This is a rush transcript from "Fox News Sunday," September 6, 2015. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: I'm Chris Wallace.
Police officers targeted as anti-cop rhetoric reaches new lows. What can ease the tensions?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BLACK LIVES MATTER DEMONSTRATORS: Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon. Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've heard black lives matter. All lives matter. Well, cops' lives matter, too.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At some point in time, you got to the stop yelling and screaming, and start listening and discussing
WALLACE: We'll discuss the deadly attacks on police as well as rising murder rates in major American cities with two top cops. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, and Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn.
Then, President Obama gets enough votes in Congress to ensure his nuclear deal with Iran will take effect.
We'll talk with former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz about that and an Obama foreign policy they say has dangerously weakened America.
And we'll ask our Sunday panel about Donald Trump's change of mind.
DONALD TRUMP, R-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will be totally pledging my allegiance to the Republican Party.
WALLACE: All, right now, on "Fox News Sunday."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: And hello again from Fox News in Washington.
Like a lot of people, we noticed a deeply disturbing trend this week. A policeman gunned down north of Chicago became the 24th law enforcement officer murdered in the line of duty this year. Since Ferguson last August, 44 officers have been shot and killed.
And this comes at a time of growing anti-police rhetoric and a spike in murders in some of our biggest cities.
We're joined today by two leaders in law enforcement. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn.
Chief Flynn, you said recently, every cop in America is looking over his shoulder and they don't feel that America has their back. Is that contributing to this rash of police shootings?
EDWARD FLYNN, MILWAUKEE POLICE CHIEF: I think we have to look at a broader context. I certainly think it's an element. A number of things have happened. I’m wondering as we look at both the police shooting phenomenon and the increase in homicides in our major cities, you can't disaggregate these two phenomenon. And I think there's a number of variables at work that we might be able to discuss later that have to do with us being at some sort of tipping point.
We're not sure if we've got a spike or a real tipping point and a change phenomenon. But there are some concerning issues. And one of them is the relentless propaganda war being waged against American police officers by our network television stations. It’s been most distressing to watch them try to link six or eight questionable video recordings of police misconduct and turn that into a national narrative of what the state of police community relations are. It's a false construct, but it is a dangerous one.
WALLACE: OK, we'll get into that in a moment.
Commissioner Ramsey, let's talk about the problem you faced firsthand this week. You were trying to talk about police/community relations in Philadelphia, and you in effect were shouted down by protesters of the Black Lives Matter movement. Here's a clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BLACK LIVES MATTER DEMONSTRATORS: No racist! Police! No racist! Police! No racist! Police! What do you want? Justice. When do you want it? Now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Commissioner, when you see that and those protesters in Minneapolis chanting "pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon," does that contribute to this sense that it's open season on cops?
CHARLES RAMSEY, PHILADELPHIA POLICE COMMISSIONER: Well, it certainly doesn't help. I think it's ignorant to do things like that. I also think that you know, the people that are serious in this movement are missing an opportunity to really make a difference. If all you want to do is get up during a meeting and yell and scream and shout and then walk out, then you're not going to get too far because there's no opportunity for dialogue.
I mean, there are a lot of issues that are driving crime in our neighborhoods. It's not just about policing and how policing is conducted. You've got very, very serious issues taking place that's driving crime. I mean, that's why police are there to begin with.
If they want to really deal with the issue of black lives and the number of homicides that take place, then you have to look at the crime that takes place on the streets of our city -- black on black crime. If you don't address that, if you don’t address the drivers of crime, then this is going just not result in anything at all positive.
WALLACE: But there clearly has been something of a breakdown or at least a worsening of the situation between police and the communities that they're trying to protect.
Chief Flynn, you were in a situation last November. You were at a hearing about a police officer who had shot and killed a disturbed man. And some of the protesters there criticized you for looking at your phone during the hearing, and you made some comments that went viral.
Here they are.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FLYNN: I was following developments with a 5-year-old little girl sitting on her dad's lap who just got shot in the head by a drive-by shooting. And if some of the people here gave a good goddamn about the victimization of people in this community by crime, I’d take some of their invective more seriously.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Chief, does that embody a breakdown in trust between the police and the people in the inner cities?
FLYNN: I think one of the great myths is there is some dramatic breakdown in trust between the people at the grassroots level and the police. It’s a canard. You know, every time there's a critical incident involving the police, some self-styled activist that I’ve never met before or ever seen at a community meeting is suddenly all over the TV running their mouth off against racist oppression in the police department.
If you can get 40 people at the demonstration, I can guarantee you four TV cameras and a news helicopter. But the reality is, day after day after day, our coppers are in those neighborhoods not just literally protecting people with their lives, but in the meetings, organizing communities, listening to problems and providing the services they want.
What we have is the historical challenge of the neighborhoods and communities that need quality policing. Most for historic reasons have been harboring some level of distrust. At the grass-roots level, those relationships are much, much healthier than any national network would have you believe.
WALLACE: OK. You have talked about this and let's address it head-on this question of whether or not it's the media and maybe some politicians who are exploiting a few isolated incidents.
Chief Ramsey, there certainly have been a series of incidents over the last year. You can say it's not a lot but they have been dramatic. A lot of them recorded on body cams, showing police acting recklessly or their original stories didn't match-up to what actually happened. You have a case like that in Philadelphia.
Don't police actions add to some of the mistrust?
RAMSEY: Sure there's no question about that. But the problem is when that becomes the only thing shown, and there are hundreds of thousands of interactions that occur between police and community every single day that you don't know about because they absolutely went well.
We've taken 2,000 guns off the streets of Philadelphia without a shot being fired by a police officer. Now, these are illegal guns being carried by a person. Those arrests are made. No one is injured. I mean, nobody talks about that sort of thing.
So, I think that it really does distort the view of what's going on in policing. We've got some issues that we've got to address. We've got police officers that engage in misconduct.
But when the only thing that gets shown is that shooting that is bad, I had an officer that was murdered on March 5th of this year. There's video of that which we will not show because we don't want to expose the family or anybody else to it. Those are the dangers that police officers face every day that gets overshadowed by the few incidents of misconduct.
WALLACE: There it is and we alluded to it at the very beginning, another side to this story, Chief Flynn. In major cities across the country, the murder rate and take a look at, it has risen dramatically from what it was at the same type last year. In your city of Milwaukee, murders are up 76 percent.
Chief, how do you explain it?
FLYNN: The question we have to look at is what are the variables right now? You know, when you think of the concept of a tipping point, you're thinking of the environment, you’re think of the few people that make maximum impact and what are the changes that have brought on this phenomenon because you end up with a sudden increase, not a gradual increase.
And what we've seen right now I think is the same percentage of the criminal population, which is 6 percent to 9 percent, is again driving this crime rate but a number of us have suffered from recently weakened gun laws that have made it much, much easier for our criminals to gain access to firearms. When the major cities mate a few weeks ago here in D.C., all of us noticed the phenomena a lot more rounds are being fired at each shooting and overwhelmingly, our homicides are being driven by people with criminal records shooting people with criminal records. And that's the slice that’s really driving our homicide rates.
WALLACE: There is another theory, commissioner. And that is the so-called Ferguson effect. And that's the argument that with police feeling they're being targeted either in the media or out on street and with emboldened criminals that police are not going into neighborhoods as aggressively as they used to.
And one of the case examples people cite rightly or wrongly is Baltimore, where six police officers were indicted after the death of Freddie Gray.
Do you think there is a Ferguson effect?
RAMSEY: Well, I mean, Baltimore's kind of a unique situation with what took place there. I haven't seen it in Philadelphia. Now, that's not to say we don't have some officers that perhaps are not as aggressive as they were before. But it certainly -- when you look at our numbers, it certainly is no indication that's the case.
We have a slight bump in homicides, 5 percent. But we stay on top of it. And I think it's also important to keep this in context. We've had historically low numbers in terms of homicides and shootings for several years now. And so, our numbers are being compared to that and we're starting to have an upward trend which is something to be very, very concerned about, we don't want to go in that direction.
But I also think it's important to remember just exactly what we're being compared to. There is a problem out there. No question about it. Certainly, Ferguson has had an impact on us in policing. To what extent, I don't know.
WALLACE: Like everything else, this has become political, as well. Critics note, Chief Flynn, that President Obama seems to speak out more emotionally and more vocally when young black men are shot down like Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown than when policemen are shot.
Do cops notice that?
FLYNN: Oh, I think the president is missing a historic opportunity and which is to bridge the gap between the two parallel conversations going on right now. On the one hand, we have the conversation about the holocaust of homicidal violence that’s afflicting poor neighborhoods of color. You know, in my city, the homicide rate for an African-American is 185 per 100,000 compared to 50 for a white person, OK? It's a dramatic difference true in city after city after city.
At the same time --
WALLACE: This is black on black crime.
FLYNN: That’s correct.
WALLACE: This isn’t policeman --
FLYNN: No.
WALLACE: This isn't white people going on, this is black on black.
FLYNN: And the challenge is that these neighborhoods are afflicted by high rates of homicidal violence and nonfatal shootings and other crimes, and the police are trying to do something about it with them.
On the other hand, you have disparities in the criminal justice system and the parallel conversation that has to be bridges is you can't talk disparities in the system unless you talk about disparities of victimization. One person could bridge that gap most effectively. So far, he's only talked about half the equation and I would like to see a change in it.
WALLACE: Chief Flynn, Commissioner Ramsey, thank you both. Thanks for coming in. We will, of course, stay on top of the story. Thank you, gentlemen.
Up next, a Kentucky county clerk chooses to go to jail rather than bend on same-sex marriage. Our Sunday group weighs in on that and the race for the White House.
Plus, what would you like to ask the panel about the Hillary Clinton aide who says he will take the Fifth over setting up her private e-mail server? Just go to Facebook or Twitter @FoxNewsSunday and we may use your question on the air.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Under whose authority are you not issuing licenses?
KIM DAVIS, KENTUCKY COUNTY CLERK: Under God’s authority.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did God tell you to do this?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did God tell you to threat us like this?
DAVIS: I’ve asked you all to leave. You are interrupting my business.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Well, someone finally took the spotlight from the Donald Trump this week. Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, defied a court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and went to jail.
Time to bring in our Sunday group: syndicated columnist George Will, Susan Page, Washington bureau chief of "USA Today", Robert Costa from "The Washington Post", and "New York Times" bestselling author Richard North Patterson has written thrillers on a range of topics, including politics and the Supreme Court.
Well, that clerk Kim Davis says that God's law outweighs man's law. The Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage and a number of Republican presidential candidates including Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee jumped on her bandwagon.
George, your thoughts about the principle and politics of the rule of law and also, what about Barack Obama who seems to sometimes pick and choose which laws he's going to enforce?
GEORGE WILL, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, there's no question that the president's selective interpretation of the constitutional provision that the executive shall see that the laws are faithfully executed, his selective approach to that perhaps has encouraged a kind of lawlessness down the ballot. People are saying, "Well, I can do whatever I wish."
But surely it is a wholesome rule that executives should obey legitimate court orders. That's true whether your name is Orval Faubus, the Democratic governor of Arkansas in the 1950s, or George Wallace, the Democratic governor of Alabama in the '60s, or Kim Davis, the Democratic county clerk in Kentucky.
She made a choice. She -- unquestionably, her faith is important to her. Evidently, her paycheck is also because she did not resign her office.
We've been here before, Chris. In 1892, a Massachusetts policeman claimed that his constitutional rights of speech and association had been violated by rules governing and restricting political activity by police. The supreme judicial court of Massachusetts head against him in an opinion written by a Massachusetts judge named Oliver Wendell Holmes, he ruled, he said the policeman has a constitutional right to engage in politics, the policeman does not have a constitutional right to be a policeman. She has that same problem.
WALLACE: Rick, as we've been following the story, I keep thinking that Kim Davis could be a character in one of your novels -- sworn to uphold the law but arguing that there's a higher law.
RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON, NYT BEST-SELLING AUTHOR: Well, I think the problem here is that -- George is exactly right. This is no different than her turning down an interracial couple on religious grounds. It's a public official. Somebody doesn't have the right to do it.
The real problem I think is a manner of parochial politics. This one revivifies the controversy which the Supreme Court protects the GOP from by ruling in favor of gay rights.
Now, Kim Davis has thrown them back in the briar patch. It separates the people willing to be grown-ups from the folks seeking is out parochial, political advantaging in Iowa among evangelicals. The problem is that's not where the American people are so the GOP should hope this goes away as quickly as possible.
WALLACE: Well, let's talk about the GOP and let's turn to Donald Trump who this week finally signed a loyalty oath pledging he'll support the Republican nominee and not run as an independent candidate. Here's a clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I will be totally pledging my allegiance to the Republican Party and the conservative principles for which it stands.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: But there's a question, Robert. Did the Republicans win or lose by in a sense with the RNC chairman Reince Priebus flying up to New York, going to the Trump Tower, seeming to formally take Donald Trump into the GOP?
ROBERT COSTA, THE WASHINGTON POST: It's a political chess game. On one side, the RNC is trying to bring him into the tent to make sure she's not a threat for a third party run. At the same time, I’ve spoken to Trump and his campaign manager about this. They believe long-term they can get other Republicans to commit to him to be botched in as much as he is botched in with this pledge should he be the no knee. He thinks he needs to start making a move in case he actually does win the nomination, people stick with him.
WALLACE: But there's another aspect of it, Bob, and that is that to a certain degree, he was the outsider. He was, you know, the maverick. But now with his signing the pledge and having the laying on off of hands of Priebus, does the GOP own his statements more than they did in?
COSTA: They do own Trump more because Priebus went up to New York and associated with Trump. Previously, he didn't appear with Trump at the press conference. At the same time, the RNC is trying to get a hold of the situation, this phenomenon. When you see Carson’s rise, Trump’s rise, Carly Fiorina, all these outsider voices are becoming a major part of the party and the institutional GOP is grappling with exactly what to do.
They don't have many tools. This is one of them. It's just a political document.
WALLACE: Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's e-mail problems continue. She refuse this week to say she was sorry for what had happened, refused to apologize, but she did say this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There was so much work to be done. We had so many problems around the world. I didn't really stop and think what kind of e-mail system will there be. I am sorry that this has been confusing to people and has raised a lot of questions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: And we got a lot of questions from you about the decision of a State Department staffer whom Hillary Clinton paid to help set up her e-mail server or private e-mail server in Chappaqua, New York. His decision, his announcement that he is going to take the Fifth Amendment in all investigations of this.
And you can see -- here's one of the questions, Phil Mayfield sent us on Facebook, "If the panel offers immunity to that staffer, can the aide be compelled to testify or risk being charged with contempt of congress?
SUSAN PAGE, USA TODAY: Absolutely. If they offer him immunity, he doesn't have a Fifth Amendment right not to testify, he will be forced to testify. I assume he would testify as opposed to going to jail and, Richard, you talked about being thrown back into the briar patch when it comes to gay marriage. Hillary Clinton cannot get out of the briar patch that is this e-mail controversy.
One thing unpersuasive about her answering the clip that you just showed was if she had not time to think through her e-mail system, wouldn't she have used the State Department system that was in place?
This is a controversy that is not going away. It's going to be here for months and it is costing her dearly in two ways -- in her reputation as an honest and trustworthy person, but also in her ability to talk about some other issue.
WALLACE: And what do you think about the fact that this fellow, Bryan Pagliano, says that he's going to take the Fifth? Hillary Clinton saying there's not wrong, there’s nothing unethical, there’s nothing improper, certainly nothing illegal. And here's a guy who’s taking the Fifth against self-incrimination.
PAGE: We discovered just yesterday I think with The Washington Post story he was being paid personally by the Clintons to maintain this e-mail server. It’s something that we didn’t know before. Now, maybe there's nothing wrong with that, but it's an example of exactly the opposite of what you're supposed to do when you face a political problem like this.
Rule one: get the whole story out there. Deal with it. Say you're sorry. Maybe you apologize and move on.
And Hillary has failed do those very basic, kind of political 101 steps on this controversy.
WALLACE: George, we seem to sort of give a temperature here every week. Is Hillary Clinton in better or worse shape on the email scandal at the end of this week?
WILL: Worse, because they're paying this person, absent-mindedly? She was saying, well, I was so caught up in fixing relations with Russia that I absent-mindedly set up an alternative e-mail system? It doesn't pass the laugh test.
COSTA: If she's so crippled by this, I wonder where is Vice President Biden? He's still on the sidelines. You have a lot of Democrats, Senator Sanders, Governor O'Malley, resisting to take negative shots at Secretary Clinton. You still have a Democratic Party, for all her struggles, is pretty much behind her and people are reluctant to get in and really make that a battle.
WALLACE: So, I mean, are you -- what are you saying then, I mean, in terms of press --
(CROSSTALK)
COSTA: I’m saying this is an issue perhaps -- when I talk to Republican campaigns, they say this is going to be an issue in the general election. We feel like we’re seeing on this more. I think with the Benghazi hearings, it will do even more.
But with the Democrats, when you're on the trail and you’re in Iowa and New Hampshire, Democrats are still not really thinking this is a big issue for her.
WALLACE: Rick, we're friends from Martha's Vineyard, that bastion of liberalism. What are your friends saying about Hillary Clinton and this e-mail thing? Is it just a vast right wing conspiracy?
PATTERSON: Well, I think what Robert says is right. I think it's a general election problem. She's very solid in the Democratic base -- among women, among labor, among minorities, everyone but white progressives. And as Gene McCarthy and George McGovern learned, white progressives aren't enough.
So, I think Robert is correct. This is a general election problem. Whatever else, it plays in the problem of perception like Dan Quayle not being able to be spell potato, this is plays into troupe of her opponents that she's entitled and untrustworthy and that's a difficulty.
WALLACE: And then there's also the FBI investigation, which might take on a whole lift on its own.
All right. We have to take a break. We'll see you all a little bit later.
Up next, President Obama secures enough support to get his nuclear Iran deal through Congress. We'll sit down with former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz who say it's another example of Mr. Obama's disastrous foreign policy.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: A look outside the beltway at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, here in Washington, President Obama got the votes he'll need to ensure Congress won't be able to block his controversial nuclear deal with Iran. That victory for the White House is bad news for two of the president's toughest foreign policy critics, former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz, a former assistant secretary of state. They have the written a new book, "Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America."
And welcome back to "Fox News Sunday."
DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: It's good to be back, Chris.
LIZ CHENEY, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: Mr. Vice President, in your book, you compare Obama's deal to Neville Chamberlain, appeasing Hitler in Munich in 1938.
Really?
D. CHENEY: Yes. No, I -- if you look at what happened with respect to the Iranian deal, the only winner are the Iranians. They got everything they asked for.
The losers are the United States, are the friends and allies of the United States, and the region, Israelis, the Saudis and others. The overall outcome I think will be to shift significantly the balance of power in that part of the world to the Iranians. I think they'll end up dominating partly not because of the nuclear deal, but also because of the lifting of the embargo on ballistic missiles and on conventional weapons.
So, I think it's a big deal, a major, major defeat in my mind in terms of our position in the region.
WALLACE: But Secretary of State Kerry says if the U.S. backs out now, that our European allies and the U.N. will lift their sanctions and we'll be all alone.
Here's a clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: It is clear that if we reject this plan, the multilateral sanctions regime will start to unravel, the pressure on Iran will lessen, and our negotiating leverage will diminish, if not disappear.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Liz, Kerry says that there's no chance for negotiating a better deal.
L. CHENEY: Well, you know, Secretary Kerry may not have been able to negotiate a better deal. But in fact, what they're saying now is totally disingenuous. We know the sanctions were working. We know they were starting to bite. When we were -- my dad and I were in the Middle East about a year ago, we had leaders there saying specifically, the sanctions are working. Why are you relieving pressure now? So, now you have a situation where having conceded the most important things including the right for the Iranians to enrich, the Obama administration is saying if you don't vote for this deal, we'll have war. The reality is, because of the pathway to a nuclear arsenal the deal provides, because of the other concessions with respect to conventional weapons and missiles and funding, this deal makes more likely, not less likely.
WALLACE: Mr. Vice President, you say that President Obama never put a serious nuclear option on the table, but you and President Bush, the Bush/Cheney administration dealt with Iran for eight years. And I think it's fair to say that there was never any real serious military threat. And during your time, let's put these numbers up on the screen, Iran went from zero known centrifuges in operation to more than 5,000. So in fairness, didn't you leave the Bush Cheney administration leave President Obama with a mess?
D. CHENEY: Well, I don't think of it that way. In fact, there was military action that had an impact on the Iranians, when we took down Saddam Hussein. There was a period of time when they stopped their program because they were afraid of what we did to Saddam we were going to do to them next. We also, when we took down Saddam, Moammar Gadhafi surrendered up his nuclear program. When we got that, then went and got his suppler, Mr. A.Q. Khan. We did a lot to limit nuclear proliferation in the region while we were there.
WALLACE: But the centrifuges went from zero to 5,000.
D. CHENEY: Well, and they well have gone, but that happened on Obama's watch, not on our watch.
WALLACE: No, no, by 2009, they were at 5,000.
D. CHENEY: Right. But I think we did a lot to deal with the arms control problem in the Middle East. We signed on with the -- our international friends and allies and the Europeans and started the negotiations process. So what we did not do is what Obama did. He never had a military option on the table. He talked about it repeatedly, but nobody believed him especially after he waffled on the Syrian deal. There never was a military option that the Iranians had to worry about. So, the situation also involved he was paying cash to the Iranians to get them just to come to the table. He was making -- lifting sanctions just to get them to come to the table. He always dealt from a position of weakness which I don't think we would have done.
L. CHENEY: Also, programs under way which have been reported in the press about which people can't speak that had an impact covertly on the Iranian program according to press reports during the Bush administration. Which were leaked during the Obama administration.
WALLACE: You talk -- well, you can't talk about it, but I mean I assume you're talking about cyberwarfare, (INAUDIBLE)] ...
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: ... things like that. Some of that also happened in the Obama administration, as well. Let's talk -- let's move to Iraq and the rise of ISIS. Liz, you blame President Obama for pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2011, but the fact is the original status of forces agreement that called for the withdrawal of all troops was negotiated by President Bush and critics would argue that the rise of al Qaeda and other terrorists in Iraq started after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the Bush/Cheney administration.
L. CHENEY: Well, the reality is that there was always an intention that there would be stay behind forces and that once the combat operations were over, there would be an agreement and another sofa agreement negotiated to allow forces to stay behind. That is what the Obama administration refused to do. Eventually ending up with agreeing to such a small number of U.S. Forces that it would not have been effective in terms of providing security in Iraq. The other thing that is indisputable, is that when Barack Obama took the Oath of Office in January 20th, 2009, the situation in Iraq because of the surge ordered under the Bush Cheney administration was stable. Al Qaeda and Iraq had been defeated. The Shia militias had largely been defeated. Even President Obama and Vice President Biden claim that Iraq was a success at that point.
What you see now, and I would say, not just in Iraq, but what you see in terms of the refugee crisis, all across Europe today is a tragedy there, is a direct consequence of Barack Obama's Middle East policies. A direct consequence of walking away from the Middle East and creating chaos, creating a vacuum that ISIS, that Iran that America's enemies are now feeling
WALLACE: Let me pick up, because this is obviously a huge story right now, Mr. Vice president. The migrant crisis.
D. CHENEY: Right.
WALLACE: Do you hold the President Obama and his policies responsible for what's happening across Europe now?
D. CHENEY: I think what's happened is, he's created a huge vacuum. He's made it very clear, he's not going to use military force to any extent. The vacuum that was created once the caliphate was formed and so forth, and enormous violence that's gone forward in Syria has contributed directly to the refugee crisis. I think when the U.S. played a major role in the region when we were there on a significant basis, it would have been much easier to manage this kind of situation. Today what you have is a crisis of major proportions in Syria supported primarily by the Iranians and that's driven hundreds of thousands of people to look for refuge someplace else. They've all headed for Europe. And it's a terrible tragedy.
WALLACE: Mr. Vice President, what do you think of Donald Trump?
D. CHENEY: I have -- I don't know the man. I've never met him personally. I have refrained from judging any of our candidates positive or negatively because we've been concerned primarily about the book and getting the whole question of national security front and center in the debate this year. At some point, we may endorse, but I haven't yet.
WALLACE: Do you think he is -- I mean I know you. You're an avid news follower. Reader, watcher. Do you think he's prepared fit to be president?
D. CHENEY: I'm not going to judge any of the candidates till we get farther down the road.
L. CHENEY: On our side.
D. CHENEY: On our side. I'll be happy to talk about the Democrats.
WALLACE: We're going to talk about Hillary Clinton in a moment. But here's what Trump has said about your administration, sir. In 2008, he said President Bush should be impeached for getting us into Iraq. He said that "would have been a wonderful thing. He got us into the war with lies." And in 2011, here's what Trump said about you. "Here's a guy that did a rotten job as vice president. Nobody liked him. Tremendous divisiveness." President Trump?
D. CHENEY: Well, some people said worst things than that about me. Again, Chris, I don't want to get into the business of judging candidates now. It's early. I want to see how they respond and react to this basic question of whether or not national security is the foremost issue in this campaign and what they proposed to do about it. That's what their books ...
WALLACE: Well, do you think those are responsible comments on national security?
D. CHENEY: I'm not going to get into the business of getting into a dustup with any of the candidates. Or support or oppose any of the candidates at this stage. You've got to ask, but that's the answer.
WALLACE: That's kind of what I figured you would say.
(LAUGHTER)
WALLACE: But I got to ask.
L. CHENEY: Right.
WALLACE: Finally Hillary Clinton's e-mails. Liz, and I expect you to be equally closed mouth on this, she says that she never sent or received any e-mails that were marked classified. Is that a defense?
L. CHENEY: No, it marked classified is the sort of you know thing that the Clintons have come up with now backing off of what she said originally, which was that she never sent or received anything classified. It is absolutely baffling, it is beyond comprehension that a secretary of state would think that she could conduct all of her business on a personal server. We know now as well as the fact that she had this server set up, that she paid a state department employee separately to maintain it, that it was wiped clean when those e-mails were under subpoena. She's got a big problem. I think it gets worse for her every day that she's not able to explain what happened. But her inability to be able to handle classified information according to the policies and potentially the laws of the nation obviously call into question her fitness to be commander in chief.
WALLACE: Mr. Vice President, how do you right Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State, both on the emails and more importantly on her foreign policy initiatives?
D. CHENEY: I think she's as responsible as anybody in the Obama administration other than the president for what happened. She carried out his policy for four years. The Russian reset was one of her initiatives. That didn't work out very well. She traveled a lot of miles, but it's hard to find anything that she actually did. I think they kept her on a very short leash at the White House. I think this White House operated very much out of the National Security Council, state, defense, the generals, the diplomats I don't thinking had much impact on policy. I think she was there basically supported everything Barack Obama did and bears responsibility for it.
WALLACE: And you agree with your daughter, your wise daughter that she's unfit for presidency because of the way she handled her e-mails?
D. CHENEY: I think it raises very serious questions about how she operated. And when you operate in that kind of environment, you are consciously aware all the time of the sensitivity of the material you deal with. It's just part of -- You go to a National Security Council meeting and the situation room in the West Wing basement, there's a basket there, and everybody has got to put their electronics in the basket before you can even go in and participate in the conversation. That happens every day.
WALLACE: Vice President Cheney, Liz, thank you both, thanks for coming in. It's always good to talk with you.
L. CHENEY: Thank you, Chris.
WALLACE: Up next, a spiraling migrant crisis in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing ISIS, war and poverty. Now this tragic image has finally brought worldwide attention to the chaos. We'll bring back the panel to discuss what Europe is doing about it.
Plus, what do you think? How should the world handle the refugee crisis? Let me know on Facebook or Twitter @FoxNewsSunday and use the #fns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: Here is the latest on the flood of migrants overwhelming Europe. Thousands of refugees traveling by train and bus have now reached safe havens in Germany overnight. Thousands more are expected today. But neighboring Hungary which has struggled to manage the mass flow of people warns the human tide from the Middle East and Africa is still on the rise. Senior foreign affairs correspondent Greg Palkot has more.
GREG PALKOT, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Chris, this weekend, Europe is grappling with the biggest refugee crisis it has faced since World War II. They have broken out of refugee camps, they have fought with police and in the thousands they've taken to roads and highways in their struggle for survival. It's estimated that some 340,000 refugees and migrants have come to Europe so far this year fleeing war in Syria and Afghanistan, poverty in Africa and Asia. There is no end in sight.
ANTONIO GUTERRES, U.N. HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES: Business as usual or incremental improvements of mechanisms in place will not be able to address what it is today a massive refuge and migration crisis in Europe.
PALKOT: Many of these desperate people want to go to Germany for good reason. It has the strongest economy and the most liberal asylum laws. But other European countries like Hungary don't want to host these migrants. They don't even want them passing through.
VIKTOR ORBAN, HUNGARIAN PRIME MINISTER: But the moral human thing is to make clear, please don't come. Why you have to go from Turkey to Europe? Turkey is a safe country. Stay there.
PALKOT: Still bringing people together around the world this past week, the image of a three-year-old toddler on a Turkish beach. He, his brother and mother drowned trying to make their way from Syria to Europe.
TIMA KURDI, CHILD'S AUNT: They were going for a better life.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PALKOT: For its part, the U.S. has taken in just over 1,000 Syrian refugees in the past year. More to be done all around. Chris?
WALLACE: Greg Palkot reporting from London. Greg, thanks. And we're back now with the panel. Rick, you know the power of images and that image which we've seen repeatedly today and over the past week of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi up on the beach like a piece of driftwood. Really seemed to bring this problem into focus.
PATTERSON: It's amazing how most Americans were sleeping until we saw that one little boy and that humanized things. The pictures of the camp. And this is a perfect storm of humanitarian disasters, where there are all sorts of contributors.
But one thing which I think has not been noted, this is also a national security problem of the first order. We stand to lose a generation of refugee kids who are not properly educated, or employed. And this is where our fear of terrorism redoubles on itself. On the one hand, we don't want these folks coming in because we worry about potential terrorism. On the other hand, this international failing of the first order is creating a whole generation of dislocated people which could really be problematic in the very ways we fear most.
WALLACE: With this flood of refugees, Robert, you're seeing a very troubling split inside the European Union. Some of the richer countries, like Germany, have been very generous in accepting and sheltering refugees, but some of the countries that don't have that kind of money have been -- and Hungary may be the prime example -- one, have been much more reluctant to bring in refugees and are opposed to the EU's idea of setting quotas on how many migrants each country is going to take.
COSTA: You're seeing countries, especially those that are having economic problems, they're not trying to bring in all of these migrants. At the same time, this issue is becoming more of one even in American politics. I would check in with the campaign and say how are you handling this? The first reaction is, it's a Barack Obama problem, it's President Obama's policy with Syria. But they expect at the second debate, they have to have a policy idea ready if Europe is not ready to handle this situation, what is the United States' role.
WALLACE: Well, and that's a very interesting question, Susan, because as Greg Palkot pointed out, so far the U.S. has accepted so far between 1,000 and 1,800 refugees from Syria in the last year. So the question is, do we accept more? And Rick talked about a national security aspect, there is also the national security aspect if you start bringing in thousands of refugees, might some of them be terrorists?
PAGE: I suppose it's possible. Although we recognize our obligation if people have a well founded fear of persecution in their homeland, that they get some international rights and some humanitarian treatment. You could hardly argue that the people of Syria do not face a well founded fear of persecution in their homeland. The United States has an obligation there.
And if we expect countries in Europe to step up to the plate with this, surely the United States will be forced to step up in a more serious way than taking 1,000 or 1,500 Syrian refugees. There are what, 4 million Syrian refugees? Much greater numbers are going to come here.
I would also say that the United States has been well served by previous waves of refugees that we've accepted. By the Vietnamese refugees that we accepted after the Vietnam War, who have become a great part of our nation. So we worry about terrorism. You can't look at these biblical pictures of people walking down miles and miles seeking just humanitarian treatment, and not be touched.
WALLACE: George?
WILL: First, yes, shortly after we took in a million refugees from Vietnam after Vietnam fell, about 10, 15 years later, there were a whole bunch of high school valedictorians named Nguyen all over California. So we benefited from immigrants there.
One of the questions here is, is this our fault because of what happened in Syria? I don't think we started the Syrian war, civil war. I don't think we have a recipe for ending it.
The real problem is Syria -- is Libya. A lot of refugees from Syria come overland into Europe or in a much safer trip, by water to Greece. The really dangerous trip is across the Mediterranean to Italy from Libya. In August 22nd, 27th rather, two boats carrying 500 people from Libya sank. In April, 800 people drowned trying to get from Libya.
Now, what happened to Libya? That is our fault. We went in, in a country that posed no conceivable threat to the United States, and in an eight-month protracted assassination attempt, decapitated their government, creating the failed state that today is producing all this. And some presidential candidates, both the former secretary of state and some Republicans who were enthusiasts for the Libyan intervention, are going to have to answer for this.
One further point, some estimates are that as many as half a million refugees are now besieging Europe in the first eight months of this year. That's 1/20th, actually less than 1/20th, than the number of human beings that Donald Trump proposes to deport.
(LAUGHTER)
WALLACE: I have to wrap my mind around that for a minute. Are you saying you think the U.S. should be more proactive in bringing in refugees to this country, that we did it in the case of Vietnam and we can do it here?
WILL: Vietnam, we clearly had a particularly intense obligation, because we had fought a war, sought allies, and lost. But it is part of our national heritage to do our duty.
COSTA: I'm not sure there's a political appetite for that. I was just in Mobile, Alabama with Trump, covering Trump in Iowa. The people who are supporting the Republican front-runner don't seem to be in that mind-set. So it's going to be hard for a lot of these Republican contenders, even if they see the human condition here, but they also have to -- they are trying to win a primary. I don't see the voters pushing for this in the GOP.
PATTERSON: The president needs to step up. He's in office right now. He needs to talk about what he can do in terms of letting in migrants, of international aid, of even using the sixth fleet to stem this tragedy at sea that we have going on. We also need the Arab Gulf states to come in, we need a coordinated response from Europe, led by Germany. You know, this is something which can't wait on politics. People need to step up now.
PAGE: You want to fuel terrorism, don't do anything about this refugee crisis. If you're worried about terrorists, just let the situation continue to fester.
WALLACE: There's another aspect to that, and that is, and George alluded to it, in addition to talking about Libya, which is Syria. Syria is a failed state, and it is bleeding its problems all across Europe. And we now hear the Russians may be coming into Syria. That the slaughter of one ethnic religious group of another continues. So as long as that continues, isn't there going to be just a never-ending supply of these migrants around Europe and conceivably the United States, George?
WILL: Yes, there will. And if we had any way to stop the fighting in Syria, we should do it. But I don't think we do. Remember, at the end of the second world war, there were about 15 million displaced people in Europe. Ten years later, there were essentially none. We've handled crises like this before.
Now, this is different. The Europeans were displaced, Europeans in Europe. And Europe doesn't have our tradition of assimilation of people from around the world. Europeans may have to learn a lesson from their transatlantic cousins -- us -- about how you do this.
WALLACE: And there's another aspect of this, Susan, because to the degree -- I'm not saying that the U.S. and Europe should shut the door -- but to the degree that the U.S. and Europe open the door, doesn't that simply ensure that more refugees, more migrants, will leave Syria, will leave Turkey, which is a country that they go to right across the border, and will follow in their footsteps?
PAGE: We don't have a moral obligation to take everybody who wants to come to the United States. We do have a moral obligation to take people who are facing this kind of situation.
WALLACE: Thank you, panel. See you next Sunday. Up next, our power player of the week. The head of the National Institutes of Health. A man of science and faith.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: He rides a Harley and plays a mean guitar. Which as we told you in April, makes what he does even more interesting. Here is our power player of the week.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. FRANCIS COLLINS, NIH DIRECTOR: NIH probably has a bigger effect on your daily life than almost any other government agency.
WALLACE: Dr. Francis Collins is director of the National Institutes of Health, the biggest supporter of biomedical research in the world. On a campus outside Washington, 17,000 scientists work in 27 different institutes, coming up with breakthrough cures and treatments for disease.
COLLINS: We are the house of hope. This is where people come to when everything else has sort of stopped working.
WALLACE: Collins is talking about the NIH Clinical Center, the world's largest research hospital.
COLLINS: Now, at least for some patients, we have a Lazarus opportunity for people who are in terrible shape to be able to recover.
WALLACE: What is a Lazarus opportunity?
COLLINS: They get into a clinical trial to try a brand-new therapeutic that is still very much under study, and they have this dramatic response, and they go home and go back to work.
WALLACE: And all that is the tip of the iceberg for NIH, which gives out 90 percent of its funds in research grants to outside programs, which brings us to money. The NIH budget this year is $31 billion, which, after spending cuts and sequestration, is where NIH was 12 years ago. What does that mean for research grants?
COLLINS: Traditionally, we could fund about a third of those. Now we're down to funding about a sixth of those, and so that means about half of the science is left on the table, at a time of such great promise.
WALLACE: Collins knows about scientific breakthroughs. He led the human genome project that in 2003 announced it had mapped the full sequence of human DNA.
COLLINS: Inside each cell of your body is this instruction book made up of 3 billion letters of the DNA code. If you know the reference genome for that person and you look at their cancer, you can see what happened. Oh, that T should have been a C. Now that gene is overactive.
WALLACE: Francis Collins is not your typical scientist. He plays a guitar, adorned with a DNA helix. He rides Harleys and he has written his book about his belief in God.
WALLACE: How controversial was that in the scientific community?
COLLINS: It stirred things up a bit. There are some questions science is poorly designed to deal with, like why are we here. That's where for me, faith comes in, and understanding that science limits the questions you can ask, so let's find another way.
WALLACE: While he's asking those questions, he'll keep working in the most powerful job in American science.
COLLINS: I'm a physician. I got into medicine hoping that I could help people. We have 7,000 diseases for which we know the molecular cause. We only have treatments for 500 of them. To be able to stand at the helm of this amazing place and steer that forward is a dream come true.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: And this summer, NIH awarded more than $30 million in grants to help tie information about the sequence of DNA into electronic medical records.
And that's it for today. Have a great week. And we'll see you next "Fox News Sunday."
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