How the Left Attacked the Bush Presidency

This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," December 18, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GLENN BECK, HOST: When you repeat a lie over and over and over and over again, people actually start to believe it as fact. The left did it to George W. Bush and they're doing it again now. That's the topic of this book.

My guest John Gibson, author of the book, "How the Left Swiftboated America."

Good to see you, sir.

JOHN GIBSON, AUTHOR, "HOW THE LEFT SWIFTBOATED AMERICA": Nice to see you. Congratulations on the show.

BECK: Thank you. Thank you very much.

GIBSON: It's doing fabulous.

BECK: Keeping your seat warm.

GIBSON: Yes.

BECK: "The Left Swiftboated America." I'm intrigued by this, because nobody sees — I think they are now — but for the longest time, nobody had seen the — you say a lie enough times and it becomes truth.

GIBSON: Well, that's what they say — that's why I took the words "Swiftboated." It was a verb the left made up. They thought John Kerry was swiftboated.

And — but they also look at the way they thought they were victimized of Kerry and said, you know, we can do to this Bush. We can do this to Bush for eight years and we can do this to the war and we can seize power again.

And so, the repetition of a campaign of lies over a number of years made this country basically flip away from conservatives, Republicans, Bush and towards Obama, which is how those radicals you always talk about ended up running things.

BECK: Can you — can you flip it? That's the question, John, because they have control — with the exception of Fox and talk radio, which they are constantly swiftboating now, there's no other outlet. I mean, look at the way they're painting the tea party people.

GIBSON: Yes.

BECK: First of all, in Time magazine, there weren't even — no picture was shown of any of the tea party people as if they didn't exist last year.

GIBSON: Any political threat, what they do is they start — first of all, a campaign lies will be initiated, and it will be repeated and repeated and repeated, until people just generally accept it. So, you get this people — I mean, the tea party people are a perfect example.
Remember that whole string of lies? Well, they're all racists.

BECK: Yes.

GIBSON: How do you know that? Well, just look at them. This is a campaign. They used it on Bush, perfected it, got power out of it, and will continue to use as far as the eye can see, as long as it works.

One hopes people are starting to wake up to what they're seeing going on.

BECK: I think they are. I think they are. I don't know how many and how many understand what they're up against. I didn't — a year ago, I didn't understand what this was. I mean, I had a sense of it, but this is — this is diabolical.

GIBSON: A year ago, as Barack Obama was cruising to victory.

BECK: Yes.

GIBSON: We were winning the war in Iraq. The surge had been successful. These guys had all condemned the surge and it would be impossible to send the American soldiers. Did they double back and say, Oh, gee, it appears right here on election day we're winning a war? Oh, no, don't let people see that. Don't let people hear that.

BECK: Right.

GIBSON: After the election, the left said, oh, hey, look, we won the war in Iraq, what are we going to do with Iraq now?

This is what they're doing now to Sarah Palin. This is what they're doing to Republicans and conservatives in general, tea party people, and even you.

BECK: Yes. I'm aware of that. There's this Maxim, and I'm sure everybody reads it for the articles, but there is this. I was amazed. A listener called in and said "Jerk Dissected." And if you look in here, it says.

GIBSON: It is your picture.

BECK: Yes, it's my picture. But in it, it talks about how I stir up a jerk forum, angry mobs, and the vein — you know, this diagram of my face, and it says that, let's see, "overcompensation and inevitable heart attack kicks in." They say I'm going to die. I suffer from a paranoid personality disorder.

I mean, it's always the same thing. I have noticed that anyone, Joe Lieberman is an example, they go after his wife or they'll go after a personality trait. Who was it that just other day said Joe Lieberman needs to start acting like a Jew and pass the health care?

I mean, it's amazing.

GIBSON: Ridicule is one of the prime methods because in ridiculing and joking about people watching the Jon Stewart show, you don't have to have the facts in line, like little ducks. As long as the punch line works ...

BECK: Right.

GIBSON: ... the ridicule works.

BECK: It's amazing to me that we — because we do punch lines and facts, and we have to be right on both of them, where they don't have to be right on either?

GIBSON: They're scared of any voice that is in opposition. The radar is always on. Who is the next threat, whether it's Fox News or Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck or whoever — go after them, go after them hard, undermine them, make people think they're not serious, that they're just a sideshow. And once you've destroyed people that way, you can move on to victory.

BECK: You want to understand what you're facing, because Americans, I don't think, really truly — we've all been trusting people, "Hey, you know, I don't want to offend anybody, if we call it a holiday concert,"
that's bothered us, but we haven't said enough, until now. I think we're approaching that point. You want to understand how it works, "How the Left Swiftboated America" — John.

GIBSON: Hey, Glenn, good to see you. Congratulations.

BECK: Good to see you. Thank you very much.

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