Karl Rove Breaks Down Obama's Disastrous Disaster Speech

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," June 16, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: The president delivered an Oval Office address on the Gulf oil spill last night in an effort to make up for 57 days of federal inaction.

Now he insisted that his team was on top of the crisis from day one, and then seamlessly transitioned into a political pitch for Democratic energy policies.

Let's just say the anointed one's attempt to cover up his tracks didn't get rave reviews.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It seemed more like a PR spiel instead of real, genuine wanting to fix — I mean we're going on 60 days?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: The speech won't stop the spill, it won't stop the pollution of the beaches. I think he gave it a good shot. He looked sincere for most of it.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: I don't sense executive command. And I thought that was the purpose of the speech tonight. Command and control. I'm calling the shots. My name is Barack Obama. I'm the boss, I'm telling people what to do. I didn't get that clarity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd like to see a lot more action out of him. He's getting better at telling us what he's going to do and he still hasn't done anything yet.

GOV. BOBBY JINDAL, R-LA.: I would've liked the president to say failure is not an option. I would have liked the president to say that we're not currently winning this war because oil is getting in.

KEITH OLBERMANN, MSNBC HOST: Rachel?

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Hi, Keith.

OLBERMANN: What did you think of the speech? OK, we're — we're in full agreement, aren't we?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people out here — good people. Good safety (INAUDIBLE). And it's devastating.

(END OF VIDEO CLIPS)

HANNITY: And in a continued effort to correct his mistakes the president met with BP executives earlier today. It was his face-to-face meeting with BP CEO Tony Hayward since the spill began.

Now the petroleum executives marched into the White House around 10:15 this morning and found that the president had cleared a whooping 20 minutes on his schedule for the group. He also put aside 25 more minutes to meet privately with the BP chairman.

Now he came out of these meeting with a firm grasp about who is to blame for the entire mess.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: BP's liabilities for the spill are significant and they acknowledge that fact. We will continue to hold BP and all other responsible parties accountable.

And I'm absolutely confident BP will be able to meet its obligations to the Gulf Coast and to the American people.

BP is a strong and viable company. And it is in all of our interests that it remain so. So what this is about is accountability. At the end of the day that's what every American wants and expects.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: And I think Americans would like to hold the federal government accountable as well. And with this president in charge, however, that seems unlikely.

Joining me now with analysis of these unfolding events is former adviser to George W. Bush, Fox News contributor, author of The New York Times best- seller, "Courage and Consequence," the one and only Karl Rove.

Karl, welcome back.

KARL ROVE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Sean, thanks for having me.

HANNITY: You know you're in trouble when Mr. Thrill-up-your-leg, Chris Matthews, and left-wing radicals at NBC recognize that this was a bad speech and a bad night for the president.

ROVE: Yes, it was a bad speech. In fact, look, there were four elements to the speech last night. Four big topics he touched on. And in every one of these subject areas he misled, he omitted and he gave misdirection to the American people.

It was an extraordinary performance.

HANNITY: All right. Why don't we go through them one by one? Because you got them right there. And —

ROVE: Yes. Yes.

HANNITY: By the way, I love your high-tech graphics.

ROVE: Yes, well, we spent all afternoon putting this together.

HANNITY: Yes.

ROVE: Look. Look, first, he talked about stopping the leak. And — this was the extraordinary one in the speech. I got the speech here. I've underlined it.

He said just after the rig sank, "I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers led by our Nobel Prize-winning Secretary of Energy Chu. And as a result of these efforts we've directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology."

Well, wait a minute, right after the rig, 57 days ago, and you gave your instructions to BP this week to mobilize additional equipment and technology? This week?

It took you 57 days to come up with that? I mean, wait a minute, what were you doing to stop the leak right at the beginning? Instead he pops up in the speech and says well, we assembled them right after. But they weren't able to come up with any useful ideas until this week.

HANNITY: Yes —

ROVE: And that's just emblematic of the speech.

HANNITY: You know, the funny thing to me is if you look in the days coming out of this, I mean, you know, we now found out — it wasn't just the Dutch offering us three days after the spill, the skimmers. We now know there are 13 countries that offered assistance and our government, in many of those cases in writing, turned them down.

Here's what — here's what we saw out of the president, though, up until last night: "I can't dive down there and plug the hole. I can't sip it up with a straw. You know, I want to know whose bleep to kick."

You know —

ROVE: Yes.

HANNITY: And I'm watching a president — what's missing here? Where is leadership?

ROVE: You know you've touched on it. He talked about accountability in that clip you had just before. All those slow decisions, those botched decisions. Last night he said well, we've made a decision to build berm islands.

Well, it only took 16 days to give an answer to the state of Louisiana that said we want to build 140 miles of berm island, 24 different berm islands. They came back and took them — 16 days to say you can have six, and we'll pay for one, you have to pay for the other five.

You know there are a whole bunch of botched decisions last night on the cleanup that you allude to, including the decision not to take full advantage of the foreign equipment that was available. And again, he didn't touch on last night. That was one of the omissions.

HANNITY: You know, one of the things that frustrates me is I think the biggest lie that he told last night when he said we only have two percent of the world's oil reserves, and that's the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface. We're running out of places to drill in shallow water.

That's an — we can drill at ANWR. We can drill off the coast of the —

ROVE: Yes.

HANNITY: — Pacific and the Atlantic and — you know, none of which is true.

ROVE: Yes.

HANNITY: I mean that was an outright falsehood.

ROVE: Well, look — exactly. And remember that's in the cap-and-trade section down here. The final part of this — the number four, took up a third of the speech.

Remember the one of the first things he did when he came into office was had his secretary of energy withdraw a series of leasing agreements on land outside the national parks where we could drill environmentally safe and withdrew those on land leases.

So, you know, this is just amazing. And look, one of my personal favorites. Down here in the restoration he said well, we're going to direct BP to have the $20 billion fund and we got a restoration plan and former Governor Mabus of Mississippi is going to do. We got a national commission.

But then he talked about two things as part of the restoration which are counterproductive. One of which is, we're going to have a six-month moratorium on offshore drilling which is going to mean that at the end of six months we're going to have a bunch of rigs which have gone to Brazil or Indonesia or deeper parts off of foreign shores and are not coming back to the United States.

And then he said well — we've done something about the Minerals Management Service which is emblematic of the failure of the government. Well, wait a minute, you've been in office for a year and a half, you're in charge of that agency. If you thought it was such a disaster why didn't you clean it up when you came into office?

HANNITY: Yes, I don't get this. Let's forget about cleaning it up, plugging the hole or damn hole if you quote the president. We'll push — we'll push, you know, cap-and-tax in the process.

Look, the president's approval ratings, and you study this as well — as much as anybody I know. It's now 42 percent. He's headed into the 30s. We're 139 days, as of today, outside of an important midterm election. His party is not looking good heading into it right now.

What impact does all of this have on the November elections?

ROVE: Well, it has a very — a very negative impact on the chances of the Democrats. But remember, public opinion is a very complex set of numbers put together. And while this is — his approval rating is being dragged down by this. It's also being dragged down by jobs, the inability to create jobs, the lack of economic opportunity, the big debt, the out of control government spending, all the bad things that are popping up on Obamacare.

So it's not just one thinking that's weighing him done, so not one thing will turn him around. In fact, what's interesting to me is less than the overall number which is now in the low 40s in Rasmussen and the aggregate number of composite number of everybody is in the mid 40s.

What's interesting to me is if you look inside those numbers the strongly opposed are easily outnumbered in most instances by the strongly approves by 2-1, or better. Meaning in Rasmussen I think it was 44 percent in today's Rasmussen.

HANNITY: Yes.

ROVE: Strongly disapprove, and it's in the 20s for strongly approve. That's a bad place to be going into election year.

HANNITY: Well, and if there's any indication out of Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey and even the Pennsylvania 12th where the candidate sounded more conservative than me.

ROVE: Yes.

HANNITY: You know, I got to tell you, it's not looking good from the Democrat perspective. But we'll see. Look, I hope they can plug this hole. I hope that we get out there and we start cleaning up, you know, this oil spill or else we're going to have a lot of people out of work and it's going to impact our environment and our economy for decades to come if we're not careful.

But Karl Rove, I love your whiteboard.

ROVE: Thank you, man.

HANNITY: You are technologically savvy and advanced. Thanks for being with us.

ROVE: You bet. Thank you, Sean.

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