The incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is ludicrously claiming that President Obama's administration is “corrupt,” and pushing a variety of phony scandals concocted by the right-wing media which he now has the power to investigate. According to the hosts at Fox & Friends, Obama's never had it so good. Watch:
In this segment on incoming chairman Darrell Issa, we see:
- Brian Kilmeade calls Issa a “name you should get used to,” then praises him for his “hallmark” of “getting the movement going to put Governor Schwarzenegger in office on the west coast.” In fact, while Issa spent $1.7 million on the effort to recall former California governor Gray Davis, he wasn't doing it to benefit Schwarzenegger. Issa wanted to replace Davis himself, only dropping out of the race when Schwarzenegger got in and instantly became a prohibitive favorite.
- Steve Doocy points out that Issa said on The Rush Limbaugh Show that Obama is “corrupt,” and later walked it back to say that he was actually talking about Obama's administration, not the president himself. Neither Doocy nor his cohosts seem to have a problem with either construction.
- Doocy mocks the Obama administration for reacting to Issa's pending investigations by hiring additional White House lawyers.
- Kilmeade declares that Issa “gets the message” and that rather than conducting witch hunts, he's trying to “save the money.” Kilmeade adds that Obama “should be the angriest” about wasted money in the stimulus. He later says that Obama should “get behind what Issa's trying to do.”
- Gretchen Carlson adds that there was “no oversight” of stimulus funds and “no rules” for its distribution, citing, well, nothing at all.
I think it's fair to say that Issa will be taking many a softball from the Fox & Friends hosts in the coming years.