Brit Hume on Monday made some strong comments about Barack Obama's recent attacks on Fox News as well as the gooey interview CBS's 60 Minutes did with the President and Hillary Clinton the previous evening.
Of the latter, he said the theme was “Just How Great Is the Relationship Between You Two?” (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):
BRIT HUME: You didn't hear it on 60 Minutes, but President Obama like many a president before him is unhappy with the press. In a separate weekend interview with the liberal political journal The New Republic, he grumbled about Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Nothing unexpected there.
But Mr. Obama also complained that reporters generally in an effort to be impartial should treat the Democrats and Republicans like equivalent, balancing the views of one side with those of the other. They fail, he said, to note that one side – his! - is trying to do what’s right, and quote, “We haven’t seen that kind of attitude on the other side.”
Never mind, of course, that the president at that moment was being interviewed by one of his campaign donors and supporters who’s now also the owner of The New Republic. And never mind that he basically whistled up 60 Minutes on short notice to sit down with him and his Secretary of State for an interview whose theme could have been described as “Just How Great Is the Relationship Between You Two?”
I must have missed the friendly interview 60 Minutes did with President Bush and departing Secretary of State Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice. Well, you say, Mr. Bush would never have offered one. That may be true, but it is also true that if he did, he would never have gotten the same treatment this president has received from 60 Minutes and nearly all of the rest of the press. Bret.
BRET BAIER, HOST: This was the Secretary of State leaving, but it was a president entering his second term. I mean, didn't you expect one series of tough questions?
HUME: Well, especially so in the case of 60 Minutes because you may recall the last time 60 Minutes interviewed the president, controversy had arisen about whether the attack in Benghazi was terrorism or not and what the president had said about it. And he said in that interview that he didn't know whether it was terrorism or not.
Well, he himself had said in the debate with Mitt Romney that he had claimed right away that it was terrorism. So there was this piece of information in the 60 Minutes interview which appeared to contradict what he’d said, and they left it out of the version that they aired, and it only turned up much later. It was embarrassing for them to have that happen. You would have thought that they would have been careful to ask some tough questions this time, but they never did.
BAIER: In fact, that tape didn't come out for just days before the election. I mean it was months later.
HUME: Exactly right. It took quite a long time, and it was, you know, the kind of thing you look at and you think, how, what were they thinking? Well, you know, it supports the case that they're soft on this guy, and these interviews that 60 Minutes have done have generally been pretty soft.
