‘Meet the Press’ transcript for July 29, 2007

ATT’Y GEN. GONZALES:  I can’t...

SEN. SCHUMER:  Did the president ask you to go?

ATT’Y GEN. GONZALES:  Senator, we were there on behalf of the president of the United States.

SEN. SCHUMER:  Why can’t you answer that question?

ATT’Y GEN. GONZALES:  That’s the answer that I can give you, senator.

SEN. SCHUMER:  Well, can you explain to me why you can’t answer it directly?

ATT’Y GEN. GONZALES:  Senator, again, we were there on, on an important program for this president on behalf of the president of the United States.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Oh, boy.  That’s the way it went all during that hearing. What’s at stake here?  It’s a question that the attorney general answered in February about the eavesdropping, wiretapping without warrants plan for the president, the anti-terrorism plan, as he described it.  This is what the attorney general said in February.

(Videotape, February 6, 2006)

ATT’Y GEN. GONZALES:  There’s not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  There was disagreement within the attorney general’s office and within the Department of Justice.  And so, when asked why he had said what he said in February, this was the attorney general’s response this week.

(Videotape, Tuesday)

ATT’Y GEN. GONZALES:  The disagreement that occurred and the reason for the visit to the hospital, senator, was related—was about other intelligence activities.  It was not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  The FBI director, who was also at that hospital meeting, had a different recollection.  This is what he said before the House.

(Videotape, Thursday)

FBI DIRECTOR ROBERT MUELLER:  The discussion was on a national—a NSA program that has been much discussed, yes.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  The Senate now is considering perjury against the attorney general of the United States, Dan Balz.

MR. BALZ:  Extraordinarily so, yes.  But he is in a completely isolated position at this point, Tim.  All of the other testimony suggests that he is telling a story that is different from what everyone else’s recollection is. I don’t know how you square that circle.

Offscreen Voice:  It seems...

MS. MITCHELL:  And he’s got one supporter, and that is George W. Bush.  This is remarkable in that every leak you’re getting out of the White House shows that no one in the White House wants this to continue.  This is really hurting the president, it’s hurting the White House because you’ve got an attorney general who not only doesn’t have credibility, he doesn’t seem to be terribly smart about the way he’s handled this whole thing.  And Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary chairman, has said, “We’re sending the testimony.  We strongly urge to you to reconsider it.” He’s basically giving him the perjury warning that “you can change your testimony.” He’s got one week to do it, and if he doesn’t come back and have a new recollection, I think he’s in serious trouble.

MR. ROBINSON:  Remember, this, this hearing this past week was, in effect, an open-book test.  They let him have the questions beforehand.  They told him what they were going to ask him, and he still manages to, to, to mangle the whole thing.  It seems fairly clear that he is trying to, to, to parse something much more finely than it can be parsed by saying, “not part of the program as announced by the president.” You know, it—there is a story in The New York Times this morning, I don’t know if we’ve checked it out that said, “Well, it was an aspect of the terrorist surveillance program that was not announced by the president later.” So—but this...

MR. RUSSERT:  But there was disagreement about this.

MS. MITCHELL:  (Unintelligible).

MR. HARWOOD:  Of course.

MR. ROBINSON:  Of course there was.

MR. RUSSERT:  John Harwood and then Ron.

MR. HARWOOD:  Well, as, as Gene suggested, you square the circle by saying that Mueller was talking about data mining and the—Gonzales was being asked about wiretaps.  The problem is that it simply—the impression that he leaves is of somebody who isn’t straight with the Congress, who isn’t terribly competent, who doesn’t have the confidence of anybody in this job.  I can understand why the Democrats are pushing this—they’re bleeding the administration politically on this—and why Gonzales, who seems to think he’s been wronged, will stay there.  And Bush knows that, knows, knows that confirmation of a successor will be difficult, but Gonzales is taking so much punishment.  I wonder how he gets up in the morning and keeps going to the office every day.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  You know, to take a step back from the fine points of the testimony, this, at this point, is more about President Bush, I think, than it is about the attorney general.  The president has decided, and I think the, the White House is comfortable with the strategy of confrontation on most fronts with the Democratic Congress, thinking that the conflict is driving down the approval rating for Congress.  This week the House and Senate are both going to vote on expanding health care for working poor children who are uninsured, and the president’s threatening to veto that?  You know, we have the executive privilege fight.  There’s a broad range of conflicts brewing, and I think the White House feels that they are baiting Democrats into a sustained series of arguments that are bringing them down to a level in approval that is even lower than the president’s.  And whether that matters more than his low approval rating next year is another question, but I think the White House is very comfortable engineering conflicts across a broad range.

MS. MITCHELL:  Well, they may be...

MR. RUSSERT:  Chuck Todd, the politics of Gonzales.

MR. TODD:  I just think it’s remarkable what Gonzales has said.  He seems to be, at this point, more loyal to Bush than Bush is to him because of what you just said.  I mean, I think the, the White House must be glad that he’s taking all the arrows right now and he is sort of almost distracting Congress to just go after him.  How any—I don’t think any other human being could take this kind of punishment and stay in the job.  And I think a lot of folks, probably, in the Bush administration would just as soon this guy would just resign.

MR. RUSSERT:  If you talk to senators...

MR. TODD:  And he hasn’t resigned.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...Democrats are more interested in having him stay than Republicans.

MR. TODD:  Right.  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  It’s like a pinata.

MR. TODD:  It is.

MR. ROBINSON:  Or like a...

MR. HARWOOD:  They bring him back.

MR. TODD:  They bring him back, and he is a terrible—I mean, he’s terrible at this.  I mean, he’s...

MR. ROBINSON:  Reliably so.

MR. TODD:  He is not...

MR. ROBINSON:  I mean, he can be counted on.

MR. TODD:  He is not a very good—I mean, he may have been a good lawyer, but he’s not good at...

MS. MITCHELL:  But Ron has a point here that the latest polling does show that Democrats in the House and Senate are so in—held in such disregard. There was a poll the other day that said, for the first time, 71 percent of those questioned didn’t like their local congressman, that even when Congress was notoriously unpopular, you always liked your local congressman.  There’s something going on here and—that this Congress that came in November of ‘06 has already lost so much support.  I think people are really fed up with what’s going on in Washington.

MR. BALZ:  And the biggest—I think a lot of that has to do with Iraq...

MS. MITCHELL:  Sure.

MR. BALZ:  ...and the failure of this Congress to change the president’s policy.  Not easy to do, obviously, but people believe they voted for a Democratic Congress that would bring change.  It hasn’t happened.

MR. RUSSERT:  We’re out of time.  Dan Balz, Andrea Mitchell, John Harwood, Chuck Todd, Gene Robinson, Ron Brownstein.  I think we’ve solved just about everything.

MR. TODD:  Yeah.

MS. MITCHELL:  Yup.

MR. RUSSERT:  We’re going to continue our discussion with this extraordinary group on the Internet.  And how has the Internet changed covering campaigns? Our MEET THE PRESS Take Two Web Extra on our Web site this afternoon at mtp.msnbc.com.  We’ll be right back.

(Announcements)

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