This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” May 7, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Tonight for one night only we are asking you to forget everything you already know about President Barack Obama.
Now tonight, well, you don’t need to know about the president’s affinity for spreading the wealth around or his friendships with people who use the phrase “G-d America.” You can forget all of that because on this night we are asking you to approach this president with a veil of ignorance and judge him only by his actions of the past week.
Now we begin with the administration’s response to the disaster in the gulf. It’s been called Obama’s Katrina. And new evidence indicates that may be an understatement. As a whole, the administration failed to act in the immediate aftermath of this crisis.
So what were they up to?
Well, one top Obama appointee had more important things on his mind. ABC News has revealed Tom Strickland, the chief of staff at the Department of the Interior, was whitewater rafting in the Grand Canyon last week. Now he went on the trip even after he was made aware of the gravity of the situation in the gulf.
Now this is not the first time a key Obama aide was AWOL during a national crisis. Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, was caught in a similar situation. He went on a family ski trip the day after the attempted Christmas Day bombing.
But can you blame the president for lacking management skills? After all, he had never had any executive experience prior to being elected.
Well, amateur week continued with his handling of the immigration debate right here in the U.S. Now he has openly bashed the Arizona immigration law. But each and every time he does it’s obvious he’s not actually read the legislation.
Now that pattern continued.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I spoke out against the recently passed law in Arizona. And make no mistake we can’t start singling out people because of who they look like or how they talk or how they dress. We can’t turn law abiding American citizens and law-abiding immigrants into subjects of suspicion and abuse.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Alright, now that’s latest example of completely irresponsible comments by the president. The bill explicitly prohibits racial profiling. But apparently he is not interested in the facts or the truth. Nor is President Barack Obama interested in accepting any responsibility for his failures.
Now rather than holding his administration accountable for the security lapse that allowed the Times Square bomber to board a plane and nearly flee the country, well, the White House says, well, the airline, they’re the ones that dropped the ball.
Of course Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, well, she’s not accepting any of the blame either. And of course, well, it has nothing do with the two TSA nominees that have already had to withdraw their names under President Obama.
But these are not the only things that the president has mishandled. You are looking at one of America’s greatest the cities, Nashville, Tennessee, completely submerged under water. Now flooding in the state has claimed the lives of nearly two dozen people. But the White House has been slow to react to this unfolding disaster.
So there you have it. That’s what we ask you to judge this president on as of now. His response to the oil spill. His reaction to the attempted Times Square bombing. His mischaracterization of the Arizona immigration law. And his failure to publicly acknowledge the disaster that is unfolding in Nashville, Tennessee.
Mr. President, well, what in the world are you doing? Is it time to step up or maybe step aside?
And here with reaction from the “Wall Street Journal,” John Fund and Democratic strategist, Steve Murphy.
I’ll just say it: Is there anything you’ll criticize him on or should I just go to Fund and he and I will have a discussion?
STEVE MURPHY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: No, no —
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Where do you as a Democrat — you’re a very strong Obama supporter.
MURPHY: Yes.
HANNITY: Forget everything that Sean Hannity brought up —
MURPHY: He’s a great president.
HANNITY: — about Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and Reverend Wright, and quadrupling the debt and deficits, and weakening the national security. This week alone, what has he done wrong?
MURPHY: This week, I don’t know of anything that he has done wrong this week. But I do disagree with him on a couple of things. I’d like to see him be a little bit more supportive of Israel. Absolutely.
HANNITY: Alright. So the idea that we have this natural disaster unfolding in Tennessee, and I have a lot of friends in Nashville. The president basically does nothing. They did — in spite of their claims they did nothing in the Gulf. They weren’t there from day one, John.
MURPHY: … still got the veil of ignorance on.
HANNITY: Hang on a second. The Arizona law, he totally mischaracterizes. Does he get away with all this?
JOHN FUND, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, he’s clearly still candidate Obama. This is not how President Obama said that he would govern.
Look, a lot of things he’s blamed for around the gulf’s oil spill, not his fault. But he waited nine days, nine days before making a statement. And the 1994 federal plan that was put in place — Bill Clinton was president — said you had to have fire booms and other equipment on site.
HANNITY: This is the NOAA —
FUND: Yes, absolutely. None — not a single fire boom was there. We had to buy the only one left in Illinois to bring it down and we had to go to other countries and beg for fire booms. Clearly we weren’t prepared.
Is that the president’s fault completely? No. But he can’t say we were on the job from day one. We can’t.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Hang on a second. There’s more to that story.
MURPHY: There are 100 booms deployed.
HANNITY: Wait a minute.
FUND: How?
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Wait a minute. But they weren’t there when they were supposed to be there. This was a pre-approved plan that the NOAA has put out.
FUND: Put out the fire —
HANNITY: Put out the —
FUND: Put out the fire right way.
HANNITY: Right away. I mean, you didn’t even need to go to the administration to get any approval. They weren’t there. They didn’t do it. They didn’t comment on it publicly. And, you know — and again, it seems everything this president does he passes the blame.
MURPHY: There are 8,000 people there working on this right now.
FUND: Now!
HANNITY: Now.
FUND: Now.
HANNITY: Three weeks later. Two and a half weeks later.
MURPHY: You can’t get 8,000 people there overnight.
FUND: The same thing was said during Katrina. That didn’t fly. This won’t fly ultimately.
HANNITY: Well, that was the thing. I mean Bush, you know, on 9/11 —
(CROSSTALK)
MURPHY: They’re doing a great job.
FUND: Now.
MURPHY: Of containing this oil spill.
HANNITY: Alright. Alright. Wait, wait. Steve, you’re not going to — look in that camera and tell the American people that they weren’t really late getting to the table here.
MURPHY: They weren’t really late getting to the table.
HANNITY: Alright. John, this is one of the problems. That Obama — the problems with the economy is Bush’s fault. The problems with banking and lending, it’s Goldman Sachs’ fault.
MURPHY: Look —
FUND: Sean, with politicians, whatever party, whether it’s President Bush, who I often was critical of, or with Mr. Obama, our president, watch what they do, not what they say. He said—
HANNITY: What if this was Bush? What if this was President Bush?
FUND: Look, there’s going to be a double standard because of the news media, I understand that. But clearly this president is so used to good publicity, so used to good media coverage. Whenever the facts are against him, he literally just denies the facts. And that’s not helping the situation. It’s not helping the cleanup, it’s not helping America.
(CROSSTALK)
MURPHY: Sean, let me make a couple of point here. You’re talking about when he speaks. He is a president that likes to know what he’s talking about when he speaks.
FUND: Nine days?
MURPHY: He likes to gather the facts.
FUND: Nine days?
MURPHY: Now one other point. Have you considered the possibility that the administration was completely deceived by BP —
HANNITY: No, no, no.
MURPHY: — about the enormity of this problem when it occurred?
HANNITY: I don’t think BP understood, but what we did know from day one they were saying at least 1,000 barrels of oil a day were going to leak from there and that they were going to have a hard time plugging it up. It’s not like — it’s not like that was a big surprise.
FUND: We have the Coast Guard admiral say we could have done the fire first. But it sends up a black plume of pollutants which could hurt bird life.
HANNITY: Right.
FUND: That —
MURPHY: Yes, conditions weren’t (INAUDIBLE) for it.
FUND: They had —
MURPHY: They had a controlled burn today that was very successful.
HANNITY: Hang on.
FUND: Exactly. But the weather was fine the first few days after — no, the weather was fine the first few days after the spill.
HANNITY: How unacceptable is it that either the president out of ignorance or just willful advancement of a political agenda totally lies and mischaracterizes the Arizona immigration law?
MURPHY: He’s not doing that.
HANNITY: Wait a minute, the racial profiling is specifically and was from day one prohibited.
(CROSSTALK)
MURPHY: That’s a joke. The illegal immigration in Arizona is almost exclusively from Mexico and Central America. They are not going to ask an angle —
FUND: Steve —
MURPHY: Let me finish. They are not going to ask an Anglo meth dealer —
HANNITY: Before John speaks, let me ask you.
MURPHY: — are you an illegal immigrant?
HANNITY: How many candles do you light a day at the altar of Obama that you obviously have in your house and — because worship him? Because, you know —
MURPHY: Sometimes I don’t think enough.
HANNITY: Now, you know, what’s missing here is a level — and this is from a lot of Democrats and frankly from the news media. Just any level of fairness, scrutiny and outright intellectual honesty.
FUND: Sean, this is not a close call. I was born 80 miles from the border in Tucson. My brother was with the Tucson Police force working on border issues for 25 years. That law — you can certainly say it’s a band-aid, it’s not the best possible law. But it says you have to have a lawful contact with any suspect. You have to stop him for a traffic violation.
HANNITY: Very specific.
FUND: And you cannot stop them —
(CROSSTALK)
MURPHY: And then if they’re a Latino, you ask him if they are an illegal immigrant.
HANNITY: No, no, no. You’re allowed to check the status only after they’ve had the contact.
FUND: Exactly.
(CROSSTALK)
FUND: Steve —
MURPHY: And who are they going to check it with other than a Latino?
FUND: If you stop a car because it doesn’t have a proper license plate and you see there’s 12 people in the car and they are literally filling up the car, that is a reasonable suspicion that you might want to ask for their papers.
MURPHY: Except if they’re 12 Anglos. You won’t ask for their papers.
HANNITY: Now wait a minute.
FUND: No, no —
MURPHY: And that’s where —
HANNITY: Actually —
MURPHY: — the discrimination comes in.
HANNITY: Actually the first thing that the police are going to do, they’re going to check the backgrounds and whether or not there’s an arrest warrant for any of the individuals in the car.
I mean —
FUND: That’s standard procedure.
HANNITY: That’s standard procedure. You know, 42 states mandate that you have to have license and identification.
(CROSSTALK)
FUND: And you have to show your identification.
MURPHY: Exactly. That doesn’t have anything to do with illegal immigration.
HANNITY: No, but this bill specifically says it’s got to be —
MURPHY: It targets Latinos. It targets Latinos.
HANNITY: Well, we’ve got an illegal immigration problem in the country, Steve, in case you haven’t noticed. A lot of people are entering this country illegally on our southern and northern border.
MURPHY: So instead of demagoguery, why don’t we get together and pass an instant background check for all employers. Problem solved.
HANNITY: How about —
MURPHY: How is that?
HANNITY: How about we enforce the law we have? If you enter the country illegally —
FUND: Steve, 1952 federal law that says any resident alien in this country has to carry identification with them. And that means they’re carrying identifications. If they’re asked they can show that they are in this country legally.
MURPHY: That’s a resident alien. Well, a citizen doesn’t have to.
FUND: So if you’re an illegal alien, you’re treated more lightly?
MURPHY: This law is about Latinos, period. It’s discriminatory.
HANNITY: We got to run. Guys, appreciate you being here.
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