Tuesday, May 02, 2006

New York Times editor Bill Keller did not return my call or my producer's call or respond in any way to my invitation to appear on the program today to discuss his extraordinary letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal. (The background to today's invitation is provided in this post, as well as the links to all the relevant articles.)

HH: Lawrence O’Donnell, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you talked to lawyers who told you that Cheney was too drunk to talk. I just don’t believe you.

LO: All right. Don’t. Don’t.

HH: Do you have any name you’ll give me that we can double check?

LO: Listen, Hugh, my entire family are lawyers. Every one of them, okay?

HH: Could I talk to one of them?

LO: No, it’s ridiculous. I talk to lawyers all the time.

HH: Did you talk to them yesterday?

LO: What…tell me what difference that makes? Let’s pretend…

HH: Well, you wrote it. I want to know about your…

LO: Let’s assume that I talked to no one. Let’s say that’s a lie.

HH: Okay. So you did lie about this?

LO: Say it’s a lie. I’m not saying…no.

HH: Did you make…

LO: No. You say it’s a lie. Now let’s proceed with the argument with that being a lie. So what?

HH: No, no. I’m just trying to get the facts, Lawrence. I would like to know…

LO: Yes, I talked to a bunch of lawyers.

HH: How many?

LO: Five, six.

HH: Five, six lawyers, and they were all your brothers?

LO: No.

HH: How may were your brothers?

LO: One.

HH: And who, besides your brother, did you talk…like entertainment laywers? Century City lawyers?

LO: No. Criminal lawyers.

HH: You talked to five criminal lawyers?

LO: Prosecutors and defense lawyers. That’s the only ones I know.

HH: Monday and Tuesday, you talked to five lawyers?

LO: On Monday, yeah.

HH: On Monday, just on Monday. Would you give me the name of one of them?

LO: No.

HH: Because none of them really said he was too drunk to talk, right?

LO: They all did.

HH: They all said, five lawyers, and you won’t let me talk to one of them?

LO: NO.

HH: Why?

LO: Because they’re guessing. They’re guessing. All we’re doing is guessing, because the Vice President forced us to guess, because he did exactly what Ted Kennedy did at Chappaquiddick. Exactly, Hugh. The same behavior. That’s what you do when you’re drunk. Now there’s other possible reasons why the Vice President did what he did. There are many other possible reasons, but he’s going to have to tell me what those are, and he’s going to have to make those believable. So far, I do not believe him…

HH: And I don’t believe you.

LO: You’ve got two approaches to this. You’ve got two approaches to it, Hugh. Either the Vice President was a moron on Saturday, or Karl Rove, who knew about it at 7:30PM, was also a moron. Or, they were both very smart. Now the smart version about the way they handled it is they had something to hide on Saturday night, and they successfully hid it. That’s the smart version.

HH: Lawrence, I want to go back to why you won’t tell me any of your five lawyers, or your brother. Why not just give us the names, so we can check to see if you just didn’t make this up?

LO: They’re not public figures, and it doesn’t matter. Read the post. It doesn’t matter. The lawyer part of it doesn’t matter.

HH: Will you give me their names off-air?

LO: No.

HH: So even if I agree not to broadcast it…