From Special Report with Bret Baier | Thursday, July 26, 2012
On the White House’s adamant claim that the administration never leaked classified information for political gain:
[Classified is] the weasel word, because the president has the power to unilaterally make anything non-classified if he wants. So any information that he would authorize unilaterally, even in secret, would be exempt from provision — [that’s] a way to give a blank check to anybody.
There was also the other weaseling out at the beginning of the clip where he [Jay Carney] said: I can’t answer any questions because there’s an ongoing inquiry. At the time of the appointment of these two [U.S. attorneys] who were going to look into this, I noted that once you have a docile investigation that has to answer to Obama’s attorney general, then you can stonewall indefinitely. All you have to say is “we’re looking into it. I can’t speak about it while it’s under investigation.” That’s exactly what the White House is doing.
And the only objective is to kick this beyond Election Day. After Election Day the president doesn’t care what comes out, whose career is upended, because his career will be secure. All they want to do — like with everything else in this administration — is to kick the problem beyond Election Day.
On whether the White House will face political pressure to more aggressively investigate and prosecute the intelligence leaks:
The key person involved here is [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein. She’s a Democrat, been on the committee for years. She obviously is extremely upset, as she was at the beginning of this affair, about the implications of these leaks. And she’s the one who said, when she was speaking to a conference earlier in the week, that the leaks, some of them were clearly coming from the White House. Then she was taken hostage by a White House team and reversed herself. And the question is, is she still being held down and tied up, or will she come out and say, as you would expect, “We’ve got to have an independent investigation that everybody, left, right, and center, can trust.” It hinges on her. As long as she stays with the president on this, I don’t think any Democrat is stepping out.
On Mitt Romney’s critique of London’s preparations for the Olympic Games and Prime Minister Cameron’s retort that London is a bustling city — it’s easy to hold the Olympics “in the middle of nowhere”:
Look, when Cameron said the “middle of nowhere” he was not referring to Rangoon. He was referring to the mountains of Utah.
What Romney answered is beyond human understanding. It’s incomprehensible. I’m out of adjectives.
All the man has to do is say nothing, nothing in any of the stops on the trip. The statement of the trip is the places he’s going to: England, Poland, and Israel — all of which have been treated roughly and badly by Obama. All he has to do is show up and say wonderful stuff about his hosts and imply we’ll be strong allies, and everybody in those countries and around the world will understand it’s a rebuke without saying so — a silent rebuke to Obama — who treated the Brits and Poles and the Israelis pretty shabbily, particularly the Brits. Remember when he came to the Oval Office he removed the bust of Churchill. There was the State Department official who said there is no special relationship… and the Falkland Isalnds, in which we have a studied neutrality between the Argentines and Brits where we should be solidly on the British side on this.
The list is long. And all Romney has to do is say nothing. It’s like a guy in a 100-meter dash. All he has to do is finish. He doesn’t have to win. And instead he tackles the guy in the lane next to him and ends up disqualified. I don’t get it.
On the optics of Ann Romney’s dressage horse competing in London:
I understand that the horse has been important in her treatment of MS. I have total respect for that. But I’m not sure why the horse has to be in the most upper class, hoity-toity Olympic event ever invented.
It’s unnecessary. They’re running for the presidency. You know? After he [Romney] wins — if he wins — he can take the horse on Air Force One if he wants, feed him from the White House mess.
But can’t you just sit [the Olympics] out so that your horse isn’t in this equestrian event? I mean it’s not exactly the equivalent, but it approaches John Kerry windsurfing in that incredible outfit. There’s no need for that.