Lynne Cheney: Sandbagged by Wolf Blitzer
Monday, October 30th, 2006Lynne Cheney walked into the belly of the beast - CNN - this week to talk about her new children’s book, “Our 50 States”. Wolf Blitzer, knowing that she was coming to talk about her book, decided he would ambush her with loaded questions about the War on Terrorism, the current elections and Iraq in an aggressive adversarial tone.
Mrs. Cheney gave back as good as she got. I thought it was great how, even though she expected the interview to be about her book, she was prepared for Blitzer’s outrageous and partisan onslaught.
Here is an excerpt:
LC: But what is CNN doing running terrorist tape of terrorists shooting Americans? I mean, I thought Duncan Hunter asked you a very good question, and you didn’t answer it. Do you want us to win?
WB: The answer, of course, is we want the United States to win. We are Americans. There’s no doubt about that. You think we want terrorists to win?
LC: Then why are you running terrorist propaganda?
WB: With all due respect, with all due respect, this is not terrorist propaganda.
LC: Oh, Wolf…
WB: This is reporting the news, which is what we do. We’re not partisan…
LC: Where did you get the film?
WB: We got the film…look, this is an issue that has been widely discussed, this is an issue that we reported on extensively. We make no apologies for showing that. That was a very carefully considered decision, why we did that. And I think, and I think, of your…
LC: Well, I think it’s shocking.
WB: If you’re a serious journalist, you want to report the news. Sometimes the news is good, sometimes the news isn’t so good.
LC: But Wolf, there’s a difference between news and terrorist propaganda. Why did you give the terrorists a forum?
WB: And if you put it in context, if you put it in context, that’s what news is. We said it was propaganda. We didn’t distort where we got it. We didn’t distort anything about it. We gave it the context. Let’s talk about another issue in the news, and then we’ll get to the book.
If you notice, he first says it isn’t propaganda, and then he admits it is.
You can read the whole transcript here, and you can see a portion of the interview in video here.
Hugh Hewitt comments that: (more…)