By ,
Published January 26, 2017
NEIL CAVUTO, HOST OF “YOUR WORLD”: All But go ahead. What is he telling you? Go ahead, Eric.
ERIC SHAWN, FOX NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I’m here with Andrew Breitbart. As you saw, he just was on the podium.
So, my first question to Andrew is, Mr. Breitbart, was this set up? Did you try to set up the congressman? And the reason for you to come to the podium moments before his news conference?
ANDREW BREITBART, PUBLISHER, BIGGOVERNMENT.COM: Of course this wasn’t a set up.
And I went to the podium because a gaggle of press people asked me that I -- that I should speak with the group. I did so at their invitation. I didn’t do as a means to crash the -- the event.
In fact, as I was walking up there, I asked whether or not this was the proper thing to do. But there clearly a lot of questions that needed to be answered. And given the fact that Congressman Weiner made much of last week about trying to blame me and much of the left wing media tried to make last week about blaming me, including claiming that I outed the name of the girl in Seattle that he sent the tweet to, which is false, and also claiming that I was the hacker, I felt that I needed to set the record straight.
SHAWN: Andrew, another question about -- that you’re holding back one photograph. You said it’s very sexually explicit.
What is that photograph? Why are you holding it back? And what do you believe the impact of what you’ve done can be or will be here?
BREITBART: I think that the photo -- the Chris Lee part two shirtless video, pretty much speaks enough to the type of relationship that he was having with a woman that he doesn’t know down in -- well, I’m not going to say where she’s from -- but that the other one is just beyond victim vulgar and just beyond salacious.
And I don’t think it does anything other than rub dirt in his face. Even though he spent much of the last week hoping that his strategy of attacking the messenger would work, I don’t feel a sense of vengeance against this man, that I would put him and his family through this type of humiliation.
SHAWN: And, finally, Andrew, what do you think the congressman should do?
BREITBART: I don’t...
(LAUGHTER)
BREITBART: ... have an opinion on that, because, I mean, as a human being, I think he obviously has some issues. And I don’t necessarily think having personal foibles is enough to resign.
But I think the big problem here is the cover-up. The big problem here was trying to deflect blame on a journalist who’s just doing his job and who lost his Memorial Day because he trying to fend off the accusations that he was the hacker.
SHAWN: And, also, Andrew, we’ve seen several politicians fall to this; Chris Lee, who was a Republican, resigned the very same day. You have been covering this.
What is your sense of what happens? They say power corrupts.
BREITBART: Yes.
SHAWN: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. What’s your view...
BREITBART: Yes.
SHAWN: ... from having been on the outside and now doing what you have been doing on the Internet.
BREITBART: Well, I would say that I was witness to what happened during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal with -- from a front-row seat.
And I watched as the "It’s just about the sex" meme and talking point went out there. I think that these guys are putting the country in harm’s way. Just like Congressman Lee or Congressman Weiner, both of them don’t want the images to be shown whatsoever. You see how much Congressman Weiner is fighting.
I believe that when you have those type of photos and you are sending them out to Americans that you don’t even know, or people you don’t not even know, you are putting yourself into blackmail territory. And when these guys have national security secrets, and these guys are now making themselves so overtly susceptible to blackmail, I have a deep problem with it. It’s not just about the sex.
SHAWN: And, of course, finally, critics would say you’re doing this for political purposes. You’re conservative. What is your reaction to that? And how do you defend yourself, since you are known as a conservative?
BREITBART: Well, I would say this. I think that the media needs to start being a lot more overt about where it comes from politically, because I don’t – I’ve never believed for a minute that ABC, CBS, NBC, or The New York Times are objective.
I go into a story and I tell people, this is where I come to the story from a political perspective. It doesn’t mean that the facts are changed as a result of that. And these facts came to me proactively. I did not -- I’m not a wizard who comes up with these facts, and I had nothing, too, to do with getting into this congressman’s head to get him to do the things that he did.
Content and Programming Copyright 2011 Fox News Network, Inc. Copyright CQ-2011 Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/breitbart-these-scandals-put-country-in-harms-way