Banned Interview With President Bush

31Jul07

This is an interview with President George Bush that was apparently banned from being aired on American television. Evidently, the journalist was not quite slavish enough.


Filed under: Media, News and politics, US, Videos   |  14 Comments

14 Responses to “Banned Interview With President Bush”  

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  1. 1 James, London, UK on July 31, 2007 said:

    What a fucking useless prick.

  2. 2 JamieSW on July 31, 2007 said:

    Feeling generous today, then? ;)

  3. 3 Sue Xian on July 31, 2007 said:

    CFR puppet. Just like Cheney, Hillary, Obama, McCain, etc…

    VOTE RON PAUL ‘08 !

  4. 4 salahudin on July 31, 2007 said:

    he seemed to be a bit… peeved. but other than that, i don’t see why they didn’t broadcast this everywhere…

    in fact i think he did a good job of defending his position. his spin is impressive… it won’t woo the more intelligent people out there of course. but overall going by the average IQ of most americans, yeah his spin is good enough

  5. 5 JamieSW on July 31, 2007 said:

    From the RTE:

    ‘THE White House has strongly criticised the RTE interview with President Bush, claiming that journalist Carole Coleman constantly interrupted him, preventing him from getting his point of view across.

    The interview, broadcast from the White House on Thursday, 24 hours before the President’s visit to Ireland, so displeased President Bush and his advisers that it led to the cancellation of another RTE exclusive yesterday, an interview with the President’s wife Laura.

    The interview with President Bush, where he was asked questions about the Iraq war and the Middle East among other issues, was the first with an American president by RTE in about 20 years…

    On the way into the summit luncheon at Dromoland Castle, President Bush is understood to have raised the “snippy” interview in a light-hearted fashion.

    An Irish Government spokesman said that “within Government there was an acknowledgement that the interview lacked respect.”

    Meanwhile, the interview was raised on the Larry King show on CNN, CBS, the New York Times where it was described as “contentious”, and in other media.”

    Hmm, it says that the interview was “raised” on Larry King, CNN, etc. but not that it was shown. It seems very odd that they wouldn’t show it, though – I’ll check it out.

  6. 6 Dave On Fire on July 31, 2007 said:

    indeed, it’s all the same old bullshit of course, but it’s a bit less absurd when he’s forced to defend it a bit. And I’m surprised that they can ban a clip from American TV like that (in 2003-4, at least).

  7. 7 JamieSW on July 31, 2007 said:

    Yeah, exactly – it’s surely not possible to ban something like that, is it? That would just be blatant censorship. Maybe the YouTube guy/girl got it wrong. I’ve just been reading a bit about it – the interview is old, from June 2004. Apparently,

    “It appears that the White House just dropped the ball on this one; reportedly, they had her list of questions three days in advance, but given that they suggested that she ‘ask him a question on the outfit that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern wore to the G8 summit’ (!!!), they weren’t paying attention, and expected some kind of giggling moronic schoolgirl, or something.”

    (See also here).

    The Heathlander – bringing you mildly interesting news over three years after it happens!®

    As to the actual interview – I thought it was pretty mild. Bush was obviously talking out of his arse – Iraq hasn’t increased the threat of terror, 9/11 happened before Iraq, “serious consequences” meant that the war was justified (except that, explicitly, it didn’t), we had to “disarm” Saddam because he had the “capacity” to build WMDs (huh?), yadda yadda yadda. I guess he just got frustrated because his routine recitation of the standard neo-con talking points kept getting interrupted. I wonder whether the journalist doing the interview has done anything good since, or whether she stepped back into line after the criticism that was levelled at her after this interview.

  8. 8 JamieSW on July 31, 2007 said:

    Hmm, it doesn’t seem like she took the criticism too badly…

    This seems to be a really well-known thing, which is quite telling since, as I say, the questions were actually quite bland. If that is what passes for adversarial, confrontational journalism in the mainstream press, it’s easy to see why Bush and Blair were able to get away with their lies in the run-up to the war.

  9. 9 Dave On Fire on July 31, 2007 said:

    Well, she was clearly under a lot of time pressure. When Bush fobbed her off with evasions (and killed time suggesting it might work better if she spoke less) it might have been nice if she put him on the spot, but she had to get onto the next bullet point.

  10. 10 JamieSW on July 31, 2007 said:

    Oh yes, I recognise that – after all, there’s only so much you can do in ten minutes with a stroppy president who is determined to spout all his talking points in full. Still, the fact that this is held up (as it seems to be) as a rare and exciting example of a journalist putting tough questions to power does illustrate just how servile such interviews tend to be.

  11. 11 SW on September 26, 2007 said:

    I haven’t seen this on RTÉ either. But then again, I wasn’t in Ireland in 2003/2004. Gotta love the part when he tries to muster support for the occupation of Iraq by mentioning how “your neighbour”, Britain, ie its then leader, Blair, supports the war. Yeah, name-dropping the army that gave us the black and tans and the occupation of the Six Counties will deffo get Irish people cheering another occupation . . .

    Bertie Ahern’s Fianna Fail government supported the war by giving CIA torture planes free stop-overs on Shannon airport, charging the Irish taxpayers. The Taoiseach is to Blair what Blair is to Bush, and on the Emerald Isle, they’re rightly regarded with contempt for their greedy wars.

  12. 12 JamieSW on September 27, 2007 said:

    Heh – yeh, I missed that one. I’d expect the Irish generally to have a lot of empathy with people struggling under occupation, given their history. For example, as far as I’m aware, public opinion in Ireland is very much in sympathy with the Palestinians. I’m not sure of this, though – I’d have to check, but it fits with their anti-colonialist past.

  13. 13 SW on October 1, 2007 said:

    It is indeed. There’s an active all-Ireland solidarity campaign (http://www.ipsc.ie/). and the public opinion is very much on the side of the Palestinians.

  14. 14 Jeff on July 11, 2008 said:

    I was expecting Bush to look weak and silly, but found him to be articulate; and firm but courteous when responding to the interviewer’s rudeness.


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