Must See Panicked President TV

Must See Panicked President TV

Want to see President Bush in a panic?

Via
Think Progress, we've got just that, our president caught on tape
stammering and stuttering, when he gets a question he isn't expecting. I saw the clip this morning on CNN.

Read
and watch our dissembling president in action, as he says he
will not apologize for illegally spying on Americans.

Citizen Harry hits back at Bush.

Q You never stop talking about freedom,
and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see
you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without
charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean
water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you’d like to restrict
my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy
on my own behalf. You are –

THE PRESIDENT: I’m not your favorite
guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what’s your question?

Q Okay, I don’t have a question.
What I wanted to say to you is that I — in my lifetime, I have never
felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington,
including the presidency, by the Senate, and –

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: No, wait a sec —
let him speak.

Q And I would hope — I feel like
despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far
behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that
you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself.
And I also want to say I really appreciate the courtesy of allowing me to
speak what I’m saying to you right now. That is part of what this country
is about.

THE PRESIDENT: It is, yes. (Applause.)

Q And I know that this doesn’t come
welcome to most of the people in this room, but I do appreciate that.

THE PRESIDENT: Appreciate –

Q I don’t have a question, but I
just wanted to make that comment to you.

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate it, thank
you. Let me –

Q Can I ask a question?

THE PRESIDENT: I’m going to start
off with what you first said, if you don’t mind, you said that I tap
your phones — I think that’s what you said. You tapped your phone
— I tapped your phones. Yes. No, that’s right. Yes, no, let me
finish.

I’d like to describe that decision
I made about protecting this country. You can come to whatever conclusion
you want. The conclusion is I’m not going to apologize for what I did
on the terrorist surveillance program, and I’ll tell you why. We were
accused in Washington, D.C. of not connecting the dots, that we didn’t
do everything we could to protect you or others from the attack. And so I
called in the people responsible for helping to protect the American people
and the homeland. I said, is there anything more we could do.

And there — out of this national
— NSA came the recommendation that it would make sense for us to listen
to a call outside the country, inside the country from al Qaeda or suspected
al Qaeda in order to have real-time information from which to possibly prevent
an attack. I thought that made sense, so long as it was constitutional. Now,
you may not agree with the constitutional assessment given to me by lawyers
— and we’ve got plenty of them in Washington — but they
made this assessment that it was constitutional for me to make that decision.

I then, sir, took that decision to members
of the United States Congress from both political parties and briefed them
on the decision that was made in order to protect the American people. And
so members of both parties, both chambers, were fully aware of a program intended
to know whether or not al Qaeda was calling in or calling out of the country.
It seems like — to make sense, if we’re at war, we ought to be
using tools necessary within the Constitution, on a very limited basis, a
program that’s reviewed constantly to protect us.

Now, you and I have a different —
of agreement on what is needed to be protected. But you said, would I apologize
for that? The answer — answer is, absolutely not. (Applause.)