DOJ inspector general investigates alleged FISA abuses
Internal watchdog of the Justice Department will examine accusations of misconduct in the process to obtain a warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'
This is a rush transcript from "The Five," March 29, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: Hello everyone, I'm Dana Perino, along with Kimberly Giulfoyle, Juan Williams, Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld. It's 5 o'clock in New York City and this is "The Five."
New developments on the Republican push for an investigation of allege FISA abuses by the FBI and DOJ in the Russia probes. The internal watch dog of the Justice Department will examine accusations of misconduct in the process to obtain a warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Paige.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz's investigation comes as a request of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and congressional Republicans. Judge Napolitano thinks he will find wrongdoing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW NAPOLITANO, SENIOR JUDICIAL ANALYST, FOX NEWS: I believe that the inspector general will find a treasure trove, not just McCabe and company, but that is the most extreme violation we know of, because the target -- the victim is the president of the United States, though he was a candidate and then president elect at the time.
But he will find a treasure trove of abuses going to FISA, getting warrants when the law did not justify it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
All right Kimberly, so nobody has actually read -- I think even Nunez admitted, congressman from California on the Intel Committee, he hasn't actually read the underlying documents.
Michael Horowitz is the Inspector General at the DOJ, now says that he is going to look into this as well. He's got a lot on his plate to investigate, but has the confidence of Attorney General Sessions as well as members on (ph) the Hill on the Republican and Democratic side.
Tell me what you think one of the most critical issues that they should look at.
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, CO-HOST: Yes, I mean I think you want to make sure, like in for (ph) -- in terms of who's making the request, what evidence they're relying to substantiate these claims.
But we really have to give them the opportunity to go through it, because otherwise the speculation in terms of what kind of violations or, you know, treasure trove, et cetera, that they might uncover.
But I'm always interested in who is proffering the evidence, where they're getting it from, from what sources, because we've seen some of these abuses in the past in terms of information that was proffered that really wasn't accurate, that wasn't prohibitive (ph), that wasn't verified.
So I think that's important to check out in terms of what they might be looking for.
PERINO: Well we don't have (ph) -- I don't think -- we don't have a -- they're all looking into all of those things, there's a ton of accusations and part of this, Jesse, comes from the text messages between the two FBI agents who were having an affair and they're going back and forth and they're -- one of allegations is that there was coordination between the White House and the FBI and that it should have been more independent than that.
This is (ph) during the Obama administration.
JESSE WATTERS, CO-HOST: Right, not just the Obama White House, but the Obama White House, the FBI, the DOJ, Harry Reid, the CIA and Hillary Clinton. If you just take it from the beginning, Hillary paid for the fake dossier filled with Russian lies.
Then you have a Hillary donor who was the one that sent the FBI the tip about Papadopoulos. So these Trump hating FBI agents opened up the counter intelligence investigation.
Then all of a sudden John Brennan, the CIA Director under President Obama comes along and briefs Harry Reid about the dossier. Harry Reid then turns around and writes a letter to James Comey urging him to open investigation into the Trump campaign.
At the same time, the Obama chief of staff at the White House, Dennis McCullough, had been talking and had been briefed by the counter intelligence division of the FBI about the Trump campaign investigation.
And from what we believe, he was urging it to move forward. So the briefing from Brennan to Reid was then leaked and wound up in the Isicoff article. The Isicoff article was used as a justification for the one on our list (ph) spying on Carter Paige.
It's funny because Carter Paige has never been charged with a crime and was an FBI informant for many, many years. So James Comey takes this information and brings it to the FISA court judge.
It's all unverified and unsubstantiated, the dossier as we've been over, and uses the Isicoff article as well. And as this is all happening, the FBI agents text and they say here we go.
So the allegation is that -- that they have, through all of these people, laid the ground work and laid the legitimacy for the surveillance on the Trump campaign. So, after Trump's elected, James Comey then briefs the president on the salacious dossier, and that same day CIA Director under Obama, Brennan leaks the information to CNN.
So when all these congressional investigators start asking questions and asking for documentation, they get stonewalled by the FBI and the DOJ, I mean, the coordination's amazing, if only Republicans could coordinate as effectively as the Democrats.
PERINO: It's one of the things, I think, that Steve Bannon said before he left was that how we -- how could we collude, we can't actually get anything done. Greg, your thoughts.
GUILFOYLE: Fair point.
GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: First, imagine if this kind of evidence was presented under a President Hillary Clinton that was against her or undermining her. The media would be in their pink hats, you know, making protest signs out of discarded Whole Foods bags. But it's not, it's under Trump. But I'm not going to be like them. I'm not going to get hysterical over this. This is to be (ph) one of the longest dances I've ever seen in politics.
I call it the collusion two-step. Step one, it's a Trump Russian collusion. Step two, no, it's a coordination among officials within the Trump Russia probe. And this two-step just keeps going on and on. It's the world's worst duel. It's like "Hamilton" for boring people. So I -- I -- I --
JUAN WILLIAMS, CO-HOST: Allow me to (ph) dance the night away.
GUTFELD: I know, but you're good at this. I'm terrible at this. I recommend we declare this beef a tie. And like, you know in soccer, the end of the game is zero-zero? We can settle this with penalty kicks.
WILLIAMS: All right.
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELD: This is a zero-sum game. It's like just have each side do penalty kicks. Or we should just start (ph) -- treat like the Russian diplomat thing. We should start expelling people on each side.
(CROSSTALK)
GUILFOYLE: Dana, but you know the news just came in that Attorney General Sessions has stated that there will be no special second counsel needed now in that space on review of the materials from a federal prosecutor that has been tasked with this for now. Doesn't mean it won't come later, but for the time being, there won't be one assigned.
PERINO: The other -- in addition to that, there was breaking news -- yesterday, we had the news that the New York Times broke that the president's former lawyer, John Dowd, had approached the lawyers for Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort about the possibility of a pardon and John Dowd saying oh, yes, that didn't really happen. But they have a lot of sources on it.
And then the other thing is -- the other story that just broke is that Reuters says that there is additional investigation Mueller's (ph) looking into the actual conversations that were taking place at the convention in Ohio for the Republicans, especially looking into how that language about Ukraine got watered down so much in the platform.
WILLIAMS: Wow. So I mean there's real news -- I mean, all of it seems to me to be striking because again, you know, it puts the presidency in a very tenuous position. If, in fact, you have John Dowd -- no longer the president's top lawyer, but John Dowd reaching out to lawyers for Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn to discuss the possibility of pardons, that's direct obstruction of the Mueller investigation.
Because the idea, in fact Manafort has yet to strike a deal and people are wondering what's going on there, because he's facing serious jail time.
PERINO: Although can I just interrupt one thing on that point?
WILLIAMS: Sure.
PERINO: I -- I was listening to the Daily this morning, the podcast from the New York Times. And one of the things I think was effectively said by somebody for (ph) John Dowd -- I think actually it was John Dowd. He said what would we have even pardoned them for? You can't just give a blanket pardon for -- like, you -- you're pardoned.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: You didn't (ph) have to wait long because guess what? They're indicted. So now --
PERINO: Right. But you couldn't offer a pardon before you know what they were going to be indicted for.
WILLIAMS: No, but you can -- you can -- you can --
GIUFOYLE: You couldn't preemptive a pardon without specificity.
WILLIAMS: -- hang out there the possibility of a pardon --
PERINO: Right. And that's the issue.
WILLIAMS: -- and then once they are indicted, say you know what, no need to cooperate, no need to tell your tale that might be damning to the president because the president has the power to pardon you. But in this case, although the president's power is pretty much unlimited with regard to pardons, in this case because he's the one under investigation, it would be illegal. It would be -- not necessarily illegal. I shouldn't say that.
It would allow Robert Mueller then to say there's an obstruction of justice case based on the behavior of the president's lawyer. And the second --
PERINO: Well, so who would (ph) do that, then?
WILLIAMS: The second thing is with regard to the Ukraine and the watering down of the language at the convention, again, here is Russia playing a role -- potentially, if this story is true, Dana -- that really, again, undermines the Democratic process. Even Republicans can't get their own policy platform in place without Russian interference.
PERINO: Well, but you can -- you can change a policy that -- without --
WILLIAMS: You can.
(CROSSTALK)
WATTERS: Because now the policy, with regard to Ukraine, is much tougher than it was under President Obama. We've sold them missiles and hard arms where Obama was giving them food.
WILLIAMS: You forget that Russia was upset that we were putting anti-missile devices in Poland and other places there under the Obama administration and then decided they were going to take that aggressive action in the Ukraine and again --
PERINO: Yes. Can I -- can I --
(CROSSTALK)
WATTERS: Obama's anti (ph) missile defense in Eastern Europe was not as robust as George W. Bush's was --
WILLIAMS: Can I make one last point on this President Trump --
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: I just want to make one last point. This FISA thing is -- I think is a total distraction. But guess what? In January of just this year, you had 191 House Republicans and you had 43 of the -- I guess 52 Senate Republicans vote to reauthorize --
PERINO: FISA. Actually --
WILLIAMS: -- and President Trump signed it.
PERINO: That's a very good transition from (ph) my question to Greg, which is I think there are some people who are hoping for some sort Ed Snowden moment to -- if they're worried about government interference and privacy and fourth amendment things, hoping that a review by the inspector general about this specific case will lead to some sort of wholesale review or the elimination (ph) of the FISA court.
GUTFELD: Perhaps, I don't know, all I know is I just see every single -- every single day they have to find something new that isn't working.
PERINO: It's like a (ph) soap opera.
GUTFELD: Well no, it is. And it goes -- I go back to the golf bag of weaponry, it's like you have the iron of, you know, Stormy Daniels, you have Russia, you had his physical health, you had mental instability.
Every day there's something and the language that he's used in all of these attacks against President Trump use the phrase it suggests possible X. It's never it is, it suggests possible X.
So now when you talk about these FISA things, we can use the Republicans or the conservatives can say this suggests possible coordination. So now the anti-Trumpers (ph) are feeling what they have been doing all along to everybody else, using wishy-washy language.
Clearly though there is a group of people high up in the corners of power who are figuring out a way to get rid of Trump, because they believe they had a higher purpose that put them above the law.
And they realized that you know what, if they don't do it, it's them against the world, so they have to do it, so they should be willing to be punished for what they are doing wrong, because clearly they were driven by some kind of irrational, emotional panic.
PERINO: That's almost the exact quote from a congressional staffer on the Republican side.
GUTFELT: Really? And I didn't even read the note.
PERINO: An anonymous one who said we're not saying that anything actually--
GUTFELT: Yes.
PERINO: -- was untoward here, we're not saying anything was improper, we're just saying it should be looked into. And guess what, now it will be looked into, and we get to move on.
GUTFELT: But we think (inaudible) you know, the thing is, this whole panic-- well because I -- it's driving me crazy. This whole panic was created by two -- two groups, the anti-Trump media who didn't think their Trump obsession would get him elected, and it did, and now they feel really guilty about it, and government officials who became politically activated once this happened.
That's what you're seeing right now.
WILLIAMS: Yes, maybe it's about Trump.
GUTFELT: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Or maybe (inaudible) --
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELT: It is about -- no, it is about Trump. It is about Trump.
WILLIAMS: (Inaudible) a chaotic president who is --
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELT: It's a refreshing breath of fresh air, Juan.
WILLIAMS: People feel (ph) aggression vibes (ph), maybe that's it.
PERINO: All right.
GUTFELT: The rationality (ph), so.
PERINO: We're going to keep going into commercial break, we will not tell you what we say in that break, but after the break we'll tell you about this. Ousted V.A. Secretary David Shulkin has some strong words from Washington on his way out the door, next.
(COMMERICAL BREAK)
GUTFELD: So after President Trump said he's replacing V.A. Secretary David Shulkin, Shulkin penned a farewell in the New York Times, which was angry, justifiably so. He made the place better, he served his country, and no one likes to be fired.
I should know, three times. But I got one beef, he claims he was fired because he opposed privatizing the bureaucracy, claiming the private sector couldn't handle these types of patients.
But how do we know that? The difference between public and private is what enabled the V.A. tragedy in the first place. The difference was accountability. In the free market, there are consequences to actions.
If you suck, you suffer. You go out of business. In the public sector, there's often no real costs to your blunders, which is why when things are bad, it takes years to fix them like the V.A.
But where there is accountability, there are standards. If you want evidence, look around you. You live in the greatest country the world's ever seen and it's one built on competition, which rewards the competent and punishes it's opposite.
The market works faster in eradicating problems, because it can't put up with them. Shulkin did a good job, but he did a good job after a really bad job by a bureaucracy immune to competitive pressure.
By bashing privatization without any proof, Shulkin defends a system that's not as good as he is. So maybe let's try a new approach. If it doesn't work, at least the free market won't try to hide it.
So Dana, I think Shulkin did do a good job, but he was starting at less than zero at the V.A. which means it's like taking -- like let's say you become coach of an 0 and 16 (ph) NFL team and you get it to three and 13.
PERINO: (Inaudible) in some eyes and for some fans, you're a hero.
GUTFELD: Yes, yes, so (inaudible).
PERINO: I think this is a -- a very complex problem, it's been going on for decades actually, and then actually even the disagreements between the Department of Defense and the V.A., like no president (inaudible) like bring them together and get them to solve their differences.
This question about privatization, it always sounds very alarming, except for when you think about a veteran who might live in a rural community and doesn't have access to an immediately near hospital, V.A. hospital.
Should they be allowed to have then (ph) a private voucher to go and get treatment at the nearest hospital to them rather than having to travel so far, or, what happens a lot, is they forgo treatment.
GUTFELD: Right.
PERINO: And so they're left alone. So I do think that innovation has been stimming (ph) at the department for decades. I actually think that he was not let go because of performance at the department as much as it was questionable ethical behavior in regards to being in the news for things that are unpleasant to be in the news about that he handled afterwards with the trips overseas with the wife and all that.
It was just getting to be too much to bear.
GUTFELD: Well what do you think about that -- that, Dana, it -- it says about innovation? I think within public agencies, when you don't have accountability, innovation is slowed and also just accountability in general prevents quality from coming to the floor.
Do you agree at some -- in some way, shape or form?
WILLIAMS: Yes, well I mean, I -- I think what you say is true, I mean the private sector tends to be more punishing for failure.
GUTFELD: Yes.
WILLIAMS: But -- it -- but what I think we're overlooking here is, and Dana touched on this, this is not a new debate. Privatization's been a long term discussion with regard to how we treat our veterans in terms of their medical needs.
And what's come up in the debate, and believe (ph) me, it's been a full throated debate, is that gee, you know, often times veterans are suffering from things like post traumatic stress and trauma, combat trauma, or they're having brain injuries of a type that are only suffered on the battlefield and the like.
And that the V.A. had developed specializations and even innovations in how you handle these issues. And that the private sector did not have it and did not have an incentive because there's how many such (ph) situations do you see in ordinary life?
And by the Dana, in regard to people who live in rural areas distant from V.A. hospitals, they already give out vouchers and so forth. So what you have now, though, is a situation, according to Shulkin and some of the reporting that I've seen this morning, that where President Trump is of a mind that there needs to be privatization. He doesn't want to hear about the argument, he doesn't want to hear about the debate.
So Shulkin writes in his op-ed, hey, this is not an honest conversation, this is about pursuing a political agenda. And he notes, by the way, Greg, high levels of -- right now -- approval from veterans for the V.A. I think he said 70 percent.
GUTFELD: Yes, that -- but to -- Kimberly, my point to that was that it was so bad when he took it over that any improvement would be taken as welcome relief.
GIULFOYLE: Yes, absolutely, because it was just abysmal in terms of the abuses that were happening and it's still a -- a very serious problem that they have with the V.A. And, you know, the Admiral taking it over now is really going to have, you know, a tough time because there are so many abuses there, there's corruption, it's very difficult to terminate anybody for lack of competence and whatnot.
And so he's going to be stuck with sort of trying to rebuild and rehabilitate the culture at the V.A. but with, you know, an -- an earnest heart and a firm hand, he should be able to do that. And if he wins the confidence of the people there, hopefully they will be emboldened and passionate about it to help the veterans, because they really do deserve our very best.
GUTFELD: Jesse, last word. Make it count.
WATTERS: OK. I would say that a cabinet secretary is never going to be able to fully control a bureaucracy. They can only seek to tame it. And in terms of Shulkin, he did an average job. So you have a lot of good things that happened, where they have the Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act so you can fire and discipline bad apples within the V.A.
And then also, as Juan said, they expanded the mental health care for veterans returning overseas that were predisposed to suicide, but the ethical lapses were troubling. I mean, he's taking his wife on a European sightseeing and shopping tour then lied about it, had to reimburse six figures? The privatization thing, yes, of course, that's an argument, but I look at this.
Last year, last March, the inspector general found that the V.A. was still lying about wait times, that they were saying there's actually a 36 percent rate that veterans had to wait longer than a month. They lied and said it was only 10 percent. And then, so about 13,000 in Virginia got the Choice Program. As you said, you get to go to a private hospital.
And they never let them go to the private hospital. And they had to wait three months to go to the private hospital. So that's last March. This March, same thing. The audit found the same thing. They're funding the numbers on the wait lines. I think that had a lot to do with it too.
GUTFELD: All right. There you go. Shulkin appears live on Special Report tonight at 6:00pm Eastern. That'll be exciting. And hey, (ph) you'll hear from Roseanne Barr on her phone call with the president following her huge ratings win.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GUILFOYLE: As a former T.V. titan, President Trump can sure appreciate a huge ratings win. He was very impressed the numbers the Roseanne reboot pulled in Tuesday night, more than 18 million. And he decided to give the star of the show, one of his supporters, a congratulatory call. Here's Roseanne Barr on how that went.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
ROSEANNE BARR, ACTRESS: You know, that was about the most exciting thing ever. And it was -- it was, you know, just very, very sweet of him to congratulate us. We talked about a lot of things and, you know, he's just happy for me. I've known him for many years and he's done a lot of nice things for me over the years. And so, it was just a friendly conversation about working and, you know, television and ratings.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
GUILFOYLE: It's a nice personal touch that the president has. He reaches out to people, he makes the calls and it -- the connection that is established, it makes you feel good. And so, this is somebody who's going to continue to do political coverage on the show and so it's kind of a nice-- nice moment.
GUTFELD: Well, and it was also, I think, favorable to Donald Trump. I mean, I don't know if he would call if it was like a really anti-Trump show. But I'm wondering, like, I have an idea. Because if -- if sitcoms are going to be introducing politics into their scripts, can -- is it -- can it go two ways? Can a political show become a sitcom?
Because I have a few ideas, that -- That's My Lou (ph). So it'd be the life and comedic antics of the legendary Lou Dobbs, always getting into trouble.
GUILFOYLE: OK, I like it.
GUTFELD: All in the Hannity. And -- and -- and so, it'll be Sean in a recliner and I'll be Meathead. And then, Fox with Friends. And that's when Doocy and Kilmeade move in with Chandler and Joey. What do you think?
GUILFOYLE: Where's Ainsley?
WATTERS: I like it.
PERINO: No. Hello?
GUILFOYLE: She was March (ph).
GUTFELD: She bailed.
GUILFOYLE: She got written off.
PERINO: Yes.
GUTFELD: She bailed.
GUILFOYLE: She took an Uber out of there. OK. Dana, so what do you make of -- this is -- of course he's going to call like (inaudible) --
GUTFELD: I know.
PERINO: I was thinking about --
GUILFOYLE: -- Dumb-dumb (ph). OK. Go ahead.
PERINO: I think one of the reasons it was successful is because if you look at the election results, OK? So in -- in the 1990s, Roseanne Barr would have been a Clinton supporter because they were working-class Midwest folks. They voted for Clinton in droves. So what happens then -- the (ph) 30 years later?
So Hillary Clinton's running and she loses those voters by 30 points. Bill Clinton won those voters by 11 points. That's a 40 percent swing. And Donald Trump won those voters by a slimmer margin, but he has solidified that base. And so, if you are going to have a show like this with a tremendous amount of promotion leading up to it with a very popular cast and they have the entire original cast is there, I'm not surprised that it did well.
GUILFOYLE: Yes, it's very cool. So I'm sure she was excited about this. Jesse, you get excited like that.
WATTERS: Yes, so, "Jesse, crushing it on The Five. Gutfeld's really come around though." No, I can see the -- I can see the -- I can see the phone call right now. "Roseanne, Celebrity Apprentice beat you by 2 million but good try."
GUILFOYLE: Mine's (ph) a little different than that --
WATTERS: It's funny -- it's funny how the world is so surprised when conservatives do well. "The Passion of the Christ" came out of nowhere. It made, like, a billion dollars. "American Sniper," huge success. These Dinesh D'Souza documentaries make millions of dollars. Like, more than Al Gore's global warming thing, and everyone's shocked.
FOX News dominated for the last, what, 15 to 20 years. No one can understand that. I don't know. It appeals to half the country. And then if you look at The New York Times best seller list, it's just like every other person is a conservative author or, you know, Kilmeade or someone like that. So it's no surprise.
GUILFOYLE: He's his own category. Kilmeade.
WATTERS: I just asked how is the book doing? He goes, oh, you know, the paperwork just cracked The New York Times best seller list again. So he's doing great down at the Villages.
GUILFOYLE: He's printing money.
WATTERS: Yes, he's printing money.
GUILFOYLE: Got his own bank.
WATTERS: You can never tell, looking at how he dresses. The -- and then talk radio, too. It's dominated by conservatives, so there is an appetite out there for conservative voices.
Finally, the market seems to be recognizing that.
GUILFOYLE: OK, Juanito. Blah, blah, blah.
JUAN WILLIAMS: I just think you have a situation with Roseanne. I continue agree with Greg more. The president calls, because he sees it as beneficial to himself.
I'm surprised that he's now thrilled with you, Greg. But the second thing to say -- I will say that, but what I will say is that it's interesting that it did well. I see here on the list in places like Tulsa, Oklahoma, Kansas City in places where the president did well during his campaign. He didn't do well in San Francisco. That was No. 2 on the list of lowly rated place. Also Greensboro, North Carolina, I would have thought he would have done better. That's No. 1. Low-rated market.
WATTERS: Chicago.
WILLIAMS: But you know, actually, the show is based in Illinois.
WATTERS: That probably has a lot to deal with it.
WILLIAMS: That would help it out. But when I look at this, what it says to me is this is culture and politics. And unlike Dana, I think Dana is wrong on this. And because I think --
WATTERS: How dare you, Juan?
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: I think -- I remember that Hillary Clinton got the most votes, and I think that where the president is --
WATTERS: So do Al Gore.
PERINO: With those voters -- what I said was with those voters, working- class, noncollege voters, Bill Clinton won by 11 points. She lost them by 30 points.
WILLIAMS: No, I heard you on that.
PERINO: Yes, I know she won a majority of the country.
WILLIAMS: Right. So I think that, in fact, you know, so like Jesse saying, look at talk radio, look at FOX News or something like that. And I think, yes, well, gee whiz, everybody on the right-wing side says, oh, it's the mainstream media. They're controlled by the liberals and the left, and they have insulting comments, "snowflakes" and "libtards," and all the rest of it.
But I mean, I don't think that it's the case that someone who is writing against President Trump or doing a show against President Trump is not getting attention and not doing well.
WATTERS: You're saying in the main networks and main newspapers.
GUTFELD: In the industry, too, you have to take a risk if you're going to do that. Because her peers, do not feel the same way she does. So that's the -- I think that's the biggest risk of coming out.
PERINO: She's like the honey badger of celebrities.
WILLIAMS: Also, once it does well and makes money, that's a reason to keep doing it.
GUILFOYLE: Well, other people just might follow suit. You can get a call from the president. You might get a kick out of a new comment from Obama's former attorney general, Eric Holder. Stay tuned for that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WILLIAMS: What do you think of someone who can help unite the country? Does Eric Holder's name come to mind? President Obama's attorney general still isn't ruling out a run in 2020.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERIC HOLDER, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL: If I was to do it, I would do it because I would think I would have concluded that I could maybe unify the country that help unify the country. Because it's bigger than any one person. That I could advance -- well, actually, then I could repair and then advance, you know, the nation in a variety of contexts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: Hmm. I'm going to guess that some of my pals here at the table don't see Holder as a uniter.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HOLDER: Well, this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot. In things racial, we have always been and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I realize that contempt is not a big deal to our attorney general. But it is important that we have proper oversight.
HOLDER: You don't want to go there. OK?
I think we are still a nation that is too afraid to confront racial issues.
I think any one of my kids would make a better president than -- than Donald Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: OK, Dana, you were jumping out there.
PERINO: I didn't realize that we had more to go. I think it's fun to watch all of the possible 2020 contenders dip their toe in, just to see what -- what the water's like. I don't think it will be very warm for him for the voters that he would need to win.
Could he win -- could he do the Obama coalition? Yes, possibly. But we just did a segment about the "Roseanne" voters are -- that are the Trump voters, and the Democrats are going to have to figure out a way to win them back if they want to win the presidency. And I would -- I don't know what his pitch is going to be on that. I'd love to see it.
WILLIAMS: Well, I mean, obviously, it's an anti-Trump pitch -- Greg.
GUTFELD: I don't know how you unify if you don't first disown the orthodoxy of identity politics, which he tended to embrace. His mustache is no match for John Bolton's. When I look at him, I see Howard Sprague from "Mayberry RFD." The audience at home is over 60, they'll know what I mean.
But if he runs, he's going to have to have President Obama by his side, because that was only reason why he survived for six years, is that he had amazing protection from Obama. When you see what he did, he investigated journalists. He refuses special prosecutor for the IRS. There's Fast and Furious. He actually sued to block school vouchers in Louisiana which was amazing. There's Gitmo, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. He's made -- he would not make terror terror. He's made more bad calls than a drunken umpire. The only way he could run is if Obama was his running mate.
WILLIAMS: Wow.
GUTFELD: Thank you.
WATTERS: Right? Oprah is now running and Stedman is going to run. That's just very chaotic. You never heard. That was Dennis Miller's analogy.
WILLIAMS: I thought we had breaking news.
WATTERS: I would say he's been held in civil and criminal contempt. That's not a great track record. And he's been divisive on guns and race, immigration. What else is there? Police, terror. Everything you can name as an issue that Americans care about, he has divided the country instead of the -- he doesn't have a shot.
PERINO: And he's never talked about the economy or jobs.
WILLIAMS: What?
PERINO: He's never talked about the economy or jobs.
WILLIAMS: He was the attorney general. I don't think that's his bailiwick. Just in response to you, he's a guy that angered the liberal base. And Democrats, after a three-year investigation into the Bush administration and the torture, he said, "No, we're not going to prosecute that." It would be -- that's a uniting kind of decision coming from the attorney general.
PERINO: Yes. United all of us.
WATTERS: It's politically expedient.
WILLIAMS: Politically --
WATTERS: Imagine Obama locking up CIA agents for keeping us safe.
GUILFOYLE: That's ridiculous. He'll get, like, three votes. He was very politically divisive. He used the law and the courts as a weapon to advance his own politics and beliefs. He did.
And he's the only U.S. -- excuse me, attorney general in U.S. history to be held in contempt. I mean, that is not a winning endorsement on one's resume to run for president of the United States. Not to mention all the cover-ups with the IRS and the targeting conservative groups, Fast and Furious, the border agents -- the Border Patrol agents that were killed.
There's a whole list of it. Benghazi. It just goes on and on. And so this guy is not uniting anyone. Thank God he will not be running for president.
WILLIAMS: Well, you never know. That's what people said about Trump. And I happen to think that Eric Holder is one of the most --
WATTERS: Low-energy.
WILLIAMS: -- wonderful, public officials at the country had the opportunity to watch in action. Anyway, stay right here. "Fastest Seven" coming next, so much fun.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: Welcome back. Time for "The Fastest Seven Minutes on Television." Three stories, seven minutes. Let's go.
First up, if you don't believe in UFOs, maybe you will now. The pilots of two commercial planes flying over the Arizona desert reported a sighting last month. We just got a hold of the newly-released audio.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was anybody above us that passed us like 30 seconds ago.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Negative.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Something did.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a UFO!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Greg, you are a believer of that.
GUTFELD: You know what UFO stands for? "Unidentified flying object." That could be a bird.
By the way, in the 1970s, everybody was seeing UFOs all the time. 2018, everybody has cameras. There's surveillance, but there's less evidence; and the reason is the drugs were better in the 1970s.
Alien life is gone. Because chances are, all alien life began well before us. So they've gone through the same trajectory of technological evolution. So they have been -- they've already been killed by robots.
WATTERS: Maybe they just saw James Carville flying.
PERINO: I mean, does anyone think it's suspicious that these are only ever seen in Arizona or in Nevada?
WATTERS: What's with this thing? You never hear about it from anywhere else. What about you, Juan? You're a believer?
WILLIAMS: I am. Wait a minute. First of all, this is an incomplete.
This is fake news you guys are being fed here. Let me tell you, in addition to the first thing that you just saw that audio report where the pilot asked, "Did something fly over us?" And the second guy says, "UFO."
Then a few minutes -- that was a private plane. A few minutes later, an American Airlines plane says, "Hey, what flew over us, guys?" And it's in the same location.
And remember. Remember, Jesse is too young. This is only a few miles from Roswell, New Mexico.
PERINO: It all happens.
WILLIAMS: The thing is, we've got to cater to Greg. You've got to take care of Greg's ego, because Greg believes in conspiracy theories. And I know it was Obama. It was Obama.
WATTERS: Holder's moustache.
WILLIAMS: It was Obama. Ego. Hillary's ego was moving.
WATTERS: That's right.
GUILFOYLE: Super crazy. I think it was -- maybe it was Lockheed testing another new model with the fastest aircraft, the SR-71. It's called the --
WATTERS: Dropping some serious military knowledge. I like that, K.G.
Next up, for 20 years, "South Park" has skewered politics and politicians on Comedy Central.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome to the Pentagon, sir. I've been ordered to show you around. This way please.
This is the drone program. In there, you can kill anyone on earth remotely. Here's the keys.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In here is satellite surveillance where you can monitor anyone's conversation live.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, that will come in handy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Extreme interrogation room, in case you ever find interrogation necessary.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, hell, yes, it's necessary. Let's do it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Trey Parker and Matt Stone just made a confession that's likely rattling Hollywood. You ready? They're Republicans. Does that surprise anybody?
PERINO: No.
WATTERS: No? Why not?
PERINO: Well, because I've watched the show for years. I love it. I save them up, and I watch them on airplanes and I laugh so hard. I'm from Colorado, which is where the show is based. And this is not a surprise to me. I doubt that it's a surprise to anyone in Hollywood.
WATTERS: Really? What about you?
GUTFELD: If you -- I mean, they've always been pro-free speech, pro- liberty, pro-free markets, antileft. You know, I always assumed that they were kind of more independent libertarians.
But now that the left is questioning the validity of free speech on campus, they are now more outspoken, because this -- the new culture war is about speech. And it's from what's been called the regressive left. And it's pretty scary.
WATTERS: Maybe after "Roseanne," they're saying, "Oh, we're Republicans, too."
PERINO: Phone calls.
WILLIAMS: I mean, these guys are libertarians. I don't know. Maybe they just felt they got to pick a box or they could excite something by saying that. I don't -- I don't think it matters. They do great work. And "Book of Mormons," that show don't look like anything the Mormons and the Republicans would be celebrating on Broadway.
WATTERS: That's right. Were you a "South Park" fan?
GUILFOYLE: I still am. I think they're very funny, clever. Like the writing. I mean, I felt that they probably were Republicans. Just if you, like, watch all the shows from way back, you could see in their coverage about what they used to do about Kim Jong-un's father. It's, like, amazing.
WATTERS: Takes one to know one.
All right. Finally, I want to hear what our resident food guru, Kimberly Guilfoyle, has to say about this. Chip Gaines and HGTV has set off quite a firestorm on Twitter after he dared the voices his disdain for avocado toast.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS GAINES, HGTV: That's disgusting. Nobody wants avocado on their toast.
I'm done.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You didn't even eat your bacon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: So I've never even had avocado toast.
GUILFOYLE: So I used to be one of those people, like "Wait, what?" If you go out for brunch and then, you know, what do you want? You want something really good. Like a burger and Bloody Marys. You want, like, steak and eggs and a milk shake. Then someone would have, like, avocado, like what is going on with that. It seems so odd. Right? But then I tried it.
PERINO: It's good.
GUILFOYLE: Oh, my God.
WATTERS: Pro-avocado toast.
GUILFOYLE: It was quite delicious.
WATTERS: Is everybody pro-avocado toast?
PERINO: Yes.
WATTERS: You like it, Juan? Juan never had it.
WATTERS: If you guys remember when we were at back 9 p.m., we did segment on avocado toast as a "One More Thing." Remember, I was trying to figure out what the mystery was.
Avocado toast is the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of food. It's -- avocado is the most amazing -- is a fruit?
PERINO: I think it's a fruit.
WATTERS: Well, it's got a seed.
PERINO: That's fruit.
WATTERS: So a seed is a fruit. It's an amazing life-saving fat, but bread is carbohydrates. So that adds to your calories. So the best thing to do is have avocado and bacon on lettuce with a really high-fat dressing, and you will lose weight.
GUILFOYLE: You're doing your Atkins thing again.
WATTERS: All right. That's diet tips from Greg Gutfeld. Up next, "One More Thing" is next.
GUILFOYLE: You should really listen to --
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PERINO: Time now for "One More Thing" -- Jesse.
WATTERS: Brand-new edition of "Mom Texts."
PERINO: Excellent.
WATTERS: OK. First up, "Jesse, you have not come a long way until you stop featuring yourself in your 'One More Thing' sections. Humility is something to consider."
GUTFELD: Wow.
WATTERS: "How insulting, Jesse, the former head of the FBI is a good actor? And who you might be?"
And here I have another one: "Is Stormy beating Trump at his own media game?"
Mom, yikes.
And "The dark jacket is a vast improvement over the Ferris wheel operator get-up you wore yesterday and need to lose -- not to denigrate Ferris wheel operators."
I think she was referring to that beautiful blazer there.
GUILFOYLE: You actually think it looks good.
WATTERS: I do.
And then lastly, "You look very handsome, and I do not want that text feeding your ego going public."
We got burned.
PERINO: So cute.
GUTFELD: She can definitely write for MSNBC. Those first three there. Right?
PERINO: Your relationship with your mom is special. We love it.
You have three "One More Things."
GUTFELD: One. And it's --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRAPHIC: Greg's Fitness Tips
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUTFELD: "Greg's Fitness Tips." Yes, you know, it's almost summer. So you're going to have to get your beach body. Like this little fellow here. He's a little overweight. So you know, all you've got to do is find a little treadmill, this little one-month-old Corgi, is trying to work off that winter fat he had, probably wasn't even born yet. A little fat dog. You know his ears weigh 30 pounds.
PERINO: Hard to hold your head up.
All right, Juan?
WILLIAMS: Take me out to the ball game. It's opening day for Major League Baseball. And what a way to start the season. Watch the Yankees' Giancarlo Stanton in his first at-bat with the new team. Here it goes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Giving out to right center field. That ball is gone! See ya! What a beginning for Stanton!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: Wow. The Yankees' hopes are high. And don't forget: there's a new star from Japan, Shohei Ohtani, the first time since Babe Ruth. He will not only pitch. When he's not on the mound, he'll be in the lineup as a hitter. And if you're looking for a dark horse theme for the season, go to Minnesota. Those twins are going to surprise a lot of people.
PERINO: All right. All right. Kimberly.
GUILFOYLE: OK. So you remember this case, Dana, an incredible young woman. Nearly six years after a brutal Taliban attack left her gravely wounded. Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist for girls' education and world's youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, has returned to Pakistan.
She gave an emotional and heartfelt speech where she vowed to continue fighting for girls' education and said that she hoped that Pakistanis could put their differences aside and come together to empower women. And since her attack and her amazing recovery, she has led the Malala Fund, which has so far invested seven million in schools and provided books and uniforms for school children around the world.
PERINO: She's a remarkable young lady. I bet that was very emotional returning when she had to flee after that. So good for her now.
GUILFOYLE: She's 20 now.
PERINO: Yes, and in college at Oxford. In the U.K.
All right. So if you've been watching "The Daily Briefing," you might have heard that one of our producers, Jennifer Williams, is going to be raising a canine companion dog in honor of her late brother whose nickname was Spike. This puppy is going to be named Spike. Her brother's name was Kyle. This is done through a nonprofit, Canine Companions Independence.
That's them today, meeting for the first time in Long Island. And this is in honor of her brother, which will be fun. And he is going to join us on "The Daily Briefing" on Monday. So that will be fun to meet him, finally. We've been watching him on cam.
GUILFOYLE: Love it.
PERINO: All right. Set your DVRs. Never miss an episode of "The Five" or "Special Report," which is up next. Hey, Bret.
END
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