Think Progress

Malkin: The content of Obama’s off-the-record meeting with liberal journalists ‘ought to be disclosed.’

On Monday, President Obama met with liberal-leaning journalists and commentators in an off-the-record session that included MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. Reporting on the meeting that night, Fox News’ Bret Baier suggested the White House had a “double standard” and was “playing favorites” after the White House had challenged Fox’s credibility as a news organization. On Fox and Friends this morning, host Brian Kilmeade and Fox contributor Michelle Malkin demanded that the off-the-record session be put on the record for the American people:

KILMEADE: Let’s go to your second question. What did you talk about in your off-the-record meeting with opinion journalists at the White House-friendly media outlet for over two hours and why should it be kept secret? Who was there? What do you need to know Michelle?

MALKIN: Well, we know that a lot of left-wing opinion journalists were invited to this off-the-record meeting that lasted two-and-a-half-hours. That’s a lot longer than General McChrystal got and I think that the news-consuming audience ought to know what was discussed. We ought to know and it ought to be disclosed what was discussed by those attendees when they talk about this White House and its policy. Why shouldn’t this be completely transparent?

Watch it:

As Crooks and Liars’ Susie Madrak notes, the complainers at Fox appear to be “suffering from memory loss” about President Bush’s many off-the-record chats with conservative columnists and radio hosts, including Fox News personalities Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck. Additionally, they seem to forget that Obama shared an off-the-record dinner with conservative columnists, including Fox contributors Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol and Paul Gigot, before his Inauguration. Malkin should note that the dinner lasted two-and-half hours.

Krauthammer on Sanford: ‘I think he doesn’t last a week in the office of governor.’ »

Following the surprising news that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had an affair with a woman in Argentina, Fox News’ right-leaning “All-Stars” declared yesterday that Sanford’s political future is in serious trouble. “I think he’s toast,” said the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer agreed, saying “I think he is toast politically”:

KRAUTHAMMER: And resigning from the Republican Governors’ Association chairmanship is not going to do it, and the reason is that there is a dereliction of duty here. I know that’s the titillation of the reason for it, but even apart from that, he is the governor of the state.

The governor of the state is chief executive, and if there is a disaster in the state, and this guy is incommunicado, he is nowhere to be seen and he doesn’t transfer authority to his lieutenant governor who calls out the National Guard, you cannot recover from that. I think he doesn’t last a week in the office of governor.

Watch it:

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After attacking Obama for it, Krauthammer refers to Khamenei as ‘Supreme Leader.’

Last Friday, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer disdainfully attacked President Obama for referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the “Supreme Leader” of Iran. “‘Supreme Leader’? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator,” wrote Krauthammer. But during an interview on Dennis Miller’s radio show today, Krauthammer himself referred to the ayatollah as “Supreme Leader”:

KRAUTHAMMER: And the reason he did it is that he thinks he needs to preserve his relations with the existing regime so that he can negotiate nuclear disarmament with them, which in and of itself is a lunatic fantasy. It’s not going to happen. There’s no way he’s going to sweet talk, you know, the Supreme Leader out of his nukes. So, that was the point. He thought that if I support the protesters too much, I alienate and I prevent the relations with the government and I can’t.

Listen here:

The New Republic’s Chris Orr notes that Krauthammer also referred to Khamenei as “Supreme Leader” days before his column attacking Obama for using the phrase was published. This isn’t surprising, considering that top conservatives have regularly referred to Khamenei as “Supreme Leader.”

Will Krauthammer attack McCain for referring to Khamenei as ‘Supreme Leader?’

In his Washington Post column today, Charles Krauthammer bitterly attacked President Obama for referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the “Supreme Leader” of Iran. “‘Supreme Leader’? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator,” wrote Krauthammer. But on Fox News later in the day, one of Krauthammer’s most admired politicians also referred to Khamenei as “Supreme Leader.” “There may be those indications since the Supreme Leader said that they were not going to tolerate further demonstrations in the street,” said Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Watch it:

Will Krauthammer lash into McCain next for his “abject solicitousness?”

Krauthammer concedes Fox News is the ‘voice of opposition’ to Obama ‘in the media.’ »

In an interview with CNBC this week, President Obama noted the constant criticism he receives from Fox News, saying, “I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration.” Some Fox regulars, like Bill O’Reilly, adamantly objected to Obama’s claim. But on Special Report yesterday, Fox contributor Charles Krauthammer admitted that Fox News can “accurately” be described as the “voice of opposition” to Obama:

KRAUTHAMMER: But what’s really interesting, the president yesterday has said, he complained about FOX, and he said, I think accurately, that it is the one, only voice of opposition in the media.

And it makes us a lot like Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run, with the exception that in Hugo Chavez-land, you go after that one station with machetes. I haven’t seen any machetes around here, so I think we are at least safe for now.

Watch it:

Krauthammer isn’t the only person at Fox who views the network as working in opposition to Obama. In March, Bill Shine, Fox News’ Senior Vice President for Programming, told NPR that the network views itself as “the voice of opposition on some issues” with Democrats in power in Washington, DC.

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Krauthammer: Fox News has ‘created an alternate reality’ for its viewers.

Yesterday, Charles Krauthammer accepted the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, an annual award given by News Corporation. In his acceptance speech, Krauthammer lauded Fox News channel, which he said has “done a great service to the American polity” and for “single-handedly breaking up the intellectual and ideological monopoly that for decades exerted hegemony (to use a favorite lefty cliché) over the broadcast media.” But his praise took a strange turn when he extolled the “genius” of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes for creating an “alternate reality” for its viewers:

KRAUTHAMMER: What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.

A few years ago, I was on a radio show with a well-known political reporter who lamented the loss of a pristine past in which the whole country could agree on what the facts were, even if they disagreed on how to interpret and act upon them. All that was gone now. The country had become so fractured we couldn’t even agree on what reality was. What she meant was that the day in which the front page of The New York Times was given scriptural authority everywhere was gone, shattered by the rise of Fox News.

Elsewhere in his speech, Krauthammer tried to explain why his award was more valuable to him than the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize is “awarded to those, from Yasir Arafat to Jimmy Carter, who give the most succor to the forces of terror and tyranny,” Krauthammer said. (HT: TPM)

Krauthammer refuses to criticize Rush Limbaugh by name.

Politico’s Ben Smith profiled Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer today as President Obama’s “biggest critic,” writing that Krauthammer is not “impressed by the current state of the conservative resistance.” As an example of Krauthammer’s dissatisfaction with the conservative opposition, Smith highlighted his criticism of the tea parties and Rush Limbaugh, though Krauthammer wasn’t actually willing to criticize Limbaugh by name:

Leaving the verdict on the Bush Administration to “the next generation’s David McCullough,” Krauthammer also told POLITICO that he isn’t rooting for Obama to fail.

“What I want to say is — I don’t want to repeat his name – I don’t want Obama to fail,” he said, referring to radio host Rush Limbaugh. “I want our country to succeed. And when I criticize him, it’s because I think his ideas are misguided.”

As ThinkProgress has previously observed, conservatives criticize Limbaugh at their own peril. As RNC chairman Michael Steele learned in March when he called Limbaugh an “incendiary” and “ugly” “entertainer,” conservatives who criticize El Rushbo are quickly forced to kiss the ring and apologize.

Krauthammer: I will say things in my column even if I don’t believe what I’m saying.

On May 1, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer conceded in a column that waterboarding is torture. Krauthammer argued that torture is justifiable “under two circumstances” and that in those cases “you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding.” But in an interview on Dennis Miller’s radio show today, Krauthammer said that he didn’t mean it when he wrote that waterboarding is torture:

MILLER: And I’m going to move beyond that and say the pertinent question to me is, is it necessary. Where do you stand on this?

KRAUTHAMMER: You know, I’m in the midst of writing a column for this week, which is exactly on that point. Some people on the right have faulted me because in that column that you cite I conceded that waterboarding is torture. Actually, I personally don’t think it is cause it’s an absurdity to have to say the United States of America has tortured over 10,000 of its own soldiers because its, you know, it’s had them waterboarded as a part of their training. That’s an absurd sentence. So, I personally don’t think it is but I was willing to concede it in the column without argument exactly as you say to get away from the semantic argument, which is a waste of time and to simply say call it whatever you want. We know what it is. We know what actually happened. Should it have been done and did it work? Those are the only important questions.

Listen here:

No where in Krauthammer’s original article did he say that he was making the concession for the sake of argument. Given his comments to Miller, it seems that Krauthammer feels comfortable asserting claims in his Washington Post column that he doesn’t actually believe to be true. Responding to falsehoods in a previous Krauthammer column, Yglesias once wrote that “the only question is why The Washington Post thinks it’s a good idea to publish columns that are designed to mislead its audience rather than to inform its audience.” It’s still a good question.

After advocating death for AIG executives, Krauthammer rips Obama for ‘demanding’ GM CEO’s ‘head on a pike.’

Earlier this month, after the AIG bonuses controversy broke, Charles Krauthammer advocated unusual capital punishment for AIG executives, suggesting “an exemplary hanging or two” in Times Square and even a guillotine “party.” But today, after President Obama compelled GM CEO Rick Wagoner to resign, Krauthammer regained his sense of civility, criticizing the administration for “demanding” Wagoner’s “head on a pike”:

KRAUTHAMMER: What this is is the President giving in to populist pressure, demanding a head on a pike, which is the titular head of the company, whether or not it makes any economic sense at all. And that makes you worry.

Watch it:

Like many other Fox pundits who have been railing against unions today, Krauthammer added that organized labor has “utterly destroyed the auto companies.”

Krauthammer: No one ever painted Islam with a ‘broad brush.’

Yesterday on Fox News Report, Charles Krauthammer complained that President Obama’s interview with Al-Arabiya was too “apologetic and defensive”:

KRAUTHAMMER: Conciliatory, but also apologetic and defensive, I thought needlessly. We heard him say that he we shouldn’t paint Islam with a broad brush. Who does? That’s a straw man.

Watch it:

Krauthammer’s objections are ironic given the fact he’s guilty of the sort of “broad brush” thinking that Obama was warning against. In December 2002, for example, Krauthammer characterized Islam as violent and “hate-driven”:

From Nigeria to Sudan to Pakistan to Indonesia to the Philippines, some of the worst, most hate-driven violence in the world today is perpetrated by Muslims and in the name of Islam.

Krauthammer and those who share his views are, in part, responsible for the propagating the myth that Muslims “hate” the West. During his interview, Obama was rightly arguing that the U.S. must discredit such notions.

Obama dines with right wingers at George Will’s house.

Tonight around 6:30 pm ET, Barack Obama arrived at the home of conservative columnist George Will to dine with a host of right-wing luminaries. Brimming with giddiness, pool reporter Kenneth Bazinet of the New York Daily News reported:

Your pool has been told it’s a dinner party.

And, thanks to an enterprising photographer, a shot through a window showed op-ed stalwarts William Kristol and David Brooks are also part of this unlikely gathering of tight, right suits. [...]

This is for real, folks. The bloggers are going to love this one.

Ben Smith notes, “All three wrote, at times, both kind and scathing things about Obama, though Kristol in particular pushed sharp attack lines against him in the waning days of the race.” HuffPost’s Sam Stein notes, “Obama has pledged to be a bridge divider once in office. He’s also said he is willing to take policy suggestions from any source, regardless of ideological affiliation, as long as they work. So far, he’s living up to his word.”

Krauthammer and Barnes call for ‘indefinite detention’ law for suspected terrorists.

Last night on Fox News, war hawks Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes expressed outrage at President-elect Obama’s pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected terrorists. As an alternative, Krauthammer called on Democrats to pass an “indefinite detention” law; Barnes wholeheartedly agreed:

KRAUTHAMMER: We’re going to have to have a law which is going to allow indefinite detention, and it is going to be Democrats who will actually have to craft it. I think that’s poetic justice. [...]

BARNES: Guantanamo will be hard. You have to pass new laws. As Charles says, you have to pass a permanent detention law in the case of some of these guys.

However the two did not agree on the rationalization for such a law. Barnes said Gitmo detainees are “almost” treated better there than in any other prison in the world, while Krauthammer argued that the U.S. interned Germans and Japanese indefinitely during WWII and the same should apply now. Watch it: