Fred Claims Fox Bias

In an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson accused the network of bias against his campaign.

During the interview, Chris Wallace pressed Thompson on how some conservatives have lambasted Thompson's campaign and showed clips of Fox conservative commentators Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes criticizing the former senator. Fred responded by attacking Fox:

"This has been a constant mantra of Fox, to tell you the truth." He noted that other conservatives have praised his bid for the GOP nomination and took issue with a Fox promo that focused on polling in New Hampshire, where Thompson is registering in the single digits.

He said he is running second in national polls and has been leading or tied for the lead in South Carolina for "a long, long time."

Thompson, in a firm, but measured tone, scolded Wallace: "...for you to highlight nothing but the negatives in terms of the polls and then put on your own guys who have been predicting for four months, really, that I couldn't do it, kind of skew things a little bit. There's a lot of other opinion out there."

Fred didn't come off well in the exchange, which reminded me a little of Bill Clinton's temper tantrum during a Wallace interview.

You can watch a video clip of the exchange below:

Clinton Caught In Yet Another Lie

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, weigh in on the scathing CIA Inspector's General Report the CIA didn't want us to see.

Buried on page three of the web exclusive is a passage which shows that Slick Willie lied during his September 2006 encounter with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace. As I'm sure you remember, during an interview, Clinton erupted in anger, became unhinged, pointed his finger at Wallace, and boldly asserted:

What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since.

Isikoff and Hosenball write the IG report criticized intelligence problems when Clinton was president, "detailing political and legal 'constraints' agency officials felt in the late 1990s." Then they mention Clinton's 2006 temper tantrum and explain Clinton's prevarication:

Clinton appeared to have been referring to a December 1999 Memorandum of Notification (MON) he signed that authorized the CIA to use lethal force to capture, not kill, bin Laden. But the inspector general’s report made it clear that the agency never viewed the order as a license to “kill” bin Laden—one reason it never mounted more effective operations against him. “The restrictions in the authorities given the CIA with respect to bin Laden, while arguably, although ambiguously, relaxed for a period of time in late 1998 and early 1999, limited the range of permissible operations,” the report stated. (Scheuer agreed with the inspector general’s findings on this issue, but said if anything the report was overly diplomatic. “There was never any ambiguity,” he said. “None of those authorities ever allowed us to kill anyone. At least that’s what the CIA lawyers told us.” A spokesman for the former president had no immediate comment.)[Emphasis added]

So now we can see why Clinton went nuts when asked if he did enough to get Osama bin Laden - he knows he did not do enough.

In case you want to review the whole sorry Clinton meltdown, a YouTube video of the Wallace interview can be watched below and the FoxNews transcript is available here. My post refuting Clinton's Clarke Defense is here. A post about Chris Wallace's reaction to Clinton's temper tantrum is here.



No matter how many times I watch that video, it always make me think of Clinton getting on national television, pointing his finger at the camera and saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman..."

UPDATE: More at Captain's Quarters, Fausta's blog, and The Strata-Sphere

Chris Wallace On Bill Clinton's Temper Tantrum

Betsy Rothstein, of 20 Questions, interviewed Chris Wallace, host of “Fox News Sunday,” about tonight’s GOP debate.

During the interview, Rothstein asked about former President Clinton's temper tantrum:

After your testy exchange with former President Clinton, do you think you can get along with the presidential hopefuls and not make them angry?

Well, I don’t think it was a testy exchange. I think he was testy; I was polite.

[. . .]

Did you have any hint that that was going to happen with Clinton?

No, and I don’t think he did either. I know the Clinton team likes to make it seem that this was pre-planned on their part, but the fact that the president’s press secretary tried to get the cameras turned off as soon as the president erupted convinces me that it was as pre-planned as a car wreck.

How do you feel about it now?

I’m delighted, and I think [Clinton] is delighted as well. We ran into each other at party a couple of months ago and there were no hard feelings. It clearly attracted a lot of viewers to our show, and I think [Clinton] feels that it had the effect of energizing the Democratic base.

You will recall, former President Clinton lost it when Chris Wallace asked him whether he'd done to hunt for Osama bin Laden.