Politically Incorrect Transcript
Guests on this program were:
Tom Fitton
Wayne Brady
Illeana Douglas
Alec Baldwin
Panel Discussion
Bill: All right, let's meet our panel. The president of Judicial Watch and the editor of "Opinion Inc.," our buddy, Tom Fitton is here. Tommy?
[ Applause ]
Tom: Hey, how are you?
Bill: How are you, my friend? Good to see you. He is one of the stars of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?," Wednesdays at 9:30 right here on ABC, Wayne Brady.
[ Applause ]
Hey, good to get you here. Her new movie, "Message in a Bottle," opens next Friday, and she's guest-starring on ABC's "Brother's Keeper" the very same night, our pal, Illeana Douglas.
[ Applause ]
Illeana: Hi, honey.
Bill: Hey, beauty. And a big movie star, serious theater actor and board member of People For the American Way, Alec Baldwin.
[ Cheers and applause ]
They still love you. All right. I always love to talk politics because I know everyone here is into it. Now, Jesse Ventura, the governor of --
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Okay. Jesse "The Body" got elected. Everybody was saying what is he going to do. Well, this week he unveiled his first big initiative. It is to cut with the goal of eliminating all public broadcasting, which is a big deal in Minnesota. It's a very liberal state. That's like Tennessee cutting pickin' and grinnin'.
[ Laughter ]
But I think he's on the right track. We've talked about the NEA before. I'm against the government being in any sort of arts. And I think he's on the right track.
Illeana: What does this guy have against, you know, documentaries about bugs and stuff?
Bill: Nothing. It's just why should the government pay for it?
Illeana: Well, when I was a kid, I actually did watch documentaries on PBS about the arts and American Master's program and I learned a lot from it, so.
Wayne: Definitely. That's what makes us a very well-rounded country. We would like to think of ourselves as the most powerful, if not one of the most powerful countries in the free world. And you just can't be one big armed country. You have to have art. You have to have intelligence.
Bill: Yeah, but why the government?
Tom: Art was around before the state of Minnesota.
Bill: Exactly.
Tom: It'll be around long after it. And these documentaries, I think, will get made. And if people want them made, I'm sure there will be lots of fund-raising.
Illeana: By who?
Tom: These things have a market, obviously, and PBS actually takes a small minority of its funding from the government. They can get by without it. We have these arguments whether we're gonna help people on welfare or whether we're gonna give money to documentaries. It seems to me the priorities are screwed up.
Bill: But PBS started in the days when there wasn't a lot of other things on TV that were educational. Now, on cable you have the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, Family Channel, Biography, A&E, Discovery, History Channel. You have enough people showing crappy movies.
[ Laughter ]
Alec: But you make a good point. Which is that when PBS was founded, they were supposed to be addressing a gap in the marketplace that existed that's been filled subsequently by a lot of cable channels for those people that have cable television. Public television is a very, very important source of programming for people on a broadcast band who can't afford cable. Hey, I got news for you. A lot of people don't have 25 or 30 bucks a month to pay for TV.
Bill: 70%.
Alec: And PBS is giving them what they want.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Tom: He's a friend of the taxpayer.
Illeana: He's not my friend.
Tom: You have to have a really good reason to spend other people's money like this.
Alec: He's a friend of some taxpayers. Not the taxpayers.
Tom: Well, many people would rather have their own money and choose to support PBS with their own money rather than giving it to the government, the government taking a little bit off the top, and then dispensing it.
Illeana: I think he should wrestle the head of public TV and whoever wins --
Alec: I will wrestle him.
Wayne: You heard it. You heard him.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Oh, yeah.
Bill: All right. We'll take a commercial and come back.
[Applause ]
Bill: Okay, the big news yesterday and today is that it looks like, finally, we're gonna end this impeachment thing. But I've been saying all along that the real scandal, I mean, this is a diversion that the president had sex, the real scandal in Washington is campaign finance, which they will not reform. And that is why this country lives in a system of open bribery. And the argument for -- thank you for that one applause --
[ Applause ]
How much they care but they should care. And the argument always against this, reforming the system, is that for some reason they say giving money is free speech, which I find to be a preposterous argument.
Tom: You're looking at me, Bill. Of course it's free speech. You know, we're talking about government bureaucrats spending our money last segment. And now we're gonna be talking about government bureaucrats telling us how to spend our money. I think American citizens have a right to fund in the way they see fit candidates of their choice. It's what democracy is about. It costs money to get your message out.
Bill: It only subverts democracy.
Tom: And you should be able to give -- and if you're concerned about it, enforce the laws against bribery. You're right about Lewinsky. The real crime with Clinton has been the bribery that he's been taking, the money from the Chinese Communists and doing fund-raising illegally in the White House.
[ Light applause ]
That should have been the focus of impeachment, not Monica Lewinsky. In my view.
Alec: Well, unfortunately, you raise two points. One is that you think that that should have been the focus of the scandal. Hey, they spent 40 million bucks and a lot of the heartache of this country to explore every angle of everything this guy did other than Lewinsky.
Illeana: Right.
Alec: And it got them nowhere. That's what led us so Lewinsky.
Tom: Well, they aren't investigating --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Alec: You got Lewinsky 'cause they came up dry on every other front.
Illeana: I have this theory. I kept thinking the Republicans are dragging it out for so long 'cause they're hoping that maybe Vince Foster would, like, come into the Senate, covered in mud and weeds, saying, you know, "Clinton killed me, I'm back."
[ Laughter ]
"I'm back from the dead. He killed me."
Alec: A Wes Craven movie.
Illeana: Yeah.
Tom: I don't think the Republicans are interested in rooting out corruption. And we probably agree on this. I don't think they were serious about getting this guy out of office. I think they knew he did a lot of things wrong and they purposely focused on the weakest link in the case. They've got Filegate, they've got Travelgate, they got the Chinese money. And they talked about the intern.
Alec: Yeah, but wait a second. Are you contending that Travelgate, Filegate, et cetera, there was really something there?
Tom: Yeah, 900 FBI files --
Alec: Why isn't Starr now -- I mean, Starr is, to me, is probably some hood ornament of some vehicle you're fond of.
[ Laughter ]
But did he not come up completely dry on all those accounts? Are you saying he lied?
Bill: By his own account, he said.
Alec: Are you calling Starr a liar when he said there was nothing there?
Tom: I don't think Starr did a thorough investigation. He was focused obviously on Monica Lewinsky.
Bill: Not thorough?
[ Laughter ]
Tom: He focused on Monica Lewinsky. He didn't do a thorough investigation of Filegate. You know what? He didn't talk to Linda Tripp about Filegate. And she was there witnessing everything that was going on virtually.
Illeana: The problem --
Tom: He talked to her about Lewinsky.
Alec: You're saying that Starr deliberately tanked the Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate thing.
Tom: No, I don't think he deliberately did it.
Alec: Just curious.
Tom: I think there's a level of incompetence on the part of his staff there.
Alec: Starr is incompetent.
Tom: And they were focusing on Lewinsky 'cause it was easy. They had the semen. They didn't want to go over after the FBI files.
Alec: Chinese Communists, semen, he's got all the hot-button words in there. Chinese Communists, semen.
Bill: So if there had been semen on the files --
Tom: I think Starr would have had an easier time, but he decided not to do anything.
Illeana: I think --
Tom: Just because Starr didn't do his job doesn't mean we shouldn't be interested in what happened in Filegate.
Bill: "Didn't do his job." I've never heard this theory. I've never heard this theory that Starr didn't put enough time and money.
[ Laughter ]
That we haven't exhausted this enough. I mean, he did everything but go door-to-door with hand puppets and act it out.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
Alec: With puppet semen. You made a statement which is the government wants to tell people how to spend their money and now they want to stop them from spending it in their contributions. That's not actually -- the specifics of the campaign finance law are the government already has ruled, or the Supreme Court has already ruled that there are limitations on contributions people can give to candidates.
Bill: Right.
Alec: They've already said that that's constitutional. What they said is unconstitutional is to limit how much money a candidate spends himself on his race. The decision says cash is speech, and if I run for office, I can only raise a limited amount of money from each individual person. But however much money I rake into a pile, I can spend as much as I want to. So what that winds up meaning is, if cash is speech, the richest guy speaks loudest and that's the problem.
[ Applause ]
Bill: Also the premise that cash is speech is ridiculous.
Alec: Let me interject one thing. Let's think about something that's really interesting here. And I know you've touched on this before. You know, Michael Huffington spent a lot of money to run for the United States Senate.
Bill: Yes.
Tom: He lost.
Alec: And Michael Huffington lost by a hair. He spent millions and untold millions of dollars.
Bill: $28 million.
Alec: Of his own personal fortune to run for office.
Bill: Right.
Alec: And concealed the fact after the race that he was gay. He withheld that from his constituents in order to gain office. This is a guy that almost won the race and bought the race, with a concealed identity.
Bill: Why should he have to say he's gay?
Alec: No, no, no, I don't think he has to say that. What I'm wondering is why is he hiding? Why is a guy who's hiding that buying himself the race?
Tom: The question isn't money. The question is principle. What are these people running on? Are they running on values that you share? Are they running on values that I share?
Wayne: They should be running on the values --
[ Talking at once ]
Illeana: I would rather --
Alec: That's the point. The point is not that Huffington was gay. It's that he felt he had to conceal that. I don't want a guy running for office who's a conservative, who lied and concealed the fact that he's gay. I probably would have voted for Huffington if he had admitted he was gay.
[ Laughter ]
[ Talking at once ]
Bill: There are gay --
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Alec: I'd vote for him, too. He was a liar.
Bill: Yeah, but first of all, they're all liars. Second of all, you can be a gay conservative.
Wayne: God bless America.
Bill: There's an organization called the "Log Cabin Republicans."
Alec: Right.
Bill: I'm sure you're familiar with them. Rich Taffle, I'm sure you know, we've had him on the show. He believes -- I mean, there are gay conservatives. Don't ask me why.
[ Laughter ]
And they believe --
Alec: And they're out there as gay conservatives.
Bill: Very much out there.
Alec: Whereas Huffington lied and concealed that fact until after the fact. Then, "P.S. I'm gay."
Bill: But it's not a lie to not come out and say, "This is how I have sex. This is how I do it, people." That's not a lie not to say that.
Alec: I think it -- I think there was something about -- I think he deceived his constituency in the state of California.
Bill: Isn't that the whole problem is that the country thinks they have a right to know about people's sex lives? Isn't that the problem with Bill Clinton?
[ Applause ]
Wayne: I think he probably felt -- I think he probably felt that he had to hide that because we are that type of country. If someone did say --
Illeana: Arianna would have killed him.
[ Laughter ]
Alec: She would have kicked his butt.
Wayne: If someone got up and said, "I'm gay, vote for me," most of our country would say, "No."
Alec: I think there is something very cynical about what Huffington did. He was a conservative candidate in California who concealed that fact.
Illeana: However --
Alec: And that he would just buy his way in.
Illeana: Alec, you have to admit that Kennedy, you know, in the good old days, Kennedy completely bought his election with the help of the mafia. My people, in the good old days.
[ Laughter ]
>br>
You know? And he had a fine presidency. Don't get mad at me.
Bill: Right.
Alec: Your family in the mafia?
[ Laughter ]
Tom: Your people?
Bill: And also, when he had an affair with Marilyn Monroe -- I mean, Bill Clinton has treated Monica very well. Kennedy, you know --
Tom: Oh, yeah, treated her very well.
Alec: Kennedy did what, Bill?
Bill: Compared to what Kennedy -- to what they did to Marilyn Monroe.
Illeana: Monica's gonna do fine.
Alec: Whoa, whoa, whoa. What did they do to Marilyn Monroe?
Bill: Well, I think they killed her.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
All right, we gotta take a commercial. We'll be right back.
Bill: All right. Well, we're packing up our wagons and going to Washington after the show tonight. We'll be there all next week. The big controversy there today is "People" came out and there's Chelsea on the cover and the White House made a statement saying they don't approve. It seems to be complimentary. It says, "Grace under fire."
Tom: I think it was nice the media did not focus on Chelsea for a while. But I have a feeling, though, the Clintons, forgive me for thinking they're a little cynical, would have been happier if she were on the cover during an election year. This is off an election year and they don't want her in the limelight, admittedly, rightly so, because of what the president did. I don't blame them for being angry, but, you know, I think they've used her in the past for political gain. Now they don't want to.
Bill: Oh, that is so wrong.
Tom: I think they have. I do.
Alec: You know, if you weren't so good-looking, you just couldn't get away with these statements. It's outrageous, the stuff that comes out of your mouth.
Tom: Do you think --
Bill: You know that is --
Tom: All politicians do this.
Bill: Come on.
Tom: They all use their children.
Bill: But they never did that. That's the one thing even their critics have defended the Clintons by. They never used their child. They kept her out --
Tom: I saw her at the convention up on the stage there.
Bill: That's part --
Tom: They do use -- they do -- have used Chelsea. They take her on the foreign trips. They let her speak on public issues in Africa recently. She's gonna be the focus of the media. I hope the media is respectful of her.
Wayne: But that isn't using her, that's involving her. She is a family member and she happens to have a very high profile. Do you know what I'm saying?
[ Applause ]
Alec: And it is their only daughter. I mean, Nixon had that whole Tricia, Julie or Tricia, Julie. I think it was Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tricia. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Julie. They could switch off.
Bill: Julie was the really loyal one. I mean, she was the one like, "Daddy, don't quit, you'll have you two votes."
[ Laughter ]
Alec: "I'll still vote for you, daddy."
Bill: Do you think Hillary's going to go for the Senate.
Tom: Well, she has the right to. I thought you were going to.
Illeana: That's the only bad thing. She'll push poor Alec out of the way.
Alec: I'm not running.
Illeana: And I'd vote for Alec.
Tom: Well, the problem is that she has her ethical problems, too. She was involved in Whitewater, Filegate.
Illeana: Oh, God.
Alec: I love this guy!
[ Laughter ]
You just keep pushing ahead. Just keep pushing ahead.
Tom: She was a defendant --
Alec: Was Chelsea involved in Whitewater and Travelgate, too?
[ Laughter ]
Tom: Not as far as we can tell, but the president's wife was involved in scandal in the White House and it's gonna come up in the Senate race.
Illeana: I think Hillary -- 7
Alec: You want to know something? Can I tell you something?
Tom: You support her values. I think you should run in the sense that you're an honest liberal. I don't think Mrs. Clinton is ethical.
[ Light applause ]
Alec: I tell you what I think. If you don't think she's ethical I can dig that. Let's just face facts about one thing about Clinton and his wife. The fact is that these people have been the target of a conservative, you know, campaign to bring them down on every conceivable level.
Tom: There was no conservative involved in the FBI files, Alec. There were no conservatives there.
Alec: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Tom: That was his White House.
Alec: Richard Mellon Scaife and all those kinds of people, but we don't want to get into that.
Tom: Richard Mellon Scaife wasn't there when the president was with Monica Lewinsky. And he wasn't there in Whitewater. That's not true.
Alec: The fact remains that we are into the final moments -- we're involved in an end game now, which is gonna result in one thing. And that is the Clintons have basically kicked your ass.
[ Cheers and applause ]
And I know that's painful. I know that's painful. I feel like Henry Hyde and those people. They must feel really empty and low because they gave it everything they had and it looks like they're going to come up three lemons right now.
Tom: It isn't over yet, Alec. There are suits out there. Starr's investigation is continuing. And I don't think people should be glad that the president of the United States gets away with in-your-face felonies. I think it's a sad day for the country.
Bill: In your face?
Tom: In your face.
Bill: The only person who's in your face was Monica.
[ Laughter ]
Come on. That's the only person.
Alec: You guys worked that out before the show, didn't you?
Bill: No.
Alec: Come on.
Illeana: I think it's great if Hillary --
Bill: She had grace under fire. Sorry, go ahead.
Illeana: I think it's great that Hillary can go to New York and reinvent herself, as we all do when we go to New York, and run for Senate.
[ Laughter ]
And I feel sorry for Bill because what is he going to do?
Bill: Oh.
Illeana: He's going to have -- I predict she will have a wonderful, wonderful career post-Washington, and poor Bill is going to come to Hollywood and probably be an actor.
Alec: The question is nobody's quite sure, I mean, is Moynihan really gonna not run?
Bill: Oh, definitely.
Alec: Well, wait a second. There's rumors now that he may still change his mind and he may run again.
Bill: I think it's great that New York state has this little law that if you're a celebrity, well, you're really a New Yorker anyway.
Illeana: Yeah, yeah.
Bill: Whether you live here or not. If you're Bobby Kennedy, if you're Hillary Clinton, come on in.
Wayne: She has every single right to run. Just because -- now, I'm not defending her. The thing is if you don't think that she has ethics and if the country doesn't think that she has ethics then she won't be elected and she'll be sitting outside with her husband saying, "I want a job."
Alec: Let me ask you a question. Can I ask you a question?
Tom: Sure.
Alec: Seriously. I just want to ask you this question. Do you think that if -- 'cause I feel deep in my heart that I wouldn't want to see what's happened to Clinton and his personal life and his sex life bedded this way, even if it was somebody who I have the least amount of high regard for, so to speak, in the Republican side. I wouldn't want to see this to happen to Dole or Tom DeLay or Dick Armey.
Tom: Right.
Alec: I mean, how do you think you would feel -- would you really be as gung ho about this if it was a Republican president? Honestly?
Tom: Yeah.
Alec: You do?
Tom: I would be. I would be. I think we've got -- I think we've got a real problem here. We have someone in the oval office who had no respect for the law related even to the Jones suit, related to FBI files, related to campaign fund-raising. And the problem is they focused on the thing that was the weakest link. There not gonna buy the bill.
Bill: All right.
Alec: But are you, for example, were you as foamed up about Iran/Contra as you are about this situation?
Tom: Well, I don't think that President Reagan violated laws in Iran/Contra.
[ Audience groans ]
I don't.
Bill: All right, I've gotta take a hypocrisy break. We'll be right back.
-------------------
Bill: All right. I want to remind everybody, we are going to Washington, D.C. We'll be there next week. We'll have people like Ron Silver. People like this. Not him.
[ Laughter ]
We'll have Ron Silver, Pat Sajak. Oh, that should be good.
[ Laughter ]
Governor Ann Richards -- I'm serious -- Mercedes Ruehl, your friend.
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