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Published January 27, 2017
This is a rush transcript from "The Five," September 17, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: So, the U.S. and Hezbollah finally agreed it's our fault, not theirs. But this rush to blame what's been called the U.S.-made film raises some question like where is Alec Baldwin? Why is he so quiet? Isn't freedom of expression the default cocktail chatter of the Hollywood artiste?
Chances are, the only way to get Hollywood to defend the filmmaker would be if he's suddenly did a sequel showing that Christians kidnapped orphans for food.
But if you think art can make people kill, then shouldn't you support art control? Carrying a concealed haiku would require a license. How about a five-day waiting period for tasteful etchings?
See, this isn't about the acts of terror but a response to them. Blaming that video for unrest is like blaming the Fort Hood massacre on the workplace violence. It's moral cowardice. A refusal to confront our enemies because then you must reject your own assumptions about evil America.
Repeat after me -- it's them, not us, which runs counter to teacher lounge logic that stains the White House. If it's our fault, why aren't the Muslims rioting in the U.S.? Maybe because our government doesn't orchestrate it. Only the media would think Mitt Romney's response is scarier than our appeasement.
This is not war for Islam's hearts and minds, but for our lungs and kidneys. We cannot forfeit our Western principles to appease haters. But it's the media, the champions of free expression doing just that. They track the filmmaker down and justify the anti-West outrage on heels of romanticizing its sister scam, Occupy Wall Street.
And why? Because it's all they know. Cultivated on the college campus, the only thing that stuck was a disgust for American strength.
There's a reason Bill Ayers never bombed a college. Those were his hearts and minds.
ERIC BOLLING, CO-HOST: Nice. Great analogy.
GUTFELD: Where is the ACLU?
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELD: Respond with facts. Don't ask me --
BOB BECKEL, CO-HOST: All right. When you say college campuses and teacher lounge, you're assuming that all college campuses are appeasers?
GUTFELD: Eighty percent of college campuses are overwhelmingly liberal. The professors have tenure, allowing them to profess ideas that no real American would even care about.
The anti-Americanism is born in universities. That's where it comes from. And it bleeds into the government civil servants, and that's why we have this now. There's nobody in the White House, there's nobody in academic who actually thinks our government is not at fault.
BECKEL: But you are suggesting that bureaucrats who work for government are anti-American?
GUTFELD: No. I'm saying that they were born and bred in an environment which taught them that way. Most professors, study show, are overwhelmingly left wing. This is where you get the attitude.
ANDREA TANTAROS, CO-HOST: Which is so fascinating because the media that makes a living and is supposed to be embracing free speech is somehow apologizing for it, which I find to be very, very --
DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: The Hollywood non-response is bizarre. They talk about everything all the time. All of a sudden, they've gone mute.
GUTFELD: Yes.
PERINO: Which is more telling than anything they --
GUTFELD: And actually kind of a relief. It's nice not to hear from them.
BOLLING: I don't want to cut you off. Can we throw the picture up of the filmmaker again? We saw like in disguise and the cops are leading him out.
To me, America changed.
PERINO: I agree.
BOLLING: Someone e-mailed that picture. Mark Levin actually sent this to me. Take a look at this.
America changed at that moment. To use what is called a flimsy ploy to bring a guy in for questioning, proves that the Obama administration, through all his appeasement and the apologizing, answers to the Koran first and to the Constitution second.
BECKEL: Oh, c'mon. That's just outrageous statement. Even for you that's outrageous statement.
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: Of all the things you said and I love you, brother, but that's the most outrageous thing you have said!
BOLLING: Why was he brought in?
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: He was brought in because he's investigated for parole dumping, that's why.
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELD: Suddenly, they find his parole.
BECKEL: I agree with that. But I'll tell you one thing, if he had any sense -- this is a guy who's apparently a Coptic Christian. I can understand why they're outraged because --
GUTFELD: You defended them.
BECKEL: That's right. I have.
But that does not mean that I would have suggested to him that they put together a film like this that was bound to incite an incitable group of people.
GUTFELD: He should do anything he wants. If he wants to make a movie --
PERINO: How many high school students tried to put together this weekend a movie more outrageous than that one? Then what are we going to do? Call in, everybody?
GUTFELD: By the way, you only incite more violence if you prove to them that violence works. OK, we're going to apologize and they know by killing Americans, this is how you shut Americans.
TANTAROS: Or that it's wrong. They say, look, the administration is actually agreeing with us.
PERINO: And they can go back to the coffee clutches and say, see, we got America to arrest the guy. That's the picture. Do you think -- this is the -- this is the picture all over the Middle East today.
GUTFELD: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELD: I got to tell you -- I love the New York Post. They are opened by our parent company. But this ticks me off.
Sunday, I buy The Post and drink coffee, they have "Cinemaniac." And they probably did this because they love the headline. But this is so bogus.
I mean, they say he -- this is the loon who set fire to Muslim world. No, the Muslim set fire to Muslim world.
(CROSSTALK)
TANTAROS: They need this excuse, because don't forget, this is embarrassing to the administration. Al Qaeda had better intelligence than we did. And eight weeks before a presidential election, it's successful terrorist attack when we drop the ball does not look good for the president. That's why they keep making an issue of this video. Lame.
BECKEL: We want to encourage people with the free speech they want. But listen, in a reasonable world, would we want to encourage people to do this film when we know the results --
PERINO: No one encouraged him.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Hold on.
GUTFELD: I'm reasonable. You can't be unreasonable.
PERINO: I think that the administration should demand that Sony cancel the release of the killing bin Laden film or else you don't know what's going to happen.
GUTFELD: It's a good point.
PERINO: How many Americans could die after that?
BOLLING: If you tell that man he or anybody else can't make a film like this Muslim --
BECKEL: Nobody said -- I didn't say he couldn't make it.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Shouldn't.
BECKEL: Shouldn't. I don't think he should have.
BOLLING: That's right.
BECKEL: Of course he has the right to do it. But that doesn't mean that you also have the right, I guess, to yell "fire" in a theater.
PERINO: You have a right to protest but you don't have a right to kill American ambassadors.
GUTFELD: You know what the parallel is? The parallel is building the mosque near the World Trade Center. You can do that. It's kind of a bad move. You kind of suck for doing it. It's the same thing with this.
You can make the video. Kind of a jerk. But you can make the video. That's the way it works.
TANTAROS: You have the right, but it doesn't make it right.
BECKEL: That's right. We have come to agreement on that.
GUTFELD: But it didn't spark anything. The only thing that sparks violence is our way of life. That's it.
BECKEL: Something else would have sparked it. To see it across 20 countries at one time --
TANTAROS: They don't need a spark.
BECKEL: Why weren't they doing something a month ago?
TANTAROS: They ran planes in to our World Trade Center.
BECKEL: No, I'm not talking about the last two or three --
TANTAROS: They don't need an excuse.
GUTFELD: Bruce Springsteen is dancing in the dark.
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