Newt Gingrich on Bush's Press Conference
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
O'REILLY: So people get angry at David Gregory and we're going to see him a little later on with Laura Ingraham and Sam Donaldson and Dan Rather and people like this who are very aggressive in their questioning. But I say that's fine. You have got to be aggressive, you have got to be respectful, but now we're in a situation in America where I believe — and tell me what you think, because I'm very interested to hear it — that a good part of the American media wants to undermine the Bush administration. They're not reporters anymore, they're not analysts anymore. They're looking to undermine the president because they think he's a dummy or they don't like him for whatever reason. Am I wrong?
GINGRICH: No. I think it's clear that there is a — first of all, as you pointed out earlier, that the overwhelming majority of reporters voted for John Kerry, voted for Al Gore, voted for George McGovern, for that matter, way back years ago. So the underlying bias of the elite media is somewhere in the 85 percent or 90 percent range. I think people generally accept that. I do think that sometimes the press starts to run in a pack, and I think the current model is Bush is down, let's go kick Bush, you know, what's wrong with Bush. And you know, frankly, he is about where Abraham Lincoln was in fighting the Civil War. He's in a situation that's very tough. He can't come in tomorrow morning and guarantee peace and he's got to do what he thinks is right, just as General Washington did in an eight-year American revolution, just as President Lincoln did in our bloodiest and most painful war. A president has to do what he thinks is right and live it out, and when reporters get too aggressive and too hostile, I think the president should in effect assert the authority of his office.
O'REILLY: Yeah, I think he should call them out, you know, Helen Thomas sitting there saying, you know, why did you want to go to war from the first moment you walked into the White House? That's absurd on its face. I mean, you could criticize President Bush for being too soft on Al Qaeda the first year he was in the office just as Bill Clinton was for eight years. You can make — that's a valid criticism and it's been made by Richard Clark and others, that he just didn't pay attention. So, the fact that he wanted to go in and cause, you know, the War on Terror is absurd. But I think that President Bush should have done this a long time ago. I think he should have put the press on notice a long time ago, that there is a line that if you cross over that, you know, I'm going to confront you and I'm going to call you on it.
GINGRICH: Well, I think the more important conversation the president has to have is with the American people. And I don't think he should ever lower himself to being the equal of a reporter, now, no offense to the reporters who may be watching, but the president of the United States is the only nationally elected unifying symbol of power in America. The vice president is a much lesser figure and the president of the United States stands for all of us. You may like him, you may dislike him. And when you get to control and you get to war and peace and you get to young Americans risking their lives, I think the president deserves a certain substantial amount of respect. And when he doesn't get it, he, I think, should reach past those reporters and go straight to the American people.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,188775,00.html
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