Can the President save his reputation?

Charles Krauthammer on five controversies plaguing the Obama administration

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," May 27, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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O'REILLY: Continuing now with our lead stories: the five controversies plaguing the Obama administration. Joining us from Washington Charles Krauthammer. So please assess my talking points. Did I miss anything?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: No I think you got it right and I think you got the one that's going to hurt the President most absolutely right. There is no question that Obamacare is going to hurt the Democrats in November and also in 2016 because it's not so much the scandalous part of it. It's the fact that it represents -- it's the embodiment and sort of the symbol of this kind of Obama hyper liberalism and intrusiveness and because it affects people where they live.

People don't end up in the voting booth reacting so much to scandal as they are to stuff that happens in there own lives. Losing their health insurance, some of them losing full-time employment or their hours are cut. Some of them are going to lose their employer provided health insurance. There's going to be -- and of course, others with high premiums and high deductibles. There are going to be millions of Americans directly affected.

O'REILLY: Yes.

KRAUTHAMMER: And it's going to affect them negatively.

O'REILLY: Here is why it is a scandal though.

KRAUTHAMMER: I was about to tell.

O'REILLY: Oh, all right. Well I could probably do it more succinctly than you.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well let's give it a shot.

O'REILLY: It was promised that the cost would go down and then everybody will have the same healthcare that they had before.

KRAUTHAMMER: Right.

O'REILLY: So the promise was hollow and that's going to tee people off in addition to as you pointed out the wallet-impacting.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well I would put it slightly more succinctly. And say that the President said if you like your plan you can keep it and it turned out to be a deliberate lie. A lie that he knew wasn't true at the time.

O'REILLY: How do you know that it was deliberate? Why -- why do you say that? Maybe it was the hyperbole that all politicians use to sell their program?

KRAUTHAMMER: I don't often use the word, but if you go back to a meeting the President held with a bunch of congressman in Blair House at the beginning of the Obamacare debate, I believe this happened in late '09 or perhaps in 2010 and he had Paul Ryan and all the others at the table. And you look at the transcript, it is very clear that the President was made aware in that meeting openly and in public that there were people who would lose their plans. Large numbers of people. The President acknowledges that in that meeting and that long predates the many, many times that the President made the promise if you like your plan you can keep it.

O'REILLY: Ok. And that's why we love you because you back up your blunt assertions with facts. Let me ask you this.

KRAUTHAMMER: "Succinct" is the word I would use. Yes.

O'REILLY: Well I mean, not many people know about a transcript from the Blair House. I didn't know about it but you did. And that's why we pay you the big dollars here.

But let me ask you this because this is -- this is now troubling. So you've got a President of the United States who acknowledges in your -- in your description that a lot of people would be thrown off the insurance roles and that the costs are going to be higher than he himself has -- has portrayed. Yet, he goes on after that and still mouths the stuff that he knows isn't true. That is a very troubling situation because then you have a dishonest man as Commander-in-Chief. Am I wrong?

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, presidents -- president shade the truth all the time.

O'REILLY: But this is more than shading though.

KRAUTHAMMER: This one -- well this one is more troubling than most. Because remember, there was other reporting, apart from this meeting at the Blair House. There was reporting of major arguments within the President's inner circle about whether to promise that you would be able to keep your plan and your doctor or not. Well some of the advisors saying look this is not true so we shouldn't say it. Others knowing that this is going to be very hard to get through the Congress and it passed by a whisker as you know with no support from a single Republican that they said well we're going to go for it and we'll worry about it later.

The other thing that factors into this is this administration knows how much the press wants to protect it. That's why on Benghazi, you say how could they have told this ridiculous fable on the five networks. Have Susan Rice go out there and say it's a result of a video when it was known within the administration that it was not.

And the reason they would err on the side of telling a fable is because they would figure that the press would not be very interested in this, very inquisitive about this.

O'REILLY: Right. They wouldn't hold them accountable.

KRAUTHAMMER: Up until Election Day. And in fact that's how it happened there was no interest up until Election Day and it did not hurt the President in the elections.

O'REILLY: All right. But you are and I have to ask this one more time -- I'm going to run a little bit over Charles' segment time. You are indicting the President of the United States as essentially being a dishonest person. That's what you are doing here and that's fairly significant, Charles.

KRAUTHAMMER: I call them like I see them. I know what the President was doing it was obvious that he knew and then he was obvious that he went out and he didn't only say you can keep your plan if you like your plan. He added the word "period" that means absolute certainty. No caveats, no excuses, no contingencies. This is a truth that I am now enunciating. And I think the evidence shows that he knew there was at least major doubt about that. And that to me is not honest.

O'REILLY: All right, Charles. Thank you we appreciated it.

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