Schumer blasts Rove super PAC
Karl Rove responds to Senator Chuck Schumer's outrage over his super PAC's finances
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 6, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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O'REILLY: "Personal Story Segment" tonight. As you may know fox News Analyst Karl Rove is associated with an organization called Crossroads GPS which raises money mostly for Republican causes. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer doesn't really like that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCHUMER: About $33 million raised by Karl Rove can stay completely secret. This is the fund expected to be most active in 2012 and we're unable to follow the money trail at all. We're completely in the dark.
O'REILLY: Joining us now from Naples, Florida is Mr. Rove. You have this money in the Caymans, in Switzerland? Where do you have it?
KARL ROVE, FOX NEWS ANALYST: In U.S. banks. Hey, are we talking about Senator Chuck Schumer. The hypocrisy? I lost --
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: Personal attack. Whoa. Personal attack on Schumer.
ROVE: Is it Senator Chuck Schumer of the hot air? I mean, you know. Look, I was shocked today.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: Yes.
ROVE: That Senator Schumer called for the NAACP voter fund to be subpoenaed for having spent $14 million from one anonymous contributor in order to slam George W. Bush in 2000 as a bigot. The end -- why is Senator Schumer attacking the NAACP?
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: But he didn't do that, did he?
ROVE: I mean, are we talking about --
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: He didn't do it.
ROVE: Oh wait a minute, that's right. That was 2000 and he didn't say a word about that $14 million anonymous contribution.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: So you were being sarcastic?
ROVE: Oh wait a minute, are we talking about -- are we talking about Senator Chuck Schumer, The Wall Street?
That's right. He -- what he did is he has -- he has threatened to subpoena the League of Conservation voters. Yes, the -- the National Abortion Rights Action League, the Sierra Club and other groups which have used 501 C4's to hide the nature of their donors. They attack Republican members of the Senate --
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: But he didn't do that? He didn't do it, he didn't do it.
ROVE: Oh wait a minute, wait a minute that's right. We are talking about Senator Chuck Schumer the cynic. I mean, you know look, who is he kidding? That this is what the Democrats have been doing for years.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: All right.
ROVE: And this guy now comes out here and -- and says he's going to do what when the Republicans start following what Democrats have done? No wonder. This is Senator Chuck Schumer. How stupid does he think we all are?
O'REILLY: Ok now are you done bashing Schumer? Or do you have a little more on your little chart there? Is that it? Did you get it all out of your system?
ROVER: I didn't say -- it wasn't -- it wasn't bashing. It was mocking the man for being --
O'REILLY: All right, are you done mocking, bashing, disparaging -- are you done?
(CROSSTALK)
ROVE: No, no.
O'REILLY: No you have more, you have more.
ROVE: No. The worse -- the worse place in Washington is between a television camera and Chuck Schumer.
(CROSSTALK):
O'REILLY: And Chuck Schumer, it's like a hippopotamus and a river I know.
ROVER: You know it's like worse place to be. Exactly.
O'REILLY: All right, all right, we got it.
Now, where is all this money? You got $33 million, where is that money and what are you doing with it?
ROVE: Actually, where the money is in U.S. banks in the bank account of Crossroads GPS.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: GPS is Grassroots Policy Strategies, right.
ROVE: That's correct.
O'REILLY: Grassroots Policy, I thought it was -- I thought you had a little company where I could find my way to home GPS. I thought that was it and then it's totally not true.
(CROSSTALK)
So you have your money all over in banks. All right all over in bank and you're going to use that money in the presidential election to do, what?
ROVE: Well, we're use -- we're allowed to use a minority of the money for express electioneering (ph) and then the rest we will use in talking about the major issues of the day. For example, last year we were involved in the battle over the debt ceiling where we called on Americans not to give President Obama a blank check. We're now having ads from GPS up talking about Solyndra and the administration's failed policy on so-called green jobs where they've handed out taxpayer dollars.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: All right so most of this money will be used to buy TV -- TV advertising, putting forth your point of view that the Obama administration has screwed up.
ROVE: Absolutely. Exactly and in furtherance of our goals of supporting the free enterprise system and limited government and low taxation, sensible regulation.
O'REILLY: Will you use it to bolster the Republican candidate? I know you can't be tied into their campaign. But will you say good things about either Gingrich or Romney?
ROVE: Sure. Sure.
O'REILLY: Ok so you use it for any -- any or all of that?
ROVE: Yes, that's right.
O'REILLY: Ok now you are right and Schumer is welcome to come on at any time. Because Schumer never said a word about George Soros who spent probably even more money than you did setting of Move On and all of this Media Matters and all of this garbage --
ROVE: Yes. George Soros himself -- yes George Soros himself gave $37.5 million to Americans Coming Together. In 2000, the NAACP Voter Fund announced they received $14 million from one donor. That was real money back in 2000. And I never heard a peep out of Chuck Schumer then. I didn't hear a peep out of Chuck Schumer when he was Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and all of these outside group were drumming on the heads of Republicans using money through their 501 C 4's. This is just pure hypocrisy.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: All right, so we're now back to bashing Schumer. I thought we had left that behind but now we've come back to that.
ROVE: You know it's just so easy. He is just --
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: Ok, all right.
ROVE: -- can you imagine you're a Democrat Senator and that guy is jumping out on front and he's the face of the evening news for your party? I mean, please.
O'REILLY: I want to get Schumer on the air.
All right I got one more question off top of this. And again Schumer we would like to see him next week.
8.3 unemployment -- that's got to help President Obama, right? The unemployment rate is down from 10.1 to 8.3; now it looks like it's going the right direction.
ROVE: Yes it -- well, but -- but look, it has gone in the right direction. We should applaud the fact that the economy is coming back. But two things, one is about half the decline in the unemployment rate has come from people dropping out of the workforce because they got so discouraged. We got two million fewer people in the workforce today than when we went into this thing.
And the second thing is this is an anemic recovery. If you take a look at the ten post-World War II recessions at this point in the recovery we should have about 13 million more people working than we've got working. This is -- this is anemic.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: are you going to do an ad on that, are you going to do an ad on the employment situation?
ROVE: I'm confident we're going to be reminding people that President Obama said at this point that we would have six percent employment. We would have a go and blowing economy. Not the 1.8 percent GDP growth that we had last year and the 2.2 percent to 2.5 percent growth we look like we're going to have this year.
O'REILLY: All right. Thank you, Mr. Rove. We appreciate it.
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