Thom Hartmann: Greetings my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers in peace, freedom and the American way. Thom Hartmann here with you. And I am so pleased to have in the studio with me today, Bill Press. Old friend and colleague in talk radio and many other things. God, you’ve done so much in your life. And your most recent book, “Toxic Talk.”
Bill Press: Yeah, I’ve done so much in so few years. You know, just for a young man.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah, there you go. Like all of us.
Bill Press: Hey Thom, it’s great to see you.
Thom Hartmann: It’s great to have you here with us. And Bill you’ve been…
Bill Press: And I have to say, it’s great to have you in Washington DC, our nation’s capitol.
Thom Hartmann: Well thank you, thank you. It’s marvelous to be here with you.
Bill Press: It’s an exciting place to broadcast, I think, to work.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah, it is.
Bill Press: There’s a lot going on here, right?
Thom Hartmann: I figured, the election is coming up, you know, you’ve got to be in DC. In any case, you have been reading, analyzing, looking over George Bush’s new book.
Bill Press: Yeah, right. Just came out today, today, comes out today, publication date. It’s called “Decision Points.” But I’ve got to tell you. I do not hate George W. Bush, I want to make that very clear. But I still…
Thom Hartmann: You’re a minority I think, among progressives.
Bill Press: You know, yeah, because I don’t know maybe…
Thom Hartmann: Did you ever meet him?
Bill Press: Oh yeah, I’ve met him a couple of times, I could tell you a funny story about that sometime.
Thom Hartmann: I understand he’s sort of like Ted Bundy, he’s very personable.
Bill Press: He’s personable, he’s the sort of a guy you’d like to have a beer with, you know? And but, have you read his book? And even I don’t hate him, I have to tell you, I still don’t like his policies, I think he was the worst president in our life time. And I’m not going to change my mind because he wrote a silly book about it, you know?
Thom Hartmann: Or a ghost writer did a good job of writing it.
Bill Press: Yeah, exactly. But it’s interesting, he doesn’t tell his whole story, but he just picks 14 decision points, that of course put him in the best possible light.
Thom Hartmann: Oh, what a surprise.
Bill Press: Yeah. This is the Bush rehabilitation tour, right. Starting of it.
Thom Hartmann: Right.
Bill Press: And Dana Perino, his press secretary, is traveling around with him, so now they’re trying to build his legacy, rewrite history. I think they want to be the first ones out there to try to paint the Bush presidency as one of tough decisions that were made you know by a guy who really cared about this country and everything. But there’s some crazy stuff in it.
Thom Hartmann: Well, were there tough decisions made by a guy who really cared about his country? It seemed to me that an awful lot of it was political calculation.
Bill Press: I’d say they were bad decisions made. I mean he says, for example, about water boarding, okay? He is the one who gave the order. They came to him, all the way up to his desk.
Thom Hartmann: Right. For Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Bill Press: For Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He said damn right, do it. That was his response. Matt Lauer last night on NBC asked him how did you know it was legal? And Bush said, “Because my lawyer told me.” Period. There was no questioning, there was no research, there was no thought process at all into hey this has been banned by the Geneva Convention since 1945, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.
Thom Hartmann: Do you think he had any idea that the United States had prosecuted and hanged multiple Japanese prisoners of war after World War II exclusively for the crime of water boarding US soldiers?
Bill Press: Of course you and I know that, George Bush didn’t know that. I’m convinced he didn’t know that. He got a guy, John Yoo…
Thom Hartmann: He’s president of the United States, though.
Bill Press: But that’s Bush. He’s so cocky and he’s so defiant and he’s so…
Thom Hartmann: He just didn’t want to hear all sides of the argument, even though it was…
Bill Press: Intellectually non-curious, right? And I think Obama, like may go to the other extreme. I’m sure Obama on a decision like that would have 50 lawyers. He had one guy, John Yoo, at the Justice Department. Even Tom Kean, who was head of the 9-11 commission, said that Bush went out and bought, got a lawyer who would give him the answer he wanted.
Thom Hartmann: Right.
Bill Press: So I mean, that was a major, major decision. An illegal act. And Bush…
Thom Hartmann: A war crime. Something that you know the United States has put people to death for, that people were prosecuted in Nuremburg for, I mean, or for similar things. This is, okay.
Bill Press: But you see that, let’s take like… go ahead.
Thom Hartmann: I’m curious if anywhere in Bush’s new book, we’re talking with Bill Press. BillPress.com the website by the way for all things…
Bill Press: No, BillPressShow.com.
Thom Hartmann: BillPressShow.com? I’m sorry. BillPressShow.com. Thank you very much. And your new book is “Toxic Talk,” which is a brilliant overview of the talk radio landscape.
Bill Press: Thank you.
Thom Hartmann: And you’ve just read George Bush’s new book, “Decision Points.” And I’m curious, does he at any point in the book say that he was wrong about anything? I mean there’s that famous point, five years, seven years ago maybe now, in one of his early press conferences where they really pushed him, you know. Did you make any mistakes, can you name one mistake? And he was like you know I think maybe Litten you asked me the question was his answer, or something like that. Does, is there any self-refleciton in this book? Are there any Walden Pond moments? Is there even a thousandth of a shred of the DNA of Henry David Thoreau in this book?
Bill Press: You’re asking an awful lot for a Walden pond moment. There are two things that he says where he made a mistake. Twice, as I recall. One is Katrina. Not that the federal response was so bad, not that he didn’t send in the national guard, not that he shouldn’t have cut, gutted FEMA’s budget before hand so they weren’t even prepared to respond. The mistake he says was in flying in over and not landing at Baton Rouge and getting off the plane and meeting with the governor. You know that famous shot of his looking out the window.
Thom Hartmann: Sure. Yeah.
Bill Press: Now just hold that for just a second, right? And the second one was the mission accomplished speech on the aircraft carrier. Not going to war in Iraq on false pretences, but giving that speech in front of that sign. Now what struck me about both of those is they’re both PR stunts.
Thom Hartmann: They were both photo ops. That ultimately went wrong.
Bill Press: Exactly. So he’s apologizing that they got the photo op wrong, not for the deed itself.
Thom Hartmann: It’s almost like he lives in a world in a parallel universe where the only thing that’s important is perception.
Bill Press: Exactly.
Thom Hartmann: And the reality of the situation, I mean you know, there are children dead. I mean he has children, he has, I know that Cindy Sheehan personally confronted him about the death of children and he seemed to be responsive. But again, you know Ted Bundy worked the suicide hotline down in Florida for a while. You know he seemed to be very empathetic. I am personally convinced the guy is a sociopath. You know from his childhood, murdering small animals, from his sister you know the whole thing. But you know at the risk of psychoanalyzing, I realize that’s…
Bill Press: Right. Now the other thing is on Iraq, which I thought was really speaks a lot. You know he says he was really disappointed that there weren’t any WMD.
Thom Hartmann: Right.
Bill Press: Really disappointed.
Thom Hartmann: So he didn’t read Joe Wilson’s thing in the…haha
Bill Press: Haha
Thom Hartmann: Have you seen the movie, by the way, “Fair Game”?
Bill Press: Oh I loved it.
Thom Hartmann: Louise and I saw that Sunday afternoon. Brilliant.
Bill Press: I thought it was really, really, really very powerful. And really shows how they screwed Joe Wilson and especially Valerie Plame.
Thom Hartmann: Well and all the people that she was working with.
Bill Press: Yes, all around the world.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah.
Bill Press: And it also shows that she was very, had a very powerful, important job at the CIA. I mean she was not, as they tried to make her just some flunky or some secretary.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah. And Karl Rove has so much blood on his hands.
Bill Press: Oh yeah.
Thom Hartmann: In the last minute we have here….
Bill Press: Just on Iraq, I just want to say, but so he says he was disappointed there were no WMD. But he does not apologize, he will not apologize for sending all these thousands of Americans to their deaths, or all these thousands, tens of thousands, of Iraqis. Because he says it was still the right decision to do. Based on false intelligence. So there’s no regret, there’s no remorse, there’s no intelligence. It’s just a self-serving piece of crap.
Thom Hartmann: Haha
Bill Press: That’s how I would sum it up. Haha.
Thom Hartmann: On the other end of that, later in the day we will have probably one of the most intellectual writers of all of our day. Chris Hedges is going to be on our show in our third hour.
Bill Press: Yeah, what a contrast.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah. In fact I’ve got his book here in front of me, on the iPad, it’s just amazing. But Bill Press, no apologies from George W. Bush. And I, that’s a fascinating observation. That the things he’s most upset about were the photo ops gone wrong. The Kanye West thing, you know. Was king of a photo op gone wrong.
Bill Press: I was going to say, he says, if we just have 30 seconds. The worst thing that happened to him when he was president was when Kanye West said I don’t care about black people. So the worst thing wasn’t the war in Iraq, the worst thing wasn’t all those Americans killed there. For no reason what so ever. The worst thing wasn’t all those hundreds of people that were killed in Katrina. The worst thing…
Thom Hartmann: He’s just personalizing everything. This is it. Bill Press, BillPressShow.com.
Bill Press: You got it. Thanks Thom, great to see you.
Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.
