack?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I do also.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Across the nation, Muslim and Birther fever infected at least ten state legislatures. Bills requiring presidential candidates to provide proof of natural born citizenship is driven by an intensely angry 27 percent of Americans who need more proof that their president is not an undocumented worker.
On Sunday‘s “Meet the Press,” Speaker of the House John Boehner tried to find what turns out to be a nonexistent line between not being associated with lunatic conspiracy theorists and not angering those same lunatic conspiracy theorists.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JOHN BOEHNER ®, HOUSE SPEAKER: The state of Hawaii has said that he was born there. That‘s good enough for me. The president says he‘s a Christian. I accept him at his word.
DAVID GREGORY, HOST, “MEET THE PRESS”: But isn‘t that a little business fast and loose? I mean, you are the leader in Congress and you‘re not standing up to obvious facts and saying these are facts; if you don‘t believe it, it is nonsense.
BOEHNIER: I just outlined the facts as I understand them. I believe that the president is a citizen. I believe the president is a Christian. I‘ll take him at his word.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: And I guess we‘ll just have to take John Boehner at his word that he is a Christian. Meanwhile, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, Ann Coulter felt perfectly comfortable taking a contrarian stand against freedom and the freedom hating crowd loved it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANN COULTER, COLUMNIST: What do you mean knowing that there are jailed journalists? I think there should be more jailed journalists.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: So is this the real America, as Republicans like to call it, a nation of paranoid, freedom hating conspiracy theorists?
Joining me now is Lisa Ling, whose new series “Our America With Lisa Ling” premiers on the Oprah Winfrey Network tomorrow. Lisa, thanks for joining us.
LISA LING, “OUR AMERICA WITH LISA LING”: Thanks for having me.
O‘DONNELL: So when you see that focus group that Frank Luntz was running, where they are talking these things about we he is Muslim, and they don‘t think he was born here—I get the feeling you‘ve been out there. You‘re not surprised.
LING: Tragically, I am not surprised. And I am someone who grew up outside of Sacramento, California. And because I am Asian American, I actually felt very conflicted about my cultural identity for a long time. I never felt totally American. Nor do I feel entirely Chinese.
So our intention with this series that we are doing, “Our America,” is really to try and define what it means to be an American. In the case of President Obama, I can‘t believe we are even still discussing this today. But throughout the course of working on this series, I spent a lot of time in churches. Some of the things I heard in churches on the pulpit about the president were so shocking and appalling. And the whole idea of separation of church and state was certainly not evident in the churches.
Completely talking lambasting our president in churches was something I never expected to hear throughout this country.
O‘DONNELL: I want to go quickly to what Ann Coulter said about jailed journalists. You had some experience with this, with your sister being held in North Korea, and Bill Clinton coming to the rescue to get her out of there in a very dramatic situation. I am sure you and your family were terribly afraid of how long she would be held.
What is your reaction when you hear Ann Coulter so flippantly make a
reference like that?
LING: It makes me incensed. Certainly, there were those people who said that my sister and her team should not have been there, and they deserved the punishment they received. And that just angers me so much, because I‘m such a fierce advocate of free press. I suppose if there weren‘t, we should just kind of sit and remain ignorant, and not have the desire, and just allow people who sort of pontificate and profess to know things about which they may not know to be our source of news.
And I think that‘s actually very a very dangerous attitude. I think that these days, with so much media, the need for journalism and people being in the field is more important than ever.
O‘DONNELL: It seems that what we‘re seeing there with Ann Coulter and with the thinking even in the focus group is this huge abundance of freedom. We are so free that Ann can just make a joke about jailing journalists. I think it was a joke. I‘m not sure what the full context was. That those people in the focus group can very freely think whatever they feel like thinking, without necessarily having facts to back it up.
Is there a kind of laziness that you find that comes with our freedom?
LING: I actually don‘t think there‘s a lot of thinking at all. I think we‘re so desperate to be told what to think that we take so much of what we hear as fact or reality or as news. And I actually think that that‘s dangerous.
O‘DONNELL: Now, you‘ve been everywhere. You‘ve just been everywhere on the planet. Surely you have been to Egypt.
LING: I have been to Egypt, yes.
O‘DONNELL: How many times?
LING: Yeah, I‘ve been to Egypt twice.
O‘DONNELL: What you saw happen in the previous 20 days in Egypt, how much did that surprise you? What of it made sense to you, as you were watching it unfold?
LING: Well, it was surprising, but having just sort of seen what happened in Iran last year was—I think that there‘s a movement happening throughout the world. It is increasingly more difficult for any dictator to maintain this kind of stranglehold over the people.
And I just think it is so incredible that the social networks that were created by American young people are now destabilizing governments and allowing millions of people to organize. I think the consequences, however, for the U.S. government will be kind of interesting. I think from here on out, we really need to rethink U.S. policy towards authoritarian regimes, because they can no longer continue to maintain the stranglehold.
O‘DONNELL: Yeah, the social media and the Internet and all of this free flow of information is something that the regimes don‘t know how to deal with. They used to be able to just clamp down on newspapers, control the newspapers and you‘re done. That‘s it. That controls information in these countries. But it is different now.
LING: You can only shut them down so long. I thought it was actually interesting. I read a report that China—as soon as Egypt started to erupt, China actually shut down a lot of their social networks and their media, because it is a scary notion for a lot of these dictators in these kinds of regimes.
O‘DONNELL: I want to get to this clip of your show, because I think, in a certain kind of way, it is a companion piece to Frank Luntz‘s focus group. Let‘s take a look at the clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LING: Todd, I am watching you do your healing and you‘re like bam, bam, bam. What‘s that about.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It‘s not the word that really is doing anything. But I do feel releases of power when I do that. At that moment, that‘s how I focus on releasing the power of God. It is the power of Jesus releasing that.
LING: Are you a prophet, Todd?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I am not a prophet. I call myself just a normal guy that believes in the gifts of the holy spirit. And I am totally dependent on God‘s spirit. I‘ve got to acknowledge God has given me a gift, and I need to use that gift. I can hear the voice of God.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: OK. What exactly does that guy do for a living?
LING: So he is a faith healer. He believes he was anointed by God to heel people who are sick and have ailments. It‘s interesting because 80 percent of Americans believe that God can heal. When I went in to this story about faith healers, I went into it with a sort of suspicious and critical kind of feeling.
And actually what I experienced at this faith healing conference was quite miraculous. I met a man who has been wheelchair bound for 15 years. And God told him that he was going to walk on the last day, in the last hour of this conference. And I‘m not going to tell you what happens because you have to watch the show, but it completely shocked me and transformed my notion of faith. It was a pretty amazing experience.
O‘DONNELL: Lisa Ling whose show “Our America” is on Oprah‘s network.
I believe it is called OWN.
LING: OWN, The Oprah Winfrey Network.
O‘DONNELL: She owns everything. Might as well call it that.
LING: Almost.
O‘DONNELL: Lisa Ling, thank you for being my Valentine tonight on THE
LAST WORD.
LING: Thank you.
O‘DONNELL: Fox News faux tough guy Bill O‘Reilly calls MSNBC anti-American and he backs that up with, that‘s right, nothing.
And O‘Reilly producer Jessie Waters is an expert on ambushing people like Al Gore and Bill Moyers. What will Waters‘ reaction be when a liberal website actually corners him. That‘s coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: Time for tonight‘s rewrite. Do you ever get the feeling that Glenn Beck‘s job is to be a smoke screen for Bill O‘Reilly? Beck is busy saying so many utterly insane things that get him so much attention that it‘s easy to miss O‘Reilly‘s lower voltage lies.
Here is O‘Reilly talking with renowned prostitute patron Dick Morris about the thing O‘Reilly can never stop talking about, his interview with President Obama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL O‘REILLY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: The president wouldn‘t basically define how he sees the Muslim Brotherhood. He would not do it. He said they are strains of anti-Americanism in it. But that sounds like MSNBC. There are strains of anti-Americanism over there.
DICK MORRIS, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Sure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: So O‘Reilly tells the lie that MSNBC is anti-American and gets a desperate guy whose public record with prostitutes makes him unemployable anywhere else to agree with him. And his devoted audience thinks they just learned something, which explains why a University of Maryland study found that Fox News viewers are misinformed more than any other news network viewers. A study that was not the first to reach that conclusion.
Now, when I say O‘Reilly is lying about this, I‘m giving him credit for sometimes being smarter than what he actually says. And on this one, O‘Reilly knows better. He knows there‘s nothing anti-American going on at this network.
But he‘s seen the studies about how, shall we say, impressionable his audience is. And he knows everyone on the Fox payroll who appears as a guest on the show is going to say exactly what he wants them to say. He has by now figured out exactly what his audience wants to hear, and that‘s what he delivers.
And when that requires lying, O‘Reilly can do it without blinking because he has discovered there‘s a lot of money to be made in those lies.
Here is what I see when I look at Bill O‘Reilly: a very, very, very rich man who has grown phenomenally rich by playing a character on TV that the most gullible audience in the history of television falls for. When I look at O‘Reilly, I also see dozens of guys I grew up with who were just like him; overbearing, argumentative, Irish guys who think they know everything and can back up nothing.
Those guys have always been a joke to me, which is why O‘Reilly almost never has the capacity to outrage me, because he is just a joke to me, most of the time.
But when he blares homicidal encouragement for killing physicians who perform abortions, he deserves all the serious minded condemnation he has received for that. Much of it eloquently delivered through the microphones of this network.
But most of what O‘Reilly does day-in and day-out deserves nothing more than to be laughed at, which is how “Saturday Night Live” treated him this weekend. What else can you do with someone who says he knows of no explanation of why the tides go in and out? Then when told it has a little something to do with the moon, thinks he can stump you with this question.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
O‘REILLY: How did the moon get there? How‘d it get there? How did it get there? How‘d the sun get there? How‘d it get here? How did it get there? Come on? Who put it there?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: He believes he can ask an utterly idiotic question like that and intimidate you, simply by using his faux Irish tough guy style. Billy Boy, I know real Irish tough guys. They don‘t look and sound like you. And none of them come from Long Island like you. And none of them go to work in makeup like you.
Anybody who knows real tough isn‘t fooled by your act, Bill.
Now, I have a homework assignment for your under worked staff. Since they finished explaining the tides and the moon to you, put them to work trying to find what this network has done or what I have done that is anti-American.
Take as long as you want. Find it and show it to your audience. And if you‘re as afraid to accept my challenge as I think you are, if you don‘t even try to provide facts to back up what you said about me, no one watching this show is going to be surprised, Billy, because they will know that you will have proved everything that I just said about you.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: If you refuse to go on Bill O‘Reilly‘s show or say something he doesn‘t like, he‘s coming after you. Excuse me. He‘s not brave enough to do that. So he‘s going to send a guy who works for him to chase you down with a camera. When you see this guy coming at you, get ready to be bullied, O‘Reilly style.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JESSE WATERS, FOX NEWS PRODUCER: Mr. Vice president.
AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don‘t like ambush journalism.
WATERS: Judge, Jessie Waters with Fox News. How are you?
That‘s truly disgraceful. You have to back up, your accusations, my man.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you leave me alone for just a second?
WATERS: Actually no. We‘d like to talk to you a second.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would like to ask you to leave my private property or I will call the police.
WATERS: You‘re just dishonest.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I listened to the portion that I highlighted.
WATERS: You didn‘t hear the entire thing. Don‘t know the context.
And you owe everybody an apology.
Want to comment on that?
What do you think about that. Do you think this was --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on my show. I‘ll ask you—Bill won‘t do it. He doesn‘t have the courage. But I will ask you, come on my show.
WATERS: Bill would have been here today, but he is interviewing Lindsey Lohan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of course.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: On Friday, Jessie Waters showed up at CPAC in Washington and found himself at the wrong end of someone else‘s view finder. My next guest, Ben Armbruster of ThinkProgress.org, caught up with Waters, and asked about an interview that a former Fox News employee gave to Media Matters in which he said, quote, “stuff is just made up.”
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BEN ARMBRUSTER, THINKPROGRESS.ORG: Are you Jessie Waters?
WATERS: What‘s that?
ARMBRUSTER: Are you Jessie Waters?
WATERS: Who are you?
ARMBRUSTER: I‘m Ben Armbruster of ThinkProgress.org.
WATERS: What‘s up, buddy? How you doing?
ARMBRUSTER: I want to ask you a question.
WATERS: Is this an ambush? Listen, this is not how you do an ambush, man.
ARMBRUSTER: Why not?
WATERS: You have to have a real camera, first of all.
ARMBRUSTER: This is real.
WATERS: If you are doing a real ambush, you have to have a crew. You have to get a sound guy. It is kind of a little Jay-Z. I got to teach you some things.
ARMBRUSTER: So I wanted to ask you, there is a report out a couple days ago about a Fox News insider saying that Fox News just makes stuff up, and it is a propaganda outfit for the GOP. I was wondering what you think about that.
WATERS: Well, first of all, when you do these things, you kind of got to like start, hey, how you doing, you know, what‘s your name?
ARMBRUSTER: So what do you think about it?
WATERS: You know, usually when I do these things, I say hi, Jessie Waters.
ARMBRUSTER: I did introduce myself. Do you think Fox makes stuff up?
WATERS: Bro, you come at me with the camera phone.
ARMBRUSTER: Answer the question. Yes or no. Do you think Fox makes stuff up? Yes or no.
WATERS: Do I think fox makes stuff up? That‘s your question? You want to repeat the question?
ARMBRUSTER: Do you have an answer or no.
WATERS: Are you going to repeat the question.
ARMBRUSTER: A Fox insider said that Fox—
WATERS: bro, I‘m kidding around, I heard the question. I‘m just messing with you, man.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Joining me now, Ben Armbruster, assistant editor for ThinkProgress.org. Thanks for joining us tonight, Ben.
ARMBRUSTER: Thanks for having me.
O‘DONNELL: Just messing with you. That‘s what he does for a living. But that is the best he could come up with when his news organization, so-called, faces the worst accusation a news organization can face?
ARMBRUSTER: Yeah. I‘m not really sure what his strategy there was. I think what he was trying to do was he was trying to bring me down to his level, and he was assuming that I was ambushing him. Therefore, he was trying to, quote, school me on how to do a proper ambush.
I mean, all I was really doing was I was reporting at CPAC for ThinkProgress.org on a variety of conservative issues. And I happened to see Jessie Waters roaming around the hotel.
I saw him, I thought hey, I saw this reporter from Media Matters that week, and I thought perhaps since he is a Fox News employee that I would ask him about what he thought about it. But after I asked him, he didn‘t really—obviously didn‘t answer the question, but he just kind of assumed that I was ambushing him, which I clearly wasn‘t.
I mean, Jesse Waters‘ view of ambushing is, for example, what he did with my former colleague, Amanda Terkel, following her two hours outside of Washington, D.C. and ambushing her on vacation.
O‘DONNELL: She was—just to identify her, she‘s one of the people we just saw in that compilation of Jesse‘s dirty work.
ARMBRUSTER: That‘s right. And all I was doing was just—I just wanted to ask him what he thought about Media Matters‘ reports. And his response was mainly to belittle me and ignore the substantive issue of what he thought about this insider saying that Fox News makes stuff up.
And so, I mean, it really wasn‘t an ambush. I wasn‘t ambushing Jesse Waters. There were hundreds of reporters at CPAC that day. I wasn‘t following him anywhere. It wasn‘t premeditated.
I just happened to see him walking around, thought maybe I‘ll ask a Fox News employee what he thinks about this story.
O‘DONNELL: The report you‘re talking about, about the Fox insider, says a lot more than they make stuff up. It goes on in great detail in quotes to describe their work process, and how the message is delivered, to deliver at that network the conservative message, the Republican party message.
It is very detailed. It is the kind of thing that a news organization would really worry about if that kind of report came out, and would want to try to confront it and deal with it in as forceful a way as possible. You offering him that opportunity and him having no idea what to do, except to try to run away, which is what he was doing. All I se on that video is he‘s trying to get away from you.
ARMBRUSTER: Yeah, that‘s right. I think it‘s pretty—seems fairly simple for me, from my point of view. If he could just say—have a comment one way or another, or say yes or no or what he thinks about it.
But I think his response is kind of emblematic of what Fox News does in general. They sort of—they divert actual substantive issues and they belittle and they put down their perceived opponents to divert attention from what the real issue is, which is what we pretty much all know anyway, is that, you know, Fox News is a GOP, you know, propaganda outfit.
So the Media Matters report really wasn‘t necessarily something we didn‘t know already. But it was interesting that an actual Fox News insider had said this.
So he sort of came back to the Fox News tactics of diverting attention from a real issue and making it about me rather than answering the substance of the question.
O‘DONNELL: Ben Armbruster of Think Progress, thank you very much for your time tonight, and thank you for your work at CPAC. Very valuable video.
ARMBRUSTER: Thanks for having me.
O‘DONNELL: You can have THE LAST WORD online at our blog, TheLastWord.MSNBC.com. You can also follow us on Facebook and follow me @Lawrence on Twitter. That‘s tonight‘s LAST WORD. Rachel Maddow is up next. Good evening, Rachel.
END
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