RUSH: What a week this is! What an unforgettable week. Things are happening for the first time in my life as an American citizen. Things I have not seen and things I have not heard before, all this week. I’m not surprised. I know who these people are. Well, maybe I am a little surprised. Maybe… No, I can’t say that I’m surprised. I’m just angry about it. I’m just a little angry about it. And it’s happening within a quiet atmosphere. The media is being dissed. You know, the regime here is making a mockery of a free press, and they’re sitting around going along with it while complaining just a little bit.
Obama told them they’d get questions yesterday. Yeah. They got one, from Univision, and then the Mexican contingent got the next question. Both of them were about immigration so Obama could bash Arizona and so that Señor Wences could bash Arizona. There wasn’t one question about Obama’s sterling electoral victory on Tuesday night. They’re now making excuses in the State-Controlled Media: ‘Well, maybe he’s just tired. Maybe he’s got a lot on his plate.’ Chip Reid of CBS… I’ll find it for you. I’m not gonna grab another phone call quickly. Ah. I don’t have to find it. I have it right here. ‘You may recall that on Monday,’ this is Chip Reid, ‘President Obama refused take any questions from the press (irony alert!) immediately after signing the ‘Press Freedom Act’ in the Oval Office.
‘The president, who hasn’t held a prime time press conference since last July, said this was not a press conference and he would have something later in the week. He was presumably referring to [yester]day’s scheduled ‘Joint Press Conference’ with [Señor Wences] in the Rose Garden. But so-called ‘press conferences’ with foreign leaders usually allow for only two questions from the White House press corps and two from foreign reporters. But today he said there was time for only one from each side. And in what I suspect was a White House effort to assure that the questioning was limited to immigration and other issues of U.S.-Mexico concern, he called on the Univision reporter from the U.S. side.
‘So if his goal was to avoid answering any tough questions about yesterday’s elections, or the oil spill in the Gulf, or financial regulation, or Iran, or Afghanistan — he succeeded.’ This Chip Reid, CBS White House correspondent. ‘As he and [Señor Wences] turned to walk back toward the Oval Office I asked, loudly enough for him to hear, if he had any comment on the elections. No response. I then shouted ‘Do you have any plans for a REAL press conference?’ No response, not that I expected one,’ said Chip Reid. Hey, Chip, can I ask you a question? Do you have any plans for any real reporting any time soon? There are so many stories out there, Chip, of incompetence, power grabs, corruption. It’s sickening. Right before your very eyes.
You are watching the orchestrated pummeling of this country by the president and one of his allies: Señor Wences, the ventriloquist dummy from Mexico. So you’re patting yourself on the back here for asking a question that didn’t get an answer, and you say you already knew the answer, which is there wasn’t going to be one. There’s some really stories out there, Chip. You guys… Has something changed in your job description? Are you guys now just White House stenographers? I know that Jonathan Alter is a stenographer for David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, but I wonder if this has spread to the entire press corps. I don’t think the press is going to turn on him, do you, Snerdley? The press is not going to turn on the guy. I do think they’ll vote for him in 2012, and they will be urging all of us to vote for Obama in 2012.
I think they’re going to continue to vote for Democrats, but what I just read to you here, this blog post from Chip Reid, what it’s saying without directly saying it is admitting that people like Chip Reid were wrong about Obama. I mean, he’s not open, he’s not a unifier, he’s not something we’ve never seen before. He’s not The One, he’s not ‘the one we’ve been waiting for.’ He was going to be different, better, smarter. Transparent! More access. That’s what Obama promised. That’s what the press predicted and reported. Apparently, they were wrong. So Chip Reid posts this as if we should all share in his shock and amazement that there hasn’t been a press conference and that the traditional rules at joint press conferences with foreign leaders were stood on their head. Chip, the bottom line here is even when Obama held press conferences, he didn’t answer anything. So we’re not missing anything here other than, when are you guys going to do some reporting?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, here’s a little bit of Chip Reid. This is after Obama signed the International Press Freedom Bill, named after Daniel Pearl. After his remarks, Chip Reid said some things to him.
REID: In the interest of press freedom, would you take a couple questions on BP?
OBAMA: You’re certainly free to ask them, Chip.
PRESS CORPS: (laughter)
FEMALE AIDE: Thank you, guys.
OBAMA: I’m not answering.
FEMALE AIDE: All right.
OBAMA: Uh, w-w-we won’t be answering. I’m not doing a press conference today.
RUSH: ‘You’re certainly free to ask them,’ Chip, and then the rest of the press corps laughs. An unidentified aide says, ‘Thank you, guys.’ Obama says, ‘We won’t be answering. I’m not doing a press conference.’ The last one was when he called the Cambridge cop stupid.