This is a rush transcript from "The Five," August 9, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
ERIC BOLLING, CO-HOST: Congratulations, Mr. President, you and your own campaign, your supporters and sadly, the White House, has reached the new low in politics. It can only be characterized as the dirtiest presidential campaign ever. Or as we like to call it, the Chicago way.
Case in point, your own com director, Stephanie Cutter, baselessly concluded Mitt Romney must be a felon. Then Majority Leader Harry Reid making a brothel out of the Senate floor, accused Romney of tax evasion. And the latest example of dirty, sleazy politics from the Chicago gang, widower Joe Soptic -- we all feel badly for the guy -- but now he's a willing accomplice to your campaign lies about Romney's tenure at Bain Capital.
Bill O'Reilly is calling you and your operatives political assassins, but my pal Rush Limbaugh said it best.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: We are in the middle of a political terrorism campaign. This is political terrorism, what is going on. Romney is a felon. Romney is a tax cheat. Romney kills women with cancer. Romney funded Bain Capital with money from right-wing death squads in El Salvador. Romney wants to rob from the middle class and give to the rich.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: You know, Juan, honestly, have you ever seen -- you have been in politic as long time -- have you ever seen a dirtier, sleazier campaign than the one Obama is running right now?
JUAN WILLIAMS, CO-HOST: Yes, the one run by Mitt Romney right now.
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, CO-HOST: Come on. Come on.
BOLLING: You must be kidding.
WILLIAMS: Are you kidding me? Who said you have to learn to be an American? That's a surrogate of Mitt Romney. Who says that when you think about it, you look at the ad, you didn't build that. Oh, they take out the part where he is talking about bridges and roads. Or, you think about, oh, you're a food stamp president? You're an entitlement president, making him out to be a socialist. Or, you know what, this is a war on religion. Romney has got that ad right now running. War on religion. What war on religion?
GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: But there's a difference. A lot of the things that you mention have to do with greater themes about an entitlement culture and it's true, they could be exaggerated because that's what people do. But nobody calls somebody a murderer. I mean, it seems to me with the left, if it doesn't have a pulse, it's a prop. Remember the Daisy ad, LBJ, it showed a woman, little girl, playing with flowers, blew her up.
The left loves to say the right kills people. That's just what they do, right?
WILLIAMS: And the right loves to say you are not an American, you are not really one of us, you're not like us. You are not a Christian.
GUTFELD: That's a fair point.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Kimberly, he's been called a felon. He's been called a tax evader. Now, he's called a murderer.
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, CO-HOST: Murderer of women, that he's against women, that he doesn't understand them. Oh, he hates dogs, he's an animal abuser.
I mean, honestly, what else are they going to say? The sad thing is it really shows the desperation of their campaign. Their rhetoric is so vehement against him and so baseless, unsubstantiated allegations made by a U.S. senator with no proof whatever. They don't care. Like nothing is off limits because they must keep the White House and they'll do whatever it takes.
This is going to backfire. So, keep acting up and you'll see what's going to happen.
BOLLING: What do you think, Dana? Should the White House -- not necessarily the campaign in Chicago -- but should the White House say, look, we have to tone down the rhetoric a little bit?
DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: Well, maybe, I guess they think it's working for them, because they're not, there aren't ads that are run by the Obama campaign about his record, right? There are ads against Romney. So you have the situation where we have been talking about this ad, and rightly so, and in particular how the ad was all put together.
Across the board, everybody from far left to far right has said this ad was beyond the pale. And as Karl said the other day -- Karl Rove -- every argument creates an opportunity for a counter argument. If you go too far on the negativity you can risk the possibility of turning people off.
It is only August. Do you remember, in the primary, when Gingrich called Romney a liar and I thought, are do you go from there? After you call somebody a murderer, what's left -- like what in the world will they say in September and October?
GUTFELD: That's the amazing thing about President Obama, his horrible mistakes actually help him. The ad is criminal but it takes everyone's eye off the economy so if he keeps screwing up like this he'll win.
WILLIAMS: Yes, that's a good point and Rudy Giuliani made that point on "Fox & Friends" when he said that everyone is talking about this. They are not having the real debate about the economy. So that is a good point.
But to get back to Dana's point, I just think when you look at his record and he does talk, President Obama talk about his record in ads. But in this instance it would actually I think in my opinion help him if he said, you know what, the Senate majority leader should not be making baseless charges on the Senate floor. If you guys think this ad is somehow over the top, if you interpret it that way, he can say, the way I interpret it that this is talking about the excesses of Bain and how Bain is all about profits.
PERINO: He should also say my campaign staff should not lie.
(CROSSTALK)
GUILFOYLE: Yes, show some integrity.
PERINO: You can look at the tape. Professionally, I don't think I could sleep at night.
WILLIAMS: The guy, that guy, that guy Joe Soptic.
BOLLING: We're going to get to him in a second. But Stephanie Cutter said we don't have any coordination. We have a lot of evidence.
WILLIAMS: You have a telephone conversation.
BOLLING: No, no, Juan, we have a lot more. We have the White House --
- we have staffers at White House raising money for Priorities USA. Sounds like a lot of coordination.
GUILFOYLE: Very direct connection to Priorities USA, from everyone that's involved with the Obama campaign and those that are serving in the White House with him. So they cannot even deny it. It's just a joke. They have no credibility if they care about that, but I don't know that they do. They want the smoke and mirrors and distract everyone from the lack of jobs, from the economy, from the deficit, from the reckless spending. That is what they want to do. He can't run on his record!
WILLIAMS: You know what? You're right. You know, I don't think there is any question, you are right, Ms. Guilfoyle. The lawyer in the house, you are right.
GUILFOYLE: Thank you so much. Glad to have you on the program!
WILLIAMS: The thing is you are a one-eyed referee, you don't see the other side is also throwing a bunch of stuff out there, too.
(CROSSTALK)
PERINO: You offended all the one-eyed people.
GUILFOYLE: Immediately issue an apology.
GUTFELD: OK. Two things, they asked Burton about this ad, he didn't stand by it. He said, it doesn't mean what it means. It's like getting lipstick on the color, and you say, oh, yes, it's lipstick, but it's not my shirt. It makes no sense. Everybody knows the implication was that he killed somebody.
The big lie here is Obama was supposed to be different. He was the new boyfriend -- young, cooler, hip, not like everybody else.
GUILFOYLE: He lied (ph).
GUTFELD: It turns he is far worse than the old, fat, ex-boyfriend. He just was better at hiding the flaws, which I admire.
BOLLING: Let's roll the little sound of Joe Soptic, the guy who's in the ad, featured in the ad saying that because of Mitt Romney, I lost my job and subsequentlt my wife lost her battle with cancer. He basically tied the two together.
But here he is from January -- went back and looked at this in January talking about this buyout. Go ahead and roll it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, JANUARY 10)
JOE SOPTIC: In my case, in my department, they actually offered to buy our jobs out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: Very important there, because that whole ad, the attack ad that's going on right now is basically painting Mitt Romney as an evil corporate raider who's destroying companies and destroying families. And here is the guy, the star of the ad, saying, wait a minute, Romney offered to buy my job out. He offered him an out before they took the company.
GUILFOYLE: Oh my gosh, the evildoer said, this is actually very unusual. You made a point in one of the e-mails you sent to us, they actually go to the workers, the line workers, and try to offer a buyout. People don't do that usually. That is not customary practice. That's going beyond the norm, which is exceptional. So, that's a great point. Point for Romney.
I have an issue with this guy, though. Who does this to their wife's memory? It really bothers me that he would do this and try to use his wife and politicize her death. You know, God rest her soul. All of us have friends and family who lost their lives to cancer. Why would you do this? Shame on him. This guy was in one other ad, too. Does he have a SAG card? He's like a paid actor.
WILLIAMS: Joe Soptic is doing this on his own. Nobody is paying him to do it, Kimberly. So, he's doing it of his own volition. This is what he wants. He has anger at Mitt Romney.
BOLLING: Help me out here --
GUILFOYLE: And he's using his wife in the meantime. It's awful.
WILLIAMS: His point is, and by the way, this is the point on the buyout. The guy wanted his job. He didn't understand why all of a sudden his factory was being closed, jobs sent overseas. That's the power of the ad. You know, a moment ago, Greg said, oh, no, it's all about Romney killing -- no, look, you can interpret that way and that's why I say it's a low ball ad, OK.
But nobody said -- the president didn't say, none of his aids said. It's
--
(CROSSTALK)
PERINO: It's just a wink and a nod.
WILLIAMS: Oh it's a wink and a nod on this, but not on anything the right wing does to Obama. No, never.
GUTFELD: It's a wink with Tourette syndrome.
BOLLING: Dana, get involved in corporate takeovers on both sides, the takeover and takeoveree. And most of the times as Kimberly points out, there's a severance. Usually on plant workers if you shut down a plant, there's a one-week, two-week severance. This guy actually admits that Mitt Romney and Bain Capital were willing to go one step further and buy the guys out, which probably meant, keep them under insurance for a while as well.
I think this guy, this -- what we just uncovered, proves that Joe Soptic isn't about being mad at Bain Capital and being mad at Romney. He's about Obama. He's about Obama.
GUILFOYLE: That's what this is all about. So, there you go.
WILLIAMS: You mean he wants Obama reelected.
BOLLING: I think this is all politics.
GUILFOYLE: And if you want to keep your insurance, go take the buyout.
WILLIAMS: That's what you were talking about last night. That just occurred to you?
BOLLING: Why would you use your dead wife --
(CROSSTALK)
PERINO: It's not that dissimilar to Cindy Sheehan in 2005, if you remember one of the things the left did with her is she had -- she had a grievance and she was heartbroken because her son had died in the war. She met with the president one time before.
Of course, the Democrats, they don't check their facts, OK? So then they hold this whole thing, she wants to meet with the president. But you met with him before. And it's like, oh, well -- they string her along for years. Now, she's on her own. She has no friends left in the world. They just use people and I think it's sad.
WILLIAMS: What happened with the Swiftboating of John Kerry?
BOLLING: Hold on, but I have to ask Greg. Is Joe Soptic another Sandra Fluke?
GUTFELD: No, he'll be used up. He's a prop. That's all he is.
And Obama knows the best defense is a good offense. This is offensive.
PERINO: I'm just waiting for the -- your mama wears combat boots ad.
(LAUGHTER)
GUTFELD: My mom did wear combat boots.
BOLLING: She did?
GUTFELD: Yes.
BOLLING: Love your mom.
WILLIAMS: So cute. I thought she was delightful.
BOLLING: All right. Mr. President, take a break from your fundraising, get off the golf course and denounce these gorilla political ads. It is unbecoming of the office.
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