MSNBC
SHOW: BUCHANAN & PRESS 18:00
BYLINE: Pat Buchanan; Bill Press
GUESTS: Jon Corzine; Norm Coleman; Steve McMahon; Ed Rogers; Eric Cantor; Lance Morrow; Richard North Patterson; Larry Pratt
HIGHLIGHT:
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld defends his memo, which says the war in Iraq is going to be a long hard slog. Should General Boykin step down from his post? Is Howard Dean losing his momentum? Congressman Eric Cantor sends a letter to the president of CBS voicing his concerns about their new miniseries on former President Reagan. Who is the most evil person on the planet today? Do we need tougher gun control laws?
BODY:
ANNOUNCER: The smartest hour on television, BUCHANAN & PRESS.
PAT BUCHANAN, CO-HOST: Good evening. Evil entered America on the morning of September 11, 2001. Learning to live with evil has forever changed our lives, from flying on a plane to mailing a letter. Tonight an investigation into evil.
Good evening. I'm Pat Buchanan.
BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Good evening. I'm Bill Press. Thanks for joining us. But first, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is defending his controversial memo, which says the war in Iraq is going to be a long hard slog. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I don't think anyone who has ever come into a position like secretary of defense is asked to cage their brain and stop thinking. And my -- that is what we are here for, is to try to think of the best interests of the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BUCHANAN: Now, is the secretary just asking tough questions or is he as pessimistic on the war as his memorandum sounds? We are joined by Democratic senator from New Jersey Jon Corzine and Republican senator from Minnesota Norm Coleman.
Senator Corzine, can you tell us what your feeling is on the Rumsfeld memo? There's talk that maybe the Pentagon itself deliberately leaked it. What is your reading of the mind of the secretary of defense from that memo?
SEN. JON CORZINE (D), NEW JERSEY: I think the secretary is speaking truthfully. I think more than likely he didn't intend for it to be publicly distributed. The clarity, with which he is bringing real questioning to the process of how we go about peacekeeping and nation building, I think is fair. But I think it is reflective of the actual facts on the ground and really does -- is really quite different than the public speechifying that we see from the administration and many of their defenders with regard to policy.
PRESS: Senator Coleman, let may ask you about that because we do hear two different points of view from the White House. There's this sort of happy face painted on Iraq. Things are going a lot better than the negative media reports. And now we got the secretary of defense, who was in charge over there until about two weeks saying (UNINTELLIGIBLE) ain't going good...
(CROSSTALK)
PRESS: ... and it's going to be a long hard slog. How do the American...
(CROSSTALK)
PRESS: ... people know what to believe?
SEN. NORM COLEMAN (R), MINNESOTA: But none of it's inconsistent. You know Pat started off by talking about we confronted evil on September 11. And the secretary lays out a magnificent memo, by the way, that asks questions about you know are we confronting evil the way we should? Do we need a new matrix? We ought to look at it a different way.
How do we - you know they spend millions to fly a plane into a World Trade Center and kill thousands of Americans and we spend billions. Cost benefit ratio, you know, in their favor. He's asking the questions that you would want to ask. It's not going to be easy. No one ever argued that it's going to be easy. On the other hand, we're making progress and we make it every day. And so the two are not inconsistent. This is the exact kind of memo you want to get from a chief executive asking his folks hey, are we doing things the right way? I'm going to challenge you. Let's think outside the box.
BUCHANAN: OK. Senator Corzine, I want to ask you about General Boykin. The general has gone to a number of Christian gatherings; he's a devout evangelical Christian. He said we are at war with Satan. That God himself put George Bush where he is to fight this war and he went after a Somali warlord and told that Somali warlord after he captured him, the guy had been mocking Americans, my God is stronger than your God. Do you have problems with this Christian warrior staying in his post?
CORZINE: I have problems with accentuating the misperception that this is a war between religions, between cultures, between people. To the extent that those kind of comments can easily be construed that that is what we are trying to do, attacking Islam, then I think it's a problem and I think fortunately the general recognizes his own remarks need to be studied in the context of whether it undermines our ability to win not just the battle on the ground, physical battle, but whether we can win the hearts and minds of the millions, actually billions, of Muslim people around the world.
PRESS: So, Senator Coleman, the president of the United States says that this general does not reflect what the administration believes about the nature of this war on terror and yet he's the man in charge of leading and finding Saddam Hussein sand Osama bin Laden. Shouldn't he be removed from his position while he is being investigated as your colleague Senator John Warner suggests? Do you agree with John Warner?
COLEMAN: I don't agree with Senator Warner that he needs to be removed. I agree with the administration that he doesn't reflect the thinking of the administration if one presents this as a war between cultures. But on the other hand, also I'm a former prosecutor. I believe in the presumption of innocence. He's renounced. He said he made some mistakes. Let's take a look at it. If he's done something wrong he should pay the consequences, but simply removing him I don't think solves the problem.
PRESS: But he contradicted his commander-in-chief in public over and over again...
(CROSSTALK)
PRESS: ... in full uniform.
COLEMAN: But when you say in public, he was speaking in churches, to Christian groups. He didn't speak to the troops and so, even generals, by the way, probably still have First Amendment rights. Again, what he said -- the administration we -- I disagree with. But I'm willing to give this guy the presumption of innocence, let people take a look and if it's found that in fact he was speaking - by the way you said in public over and over again while speaking to his troops this way he should be removed, but we don't have that in front of us now.
BUCHANAN: OK. Senator Corzine, many Democrats have said the Bush administration did a terrible thing giving a tax cut to wealthy people. But congressmen make over $150,000 a year and they just gave themselves a $3,500 pay raise. Is that a good idea...
CORZINE: Oh I think...
BUCHANAN: ... especially when manufacturing workers are losing their jobs at the rate of 83,000 a month.
CORZINE: I think that to make sure that we get credible people on to our courts, the judiciary and people who are free of special interests, we need to make sure that there's reasonable compensation. This was a cost of living adjustment, which I think is probably reasonable. By the way, I don't think some of us who are blessed need take this kind of income increase. I think we can do something else and give it pack to society. But the fact is, is that I think that there are a lot of people who want to be in public life that couldn't afford to be here otherwise and I think that's what that reflects.
PRESS: Senator Coleman, surely you can't endorse this pay raise. I mean look, there are nine million Americans out of work. The Congress tried -- the administration tried to do away with overtime benefits for millions of workers, now you guys in Congress up your salary to $158,000. You can't go along with that.
COLEMAN: By the way, I'm not one of those millionaires in Congress. I group up in at best a middle class family in Brooklyn, New York. This is a cost of living...
PRESS: You're going to take the pay hike?
COLEMAN: ... yes, but listen, absolutely and by the way, those who don't want to take it or voted against it shouldn't take it. That's their right. But I've got to tell you, I've never bought the Democratic -- demagogic class warfare argument and secondly, the tax cut, by the way, the tax cut is generating growth in the economy right now. Numbers are looking better every day.
BUCHANAN: OK. Senator Corzine and Senator Coleman, thank you...
PRESS: There you go.
BUCHANAN: ... both very much.