This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” October 21, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And tonight in “Your America,” there is a new shocking undercover ACORN video. And this time the spotlight is shining on the organization’s Philadelphia offices. Now filmmaker James O’Keefe and Andrew Breitbart of BigGovernment.com unveiled the video this morning at a press conference in D.C. Let’s take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW BREITBART, BIGGOVERNMENT.COM: ACORN has lied every step of the way and ever since they sued these truth tellers and me, they’ve used the media to propagate a new slew of lies, including the lie of Philadelphia. They have lied that Hannah and James were kicked out of the Philadelphia ACORN office. They have lied that Hannah and James did not mention prostitution when they came in. We are here to dispel those lies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: All right, now, Breitbart says the following video clearly shows that prostitution was discussed and that James and Hannah were not immediately asked to leave the ACORN offices. Now keep in mind, Biggovernment.com acknowledges the video has been edited. And the ACORN audio of the worker, in fact, has been muted for legal reasons. Let’s take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES O’KEEFE, POSED AS PIMP IN VIDEO (voiceover): We mentioned prostitution twice.
(CROSSTALK)
(on camera): No one’s going to be prejudiced against her because she’s a prostitute.
(voiceover): And Catherine said that nobody in her office would discriminate against that line of work or anything else. Even the Philadelphia Inquirer reported we only spoke to Catherine Conway Russell for, quote, “a few minutes.” It didn’t just last a few minutes, not 10 minutes, or 15 minutes, or even 20 minutes, but 32 minutes long.
My camera ran out of batteries at the 26th minute mark, but the audio kept recording. We talked about the abusive pimp and the new prostitution business.
(on camera): And we don’t want to have anything to do with that guy. I’m trying to — at least if not straighten her out, give her her own business where she doesn’t have to be beholden to that guy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Now ACORN claims the edited videos do not tell the whole story and told an ABC affiliate in Philly that workers there even called the police to have James and Hannah removed.
Joining me now with reaction to all of this is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller, “Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies,” Michelle Malkin.
Michelle, first of all, your take on the video?
MICHELLE MALKIN, “THE CULTURE OF CORRUPTION” AUTHOR: Well, it’s clear that many of the assertions that the ACORN officials made were clearly debunked by the tape that we have seen. The ACORN official in Philly said that they were only there for a couple of minutes and then were thrown out. This is eight minutes worth of tape and the BigGovernment team says that it was upwards of 32 minutes at least that they were in the office.
And from what we’ve seen, it’s clear that they weren’t run out on the rail. And it’s not apparent from the tape that they had released that the ACORN official was intimidated or outraged in any way. If she was, she would have called the cops then and there, which she didn’t do.
And I think that the larger story here is twofold. And one is the continued whitewashing of the larger ACORN criminal enterprise by the mass media, and the second story, of course, is the continuing operation of this criminal enterprise even now, and the need to dig much further.
This goes way beyond a half-dozen ACORN sting videos and what was in them and the substance in them. The fact is that it has taken years and years and decades and decades for this empire to be built and it will take many years to dismantle it and untangle all of the financial networks that have been built around it.
And then I think the third story, of course, is the fact that any time you challenge or threaten a left-wing enterprise like this, there will be serious legal repercussions. It is not just Andrew Breitbart, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe who are being threatened. There is another whistleblower, Anita Moncrief, who was sued by ACORN and Project Vote.
She was someone who served as a source for The New York Times, which cut bait right before the election because they realized that continuing to pursue the story would be a, quote/unquote, “game changer.”
HANNITY: All right. There seems to be, and we just got into this with Karl Rove earlier in the program, the politics of intimidation. You get into this in great specificity and great detail. I don’t think it’s going to work Hannah, I don’t think it’s going to work with James, and I certainly know Andrew Breitbart well enough. It’s not going to work with him.
The attacks against the Fox News Channel, it’s going to ultimately, I believe, backfire on the White House. But yet they still continue to use these tactics. I — do you think most of America, though, is waking up to a very different White House, a very different Barack Obama, than what was presented during the campaign?
MALKIN: Well, certainly what was presented by the stenographers and the white washers in the mainstream media, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the political analysts at so-called news organizations on other parts of the cable airwaves, that spent most of their time deifying this man instead of probing not only his brief history in public office, but of course all of the people that he has surrounded himself with.
And over the many, many weeks that I have been talking about “Culture of Corruption” on your show, Sean, and on Fox, I’ve tried to make clear that of course birds of a feather flock together. And the corrupted birds of a feather flock together.
It’s no surprise…
HANNITY: You see.
MALKIN: …that the demonization tactics that this White House has adopted are now the kind of tactics they’re using against their political enemies and outlets that threaten them because of news that they don’t like.
HANNITY: You know, look, I think I actually made a mistake. And I think I said this to Dick Morris earlier in the week because I kept saying and kept asking the question for a couple of weeks, where are all the vetters? Where are the people around the president that are protecting the president?
But if we look at this pattern, I mean, Anita Dunn, and this other official praising Mao, you’ve got the Kevin Jennings, you’ve got the Van Jones controversy, you got Holdren, you got Sunstein.
And of course we can go back in the president’s past, it seems like they actually got the people that they wanted. They got people with radical views. But isn’t it really the president that is sort of — he’s sort inoculated himself. I guess with the help of the media, he has an image that I think in the minds of many people, that’s very different.
Is he as radical as the people around him?
MALKIN: Well, sure. I mean the left-wing fish rots from the head down. And I think it is too expedient to simply treat Obama as if he is some puppet being maneuvered by left-wing puppet masters all around him.
Of course he believes what his minions believe. And I think that the ACORN story is a perfect example of how the mainstream media has covered for him. And I go back to drumming The New York Times about this. Stephanie Strom, and I want to end with this quote, “The real story to all of this is how these myriad entities allow them to shuffle money around so much that no one really knows what’s getting spent on what.”
That is New York Times Stephanie Strom to whistleblower Anita Moncrief. They knew this was going on last October. And they covered it up. Who’s a real news organization?
HANNITY: All right. We appreciate it, as always, Michelle, thanks for being with us. Congratulations on the book.
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