Ed Gillespie On Fox News Radio's 'The Tony Snow Show,' 8/11/05

[paineinthearse]

http://www.gop.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=5721

:puke: Ed Gillespie On Fox News Radio's 'The Tony Snow Show,' 8/11/05

TONY SNOW: Now, you know, you've been in a little tiff with the New York Times. They did a piece the other day where Ron Wyden, who is a senator from Oregon, had given sort of his view of some of the answers John Roberts had given him in a semi-private interview. I say semi-private because there's only so many from the White House in attendance, in this case Fred Thompson, and they didn't bother to call you guys about it, so you sent them a little letter. I want you to tee up this particular controversy, then we can get to some others.

GILLESPIE: Well, they didn't call for a comment to see if their characterization of -- Senator Wyden's characterization of his conversation with Judge Roberts was accurate. In fact, the New York Times reporte d from that meeting that Judge Robert, in quotes, made clear he was displeased with Congress' effort to force the Senate Judiciary to overturn a court order withdrawing her feeding tube, close quotes, in the Schiavo case. And, in fact, the judge refused to comment on the Schiavo case, saying he hadn't studied it and wasn't familiar with the legislation in Congress. I have to say, Senator Wyden has been clear that remerge from doing that. That's the New York Times' characterization. That is not Senator Wyden's quote that I was drawing your attention to...

SNOW: That's hilarious. Okay, so we've got this. Now, NARAL's put out this completely ridiculous ad and it's been bashed in all quarters as being a pack of lies. Let me play it one more time so that people can get a sense of it. It, in effect, accuses John Roberts of being complicit with a bunch of abortion clinic bombers....

SNOW: And it's kind of hard to figure out where to begin on this one, isn't it?

GILLESPIE: It really is. It is outrageous, it's despicable, it's false. It's a pack of lies is exactly what it is. And, in fact, first of all, the bombing, the clinic bombing, tragic clinic bombing that took place was seven years after the case that they reference, that he was defending supposedly clinic bombers in a case that took place seven years after the case that he was involved in.

SNOW: But let's make it clear. He was not defending clinic bombers. full extent of the law. All he was saying was, that people were using an anti-discrimination statute and he said they were using the wrong statute to prosecute these guys.

GILLESPIE: Exactly. Exactly.

SNOW: He was basically saying to prosecutors: Go back and try again. You're going to have a lot better chance if you do it this way.

GILLESPIE: And in the Amicus the filing from folks who agreed with that perspective, by the way, and what the NARAL characterizes as condoning violence --

SNOW: Right.

GILLESPIE: Were elders of the Menonite church, peace activist s , Amnesty International. It is absurd. And it's been called to the attention of CNN. CNN knows that it is a false and misleading ad. They're running it anyway. I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact that Ted Turner is one of the biggest contributors -- $1.4 million -- to NARAL itself and he's on the board of Time Warner and that's why they chose to run it. They refuse to run an ad featuring Mother Theresa because it was pro life and they didn't want to handle abortion ads, apparently. But I guess things have changed at CNN...

GILLESPIE: And Amnesty International. You know, you're right, as you pointed out, in a memo he wrote at one point while working in the White House concerning people who were seeking pardons for abortion clinic bombers, he said these people are criminals, they should not be pardoned. You know, this is not an act that can be, that's pardonable. That's his view. They are completely distorting John Roberts' record and I have to give credit to Democrats like Walter Delenger , who's been clear about this, that this is a completely unfair and misleading ad. It's unfortunate. I noticed on a news report yesterday that Democratic leadership in the House and Senate were asked about the ad and they stood by it. And I just, you know, this is not the kind of debate that is worth of a Supreme Court nomination in the United State Senate....

SNOW: Yeah. Yeah. There are also a lot of groups now saying we want more documents. And now I know that you have only given them 75,000 pages and you barely learned anything about some of these 75,000 pages. The second complaint is, well, even though you promised 75,000 pages, you're giving them out too slowly. Your response.

GILLESPIE: Well, a couple things. One is it takes a while to cull 75,000 pages worth of documents and that's what they're doing at the Reagan Library. Not quite 75,000. I think it's more like 60,000. There's another 15,000 from the archives from his time at the Department of Justice.

SNOW: The Reagan Library.

GILLESPIE: The Reagan Library's about 60,000 pages, as I understand it. And the Democratic senators on the judiciary committee have asked for, to expedite. And the White House, by the way, has asked to expedite all of that. You know, at the Reagan Library, there's a lot of interest from people who care about foreign affairs and what was going on in the cold war at the time. They have requests. There are people interested in the tax policy of the Reagan administration. They have requests in. What we've asked the Reagan Library to do, and they have done, is to jump ahead of all those pending requests that have been in there for sometimes years, and move anything related to John Roberts up to the front and get them out in time for the committee hearings, and they're doing that. The Democrats, on top of that, asked for documents related to 35 different issues, that they asked that we expedite those and get them to the committee, I'm suspecting, we hope, by the 22nd...

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