Matt Lauer: Bush Whore

Let's not forget that Matt Lauer used to be a talking bubblehead for an entertainment "news" show...because he sure has. He's forgotten that as a "journalist", he's supposed to elicit information from the interview subject, not browbeat said subject. He did it with Michael Moore, and he's now done it with Kitty Kelley. Not that either of these people are shrinking violets, but Lauer obviously got his marching orders from Herr Rove before these interviews with Kitty Kelley yesterday and today.



Case in point:

Lauer: "Clearly the White House is not pleased at all with this book?"



Kelley: "No, they're not."



Lauer: "And there's a reason for that. It's an extremely, extremely unflattering look at the Bush family. Let me start by..."



Kelley: "I think it's realistic. It's, I mean..."



Lauer: "I'm not, I don't think I'm misstating anything to say it's about 99 percent negative."



Kelley: "No, I think you are. I think it's 99 percent realistic. Up to this point we have had almost a Hallmark card image of the Bush family. All this does is lift the blinders and you see another side."



Lauer: "Let's talk about you first. Let's, so that people have the right perspective."



Kelley: "Sure."



Lauer: "Who'd you vote for in 2000?"



Kelley: "I voted in 2000. I'm registered in the District of Columbia. I vote for Republicans, I vote for Democrats. And I used to give money to both. In fact, probably, the last campaign contribution I made was to the Republican Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison."



Lauer: "Whom might you vote for in 2004? Who are you thinking of?"



Kelley: "It's not so much I'm going to vote for the person as I'm going to vote for principles that I believe in."



Lauer: "Who are you going to vote for?"



Kelley: "Is that relevant to this book?"



Lauer: "I think it at least gives people some... "



Kelley: "Who are you — tell me something, who are you going to vote for?"



Lauer: "...it gives some people some information or some perspective as to what's contained in the 600-plus pages."



Kelley: "I think that your viewers need to know that this is not a partisan book. I come from a red, white and blue Republican family. My father was behind George Bush, Sr. and behind George Bush, Jr. Now he has a little problem with Barbara after she took the Smithsonian exhibit out."



Lauer: "What about the timing of this book? You've been working on it for four years."



Kelley: "I have."



Lauer: "Why release it 50 days before what is a hotly contested, incredibly divided election?"



Kelley: "Why not?"



Lauer: "Well, I'm asking why?"



Kelley: "I mean, why not? It's relevant."



Lauer: "Do you want people to read this and do you want it to influence their choices as they go to the polls on November 2nd?"



Kelley: "Matt, I want them to read this book. It's an important book. There are relevant themes here. Is it going to change an election? No. I wrote a book about Frank Sinatra; I still love his singing."



Lauer: "He's an entertainer."



Kelley: "I wrote a book about the British royal family. The queen still sits."



Lauer: "Nobody goes to the polls to vote for them."



Kelley: "I wrote a book about the Kennedy family. There's no more revered family..."



Lauer: "They weren't in office at the time."

This is Lauer in his best Zell Miller mode, that we aren't allowed to criticize a sitting president....unless his name is "Bill Clinton".



More:

Kelley: "I feel sorry for Sharon Bush in a sense. And I have to tell you over that lunch, we knew the next day that Sharon was going to be frightened over this. She was hysterical at the time, and she said herself that Neil Bush left a message on her tape machine saying that if she didn't stop what she was doing she'd find herself in a dark alley."



Lauer: "So you — you say that right — you say right now that she's lying."



Kelley: "No, I do not say she's lying."



Lauer: "Well she's categorically denied saying it."



Kelley: "I mean on this she is, yeah."



Lauer: "She's lying She's going to join me live in the next half hour..."



Kelley: "Good."



Lauer: "...right here in this studio and we'll get to ask for her version of this."



The White House, when I spoke to them over the weekend, Dan Bartlett said, 'speaking on behalf of the president this is an outright lie.' Anything coming out of the White House right now surprise you regarding this book?"



Kelley: "No, no. Look what they tried to do to Richard Clark. Look what they did to Paul O'Neil. Look what they did to Ambassador Joe Wilson. If they don't like the message, beat up on the messenger."

Kitty Kelley: “How's that? You know, there's an old southern expression that when you throw a rock at a pack of dogs, the one that's hit is the one that barks. And there's an awful lot of barking on this book. I'm so glad that it's out now, so that people can make up their mind.”

Kelley: “I took public records and I combined it with interviews. First of all, what this book shows you is the pattern of connections that the family has used. George W. Bush admitted to his macro-economics professor at Yale, Yoshi Tsurumi – I hope I'm pronouncing that right...”



Lauer: “Right.”



Kelley: “...that his father used pull to get him into the National Guard.”



Lauer: “I'm talking about fulfilling his obligation in the National Guard.”



Kelley: “And I'm answering the question. For the first four years he had a solid, good record. Starting in April of 1972, no record. There is a huge gap. He made his last flight in – in April of 1972. And Lt. Col. Roger … Robert Rogers told me that the reason for that gap, that's when the Air Force and the National Guard started random drug testing.”



Lauer: “But you have no evidence of any positive drug test for George W. Bush in the Texas National Guard?”



Kelley: “Didn't say that. No, I don't.”



Lauer: “Okay.”



Kelley: “But all he has to do is release the flight board inquiry record, because those are the medical records. They have not been released.”



Lauer: “You allege that people surrounding then Governor George W. Bush went to great lengths and scrubbed his National Guard service record...”



Kelley: “They call it the tidy-up team.”

Lauer: “Did you read this article in the Houston Chronicle in 2004?”



Kelley: “It's in the back of my book...”



Lauer: “Right, so...”



Kelley: “...as part of the documentation. But that does not mean that the man is lying.”



Lauer: “However, you know, it does cast doubt on the fact that he may have had a grudge against the Texas National Guard and the governor's office at the time which handled his complaints.”



Kelley: “Gee, what a surprise, Matt. This isn't the first time that the White House, the Bush White House has tried to trash the messenger whose bringing the message. Just read the book, look at the documentation and you know what, the American people are going to have to make up their own mind on this, because not all of the records are available.”

Lauer: “Most people, no matter what their politics, would say that if a family has three generations of public service, the reality has to be that there are some nice things that need to be said about them, and why aren't they in this book?”



Kelley: “Matt, you play golf with the former President Bush?”



Lauer: “I have never played golf with him.”



Kelley: “You know that he's is a gregarious man. He's gracious. That's a very, very nice thing. That's in the book. The reason this looks so negative to people is that for years and years and years, we've had a very crafted public image. It looks like ‘The Donna Reed Show.’ Now we've got a little bit of ‘The Sopranos.’ Every family has got negatives and positives.”



Lauer: “But every – but where are the positives, Kitty?”



Kelley: “Well start – Matt, start with the first page. Don't you fall in love with Flora Sheldon Bush? Didn't you – weren't you impressed with Prescott Bush and the way he grew into his role? Didn't you...”



Lauer: “When – when your publishing company sent us the book last Thursday, they also sent us what they felt are the highlights of the book, the things that needed to be talked about. It's 22 pages long, Kitty. It covers 39 topics. Of those topics how many are positive, do you think?”



Kelley: “I don't know. I have...”



Lauer: “Zero.”



Kelley: “Zero.”



Lauer: “Zero. Not one. Twenty-two pages, 39 topics, not one positive topic that the publishing company feels that people should know about.”



[Note from me: People have heard nothing but positive about the Bush family since December 12, 2000 from people like Matt Lauer, the idiots at Faux, and buttlickers like Judy Woodruff, who tried to butcher the noble Kristen Breitweiser today. It's high fucking time we heard the other side.]



Kelley: “Well, I want people to know the positives and the negatives. I want them to know the light and the dark side. It is all there, both of them.



Lauer: “Going to come back tomorrow for a third part of this?”



Kelley: “I think I'm going in the federal witness protection program.”

Now, Kitty Kelley is nobody's fool, and she's one tough tomato. If anyone can take on the Bush family, she can. But Lauer's palpable rage in this interview was disturbing. It's one thing to be confrontational, it's another thing to so blatantly take sides. If you don't like what the woman writes, don't have her on the show.