Last night, after having had some earlier segments that pissed some of us off over his coverage of Fast & Furious, Jon Stewart had an excellent segment detailing how empty the right-wing criticisms coming from Fox News are when it comes to this program.
An ATF program, disastrous and deadly results, statements by the Department of Justice that don't match with previous statements, and Barack Obama's first invocation of executive privilege, the White House on its heels. It looks bad, it is bad, Republicans were quick to pounce.
FOX NEWS VOICEOVER (6/21/2012): The debate over President Obama's assertion of executive privilege in Fast and Furious carries echoes of Watergate
ERIC BOLLING (6/21/2012): I think he's made this as big as Watergate.
SEAN HANNITY (6/20/2012): ... bigger than Watergate ...
NEIL CAVUTO (6/20/2012): ... Watergate-like environment ...
PETER JOHNSON, JR. (6/21/2012): ... Richard Nixon, walking around the White House with a drink in his hand, thinking about how to keep the Watergate tapes away from the American people.
MONICA CROWLEY (6/20/2012): Watergate looks like child's play compared to what we're seeing.
Child's play! It's child's play! Fast and Furious would be like if Monica Lewinsky went down on Iran-Contra during the Bay of Pigs invasion! Do you understand what this is? Wait... (mumbles) Monica Lewinsky... get me Bruckheimer! It'd actually make kinda a cool movie.
Anyway, there's only two problems with Fast and Furious being Obama's Watergate. I'll let Governor Rick Perry explain problem number one.
6/24/2012:
GOVERNOR RICK PERRY, R-TX: You gotta admit, this is almost Nixonian, if not absolutely Nixonian, in the cover-up that's going on with this Fast and Furious.
BOB SCHIEFFER: What exactly are you accusing the President of here, Governor?
GOVERNOR RICK PERRY, R-TX: I don't know! I mean, that's the issue.
(wild audience laughter and appaluse)
(in Rick Perry accent) "That's what's so Nixonian about it. I don't know!"
You know, you gotta wonder how a cautious governor like this ends up executing so many people. Really....
....
And the second problem: while the Republicans would like our outrage at the Obama administration Fast and Furious scandal to reach the levels it reached during Watergate, it's not the first time they've asked us to go there.
LT. COL. RALPH PETERS (6/7/2012): This pattern of leaks in the Obama administration of grave national security leaks is vastly more serious than what happened in Watergate.
11/18/2011:
MEGYN KELLY: Well, let me ask you about this Solyndra deal.
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MN: This makes Watergate look like child's play, Megyn.
5/27/2010:
BILL HEMMER: The White House, in a perception battle, trying to tamp down the rhetoric linking that Gulf oil spill to Hurricane Katrina.
ANGELA McGLOWAN: Not only could this be Obama's Katrina, and it's not Katrina yet, but it could also be Obama's Watergate.
Guy's had four Watergates! That is a record number of Watergates, passing the previous record-holder, a Richard Nixon, with one!
They throw around the term "Watergate" so much at Fox, you'd think the guy running Fox had been a Nixon operative in the...
OH MY GOD!! OH MY GOD!!! It's Watergate-gate!!! Gate-gate-gate. It's a lot of gates.
See, the problem here is you've become the Fox who cries wolf. Your outrage repertoire has been so overused as to render justified outrage meaningless. "This is Watergate!" Right. And what was it when second graders sang a song about Obama in their classroom?
(video of second graders singing, "Mmm mmm mmm, Barack Hussein Obama")
STEVE DOOCY (10/12/2009): They say it's political indoctrination of young, malleable minds.
SEAN HANNITY (9/24/2009): I can't stand indoctrination.
MONICA CROWLEY (9/27/2009): When I saw that, I thought, yeah, this is indoctrination straight up.
SEAN HANNITY (9/24/2009): Doesn't it remind you of any dictator, you know, and the indoctrination process of kids?
TUCKER CARLSON (9/25/2009): This is just pure Khmer Rouge stuff.
Khmer Rouge stuff! Yes, who could forget the Khmer Rouge and the dreaded singing fields of Cambodia?
....
And you can't even keep your justification for wanting the information under control. Here's the guy heading up the Fast and Furious investigation, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
REP. DARRELL ISSA, R-CA (4/14/2012): They've never answered the question, "What were they thinking of?" Could it be that what they really were thinking of was in fact to use this walking of guns in order to promote an assault weapons ban? Many think so, and they haven't come up with an explanation that would cause any of us not to agree.
So the absence of a clear explanation for this unbelievably stupid gun program, that mirrored only a slightly less unbelievably stupid one that began during the Bush years, is evidence of a larger conspiracy to ban assault weapons.
Are you sure it's not evidence that Obama's just arming Mexico so they can lead him to retake the Alamo? Do you think it's that? Maybe he's using the weapons to weigh Mexico down, sinking it, thus creating acres of new beachfront property... to soil with an oil spill! Obama's given no explanation that would make me believe otherwise, so I'm inclined to go with it.
If that's the case, though, what did y'all think of the Bush year shenanigans? Secret torture programs, wiretapping citizens without a warrant, putting signing statements onto laws that negated what the law actually said, stonewalling Congress, holding Americans without trial by calling them "enemy combatants"? What was your working theory on the tyranny and lawlessness of those secret programs?
6/26/2006:
STEVE DOOCY: Do you feel that it is in the public's best interest to know when the government does secret stuff -- that really protects you -- you wanna know everything?
E.D. HILL: I don't need to know about secret programs.
BRIAN KILMEADE: To a certain degree, you have to trust the people you elected when it comes to national security. If not, what is it saying about our leaders if we can't even trust them to watch our back?
E.D. HILL: Yeah!
It says you didn't vote for them!
We begin tonight with Fast and Furious, a scandal which, as you'll recall, Fast and Furious was a program where we allowed untrackable guns to be sent to Mexico in an effort to track... guns going to... it's the zaniest south of the border mix-up since The Three Amigos. By the way, this segment brought to you by The Three Amigos. The Three Amigos! Because two amigos would've been a stupid fucking movie. There were a lot of different punch lines to that one.
Last week brought a troubling new development to the Fast and Furious story.
ABC NEWS (6/20/2012): President Obama today, for the first time, exerted executive privilege to shield Justice Department documents dealing with what's become known as the Fast and Furious scandal.
So there it is! An ATF program, disastrous and deadly results, statements by the Department of Justice that don't match with previous statements, and Barack Obama's first invocation of executive privilege, the White House on its heels. It looks bad, it is bad, Republicans were quick to pounce.
FOX NEWS VOICEOVER (6/21/2012): The debate over President Obama's assertion of executive privilege in Fast and Furious carries echoes of Watergate
ERIC BOLLING (6/21/2012): I think he's made this as big as Watergate.
SEAN HANNITY (6/20/2012): ... bigger than Watergate ...
NEIL CAVUTO (6/20/2012): ... Watergate-like environment ...
PETER JOHNSON, JR. (6/21/2012): ... Richard Nixon, walking around the White House with a drink in his hand, thinking about how to keep the Watergate tapes away from the American people.
MONICA CROWLEY (6/20/2012): Watergate looks like child's play compared to what we're seeing.
Child's play! It's child's play! Fast and Furious would be like if Monica Lewinsky went down on Iran-Contra during the Bay of Pigs invasion! Do you understand what this is? Wait... (mumbles) Monica Lewinsky... get me Bruckheimer! It'd actually make kinda a cool movie.
Anyway, there's only two problems with Fast and Furious being Obama's Watergate. I'll let Governor Rick Perry explain problem number one.
6/24/2012:
GOVERNOR RICK PERRY, R-TX: You gotta admit, this is almost Nixonian, if not absolutely Nixonian, in the cover-up that's going on with this Fast and Furious.
BOB SCHIEFFER: What exactly are you accusing the President of here, Governor?
GOVERNOR RICK PERRY, R-TX: I don't know! I mean, that's the issue.
(wild audience laughter and appaluse)
(in Rick Perry accent) "That's what's so Nixonian about it. I don't know!"
You know, you gotta wonder how a cautious governor like this ends up executing so many people. Really....
(in Rick Perry accent) "I'm tellin' you, this guy's Mansonian! I'm sayin' it! He's O.J. Simpsonian! I don't know how I know, I just can tell."
And the second problem: while the Republicans would like our outrage at the Obama administration Fast and Furious scandal to reach the levels it reached during Watergate, it's not the first time they've asked us to go there.
LT. COL. RALPH PETERS (6/7/2012): This pattern of leaks in the Obama administration of grave national security leaks is vastly more serious than what happened in Watergate.
11/18/2011:
MEGYN KELLY: Well, let me ask you about this Solyndra deal.
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MN: This makes Watergate look like child's play, Megyn.
5/27/2010:
BILL HEMMER: The White House, in a perception battle, trying to tamp down the rhetoric linking that Gulf oil spill to Hurricane Katrina.
ANGELA McGLOWAN: Not only could this be Obama's Katrina, and it's not Katrina yet, but it could also be Obama's Watergate.
Guy's had four Watergates! That is a record number of Watergates, passing the previous record-holder, a Richard Nixon, with one!
They throw around the term "Watergate" so much at Fox, you'd think the guy running Fox had been a Nixon operative in the...
OH MY GOD!! OH MY GOD!!! It's Watergate-gate!!! Gate-gate-gate. It's a lot of gates.
See, the problem here is you've become the Fox who cries wolf. Your outrage repertoire has been so overused as to render justified outrage meaningless. "This is Watergate!" Right. And what was it when second graders sang a song about Obama in their classroom?
(video of second graders singing, "Mmm mmm mmm, Barack Hussein Obama")
STEVE DOOCY (10/12/2009): They say it's political indoctrination of young, malleable minds.
SEAN HANNITY (9/24/2009): I can't stand indoctrination.
MONICA CROWLEY (9/27/2009): When I saw that, I thought, yeah, this is indoctrination straight up.
SEAN HANNITY (9/24/2009): Doesn't it remind you of any dictator, you know, and the indoctrination process of kids?
TUCKER CARLSON (9/25/2009): This is just pure Khmer Rouge stuff.
Khmer Rouge stuff! Yes, who could forget the Khmer Rouge and the dreaded singing fields of Cambodia?
They forced children... to sing! To their own parents!
I mean, Khmer Rouge is worse than Watergate. So if those kids singing is the Khmer Rouge, Fast and Furious has gotta be the Death Star taking out Alderaan, just to maintain your outrage exchange rate!
Not to mention the breathlessness. Oh, the breathlessness, over Barack Obama's executive actions.
MONICA CROWLEY (6/21/2012): This administration has engaged in chronic Constitutional abuse.
HUGH HEWITT (6/22/2012): ... increasing lawlessness, I'll call it, of President Obama.
REP. BEN QUAYLE, R-AZ (6/21/2012): But it's yet another unconstitutional power grab by this administration.
MICHELE BACHMANN (6/20/2012): This president is thumbing his nose at the Constitution.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER (6/15/2012): This is out and out lawlessness.
RUSH LIMBAUGH (6/24/2012): ... the dictator's wet dream ...
(shocked audience response)
Lemme tell you something, Rush. If you're a dictator, and you've got enough semen left over at the end of the day for a nocturnal emission, you're not a very good dictator. (grossed out audience reaction turns to applause)
I gotta say, Rush Limbaugh and semen in the same image, it's just not....
Lawless dictatorship. Fast and Furious, I think is bad, but lawless dictator.... Are you shitting us?! Executive action, giving Republicans the vapors? Remember this guy?
GEORGE W. BUSH (3/3/2004): So I got a little frustrated in Washington because I couldn't get the bill passed out of the Congress. They were arguing process. ... Congress wouldn't act, so I signed an executive order. That means I did it on my own. (Bush's audience applauds)
We know what it means. But did you hear that? Did you hear that sound? (starts clapping) What do you think that sound is? Is that just Republicans trying to get someone's attention to have that guy arrested? I don't think so! "Officer, there's a lawless Watergater being lawless with the tyranny. Gah, here comes the wet dream!"
That's applause, acceptance, excitement. I'm troubled by the accumulation of executive power. So maybe I'm not the best guy to make a defense of this. I mean, who would have the balls to defend this kind of executive privilege?
DICK CHENEY (6/27/2007): There's a very important principle here in terms of separation of powers, the ability of the executive branch to make decisions without having anybody, for example, to be able to go to court and get a judge to direct discovery, so they pour through all the papers, and all the recommendations and, in effect, inhibit that decision-making process in the executive branch.
(hisses) Feel cold.... So cold!
But now with Obama, y'all gotta have the information! And you can't even keep your justification for wanting the information under control. Here's the guy heading up the Fast and Furious investigation, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
REP. DARRELL ISSA, R-CA (4/14/2012): They've never answered the question, "What were they thinking of?" Could it be that what they really were thinking of was in fact to use this walking of guns in order to promote an assault weapons ban? Many think so, and they haven't come up with an explanation that would cause any of us not to agree.
So the absence of a clear explanation for this unbelievably stupid gun program, that mirrored only a slightly less unbelievably stupid one that began during the Bush years, is evidence of a larger conspiracy to ban assault weapons.
Are you sure it's not evidence that Obama's just arming Mexico so they can lead him to retake the Alamo? Do you think it's that? Maybe he's using the weapons to weigh Mexico down, sinking it, thus creating acres of new beachfront property... to soil with an oil spill! Obama's given no explanation that would make me believe otherwise, so I'm inclined to go with it.
If that's the case, though, what did y'all think of the Bush year shenanigans? Secret torture programs, wiretapping citizens without a warrant, putting signing statements onto laws that negated what the law actually said, stonewalling Congress, holding Americans without trial by calling them "enemy combatants"? What was your working theory on the tyranny and lawlessness of those secret programs?
6/26/2006:
STEVE DOOCY: Do you feel that it is in the public's best interest to know when the government does secret stuff -- that really protects you -- you wanna know everything?
E.D. HILL: I don't need to know about secret programs.
BRIAN KILMEADE: To a certain degree, you have to trust the people you elected when it comes to national security. If not, what is it saying about our leaders if we can't even trust them to watch our back?
E.D. HILL: Yeah!
It says you didn't vote for them!
Seems like over the past four years, Fox has lost their capacity to trust their leaders. I think I can help. Close your eyes, guys. And fall backwards into my arms. We'll catch you.
(whispers to audience) Nobody catch them!
We'll be right back.
for non-kosher hot dogs being advertised as kosher hot dogs. And Kristen Schaal's getting married!!
in light of the Supreme Court ruling.
for skipping commercials.