By ,
Published January 27, 2017
This is a rush transcript from "The Five," November 29, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: So, according to Politico, President Obama's worst critic is actually Obama himself. Wow. How refreshing. So counting Obama, that's exactly one critic of the president in the mainstream media.
The website points out that, quote, "Obama's self-critiques began early in his term, a notable departure from his predecessor, George W. Bush."
So true. Bush had no had interest in himself, but for Obama, thinking about Obama, it's a full-time job.
The pop piece then adds, "Obama supporters see the public self doubt as proof of the president's honesty."
So, even when the president admits he's imperfect, that just makes him more perfect. It's like when you're asked to name your biggest fault in a job interview and you say, "Sometimes I care too much" or "people say I'm a perfectionist," or "I can only squat thrust 400 pounds." I said that when I interviewed at Jamba Juice. Still didn't get the job.
But if Obama were really as big his critics, will he say something like, my biggest weakness is that I'm not very good? Instead he says, shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected. Yes, you can really tell how Obama is torturing himself with introspection as he eyes those putts on the 18th green.
(LAUGHTER)
GUTFELD: Bob, you have to admit, that was a big, slobbery kiss for Obama, wasn't it?
BOB BECKEL, CO-HOST: That was -- that was one of your better reads. First of all, you know, it was only last week I think on this show, or maybe it was two weeks ago, that we all sat -- y'all sat around and said, Obama blames everybody else for his problems. Dada dada dada.
Look, here he is, taking credit for his problems, and now you dump on it. What's the deal?
GUTFELD: That is a great point, but we needed a segment.
BECKEL: OK.
GUTFELD: So, we conveniently forgot about last week and did this segment.
But, Dana, would Bush or any Republican ever get something like this? Will they go --
DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: It probably would depend on who's writing it.
GUTFELD: Yes.
PERINO: But when I was press secretary, I remember that George Bush at every press conference would be asked, don't you hate yourself? I mean, aren't you mad at yourself? How can you sleep at night?
I mean, honestly, like how do you -- there was never going to be enough self-flagellation of President Bush for them to be satisfied.
GUTFELD: Yes.
PERINO: And President Obama will probably find that out a little bit. I was actually thinking about the interview saying, when you say I work too hard, that you had it in your monologue.
GUTFELD: I'm sorry about that.
PERINO: So, I'm bringing up the point anyway.
GUTFELD: That's OK. I'll forgive you.
Here, Andrea, here's the thing. I guess you could say that President Obama is a beta male, because he's not afraid to be self-deprecating, but the last beta male we had was Jimmy Carter.
ANDREA TANTAROS, CO-HOST: Right. Jimmy Carter, and Obama is doing a lot worse than Jimmy Carter. And you do not want to be compared to Jimmy Carter in this day and age. Gallup just came out with some new numbers today showing that Obama has the lowest approval rating of any president in the history of Gallup approval ratings.
So, as you always say, Greg, it only goes back as far it goes back. But, it's also back a while.
Nixon 50 percent. Reagan 54 percent. Obama is at 43 percent. By the way, Truman 54 percent. And remember he's patterning his campaign after Harry Truman, running an anti-Congress race.
So, I'm a little upset about that when he made it political. I thought I was Obama's worst critic.
GUTFELD: Oh.
BECKEL: Truman was a lot lower than 54 -- you said 54 percent?
TANTAROS: Truman at this stage in his presidency.
BECKEL: Oh, this stage.
GUTFELD: You're thinking of "The Truman Show," which was a terrible, terrible movie.
ERIC BOLLING, CO-HOST: You know --
GUTFELD: Eric, yes?
BOLLING: I was just going to point out, it's all cute when he says, "I'm my own worst enemy, I have to own up to my mistakes, I'll be a one-term president if I don't fix this thing" -- except that he's put $5 trillion on to the national debt in three years. If you extrapolate that over --
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: How many times do I have to explain it?
BOLLING: OK. Go ahead, explain it, Bob. Help me out with this.
BECKEL: If there had been a President --
BOLLING: Yes?
BECKEL: There had been a President McCain, there would have been about $3 trillion in increases in entitlements and the national debt.
BOLLING: However, you're wrong with your numbers once again. President McCain or president conservative may have stopped adding to the national debt.
BECKEL: You can't stop adding to the national debt --
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: -- adding to the national debt as recently as 2002, under Bush.
BECKEL: Eric, let me ask you a question -- can you stop paying interest on the national debt?
BOLLING: Absolutely not.
BECKEL: Can you stop paying Social Security payments?
BOLLING: You can reform Social Security.
BECKEL: Oh, OK. Now you're talking about reform. OK.
BOLLING: Yes, Bob. That's OK to do.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Or we just assume that going forward, we're going to spend more and more money.
TANTAROS: Do you think Obama is his own worst critic?
BECKEL: No. I think you guys -- I think Eric is his own worst critic.
GUTFELD: Eric is mad, like you, because he is his worst critic.
I want to bring in Governor Christie, Monday tore into President Obama. Basically, he said, he blamed the super committee's failure to reach an agreement on President Obama, basically calling a bystander in the Oval Office. We have tape!
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE, R-N.J.: Listening to the spin coming out of the administration about the failure of the super committee, and if the president knew it was doomed for failure, so he didn't get involved. Then what the hell are we paying you for? It's doomed for failure, so I'm not getting involved? What have you been doing exactly? When you're president -- it's not good enough to say, well, I'll get it done after the election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUTFELD: Dana, is he kind of sore that he didn't -- I can't believe I said sore. He kind of sore -- that's like an Archie comic.
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELD: Sore -- you can see Christie being sore about something, that he didn't enter the race?
PERINO: No. I think he's proving is that he's probably going to be -- if it continues on this way, that he'll be Mitt Romney's best asset in the campaign if he's going to actually campaign for him.
BECKEL: Well, if I could just say, the guy didn't have the guts himself to run. So, if you don't have the cajones to do that, go back to New Jersey and make that model state worked, which by the way is floating not because of anything Christie did, but because of stimulus money.
So, you know, Christie, just shut -- if you're not willing to get up and run, then don't criticize.
GUTFELD: You're not running either.
BECKEL: I can't run. I got a record.
GUTFELD: That's true.
TANTAROS: We can make statements. And governors and senators make statements all the time and are critical of the president. And he makes a very valid point.
BECKEL: What is it?
TANTAROS: The president commissioned his own deficit commission to put presentation that he did nothing on. He has made no effort to reform entitlements. He's made no effort to balance the budget, which was a campaign promise in 2008. He's ducking for cover, because he knows if he jumps into a fight, he's going to get hit and he can't afford to --
BECKEL: Outside of George Bush, can you name me one of these Republican candidates for president who's come up with an entitlement program?
BOLLING: Paul Ryan.
BECKEL: Newt Gingrich.
BOLLING: Paul Ryan.
BECKEL: Paul Ryan is not a presidential candidate.
BOLLING: Not yet.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: By the way, he had one that was going to cut $6 trillion.
BECKEL: Excuse me. He's not running for president, unless he's running for the Kiwanis Club. He is not running for president of the United States.
BOLLING: Can I weigh in a little bit here?
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: They don't have an idea.
BOLLING: Chris Christie asked, what are you paying for Obama? There's a better -- that's a great question. But the better question is: Why do you have our checkbook in your hand? You're spending money like a drunken sailor.
BECKEL: He doesn't.
BOLLING: What Christie did that you're kind of saying, oh, yes, the guy from Jersey. What he did is he took unions in the room and he said, look, we're going to reform pensions and benefits and bring the state back to health. And he's doing that. That's what Obama could do but refuses to do.
BECKEL: You know, the other thing he did is he canceled the tunnel to New York, which was smart. I'm for that. I think this makes a lot of sense. This guy is vastly overrated.
PERINO: But that was stimulus money. Didn't you want more?
BECKEL: No, no, we didn't. No, it was before the stimulus. But you know the thing that I come back to, you say Gingrich has got a plan for entitlements. I don't believe I haven't seen it. Maybe it's not out there.
And forget Ryan. The guy is not running.
TANTAROS: Oh, forget that. He has the most --
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: No, I said he's not running for president. I'm asking you to tell me, in the stellar group of Republican candidates for president, name me one significant statement that's been --
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: On entitlements?
TANTAROS: Yes.
BECKEL: What are they? Tell me.
TANTAROS: You want me to literally burn through the entire segment?
BECKEL: No, you don't because even you, as smart as you are in politics, can't name them because they don't exist.
GUTFELD: It does exist, but we don't want to waste our time talking about it.
I want to talk about something else. Video was obtained by The Daily Caller, exclusive video of Illinois Senator Barack Obama back in 2006, talking glowingly about Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I did this for you, Bob, more.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
THEN-SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, D-ILL.: I'm not plugging the book, but the title of it, "The Audacity of Hope." Some people have noted that I actually viewed that line in a speech that I gave in 2004 Democratic Convention. But I tell you what: I'm confessing to all of you here today -- it's a big crowd, 2,000 people -- I'm confessing in front of the TV cameras, I actually stole this line from my pastor, Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUTFELD: So, Dana, he's confessing that he stole the title of the book, "The Audacity of Book," from his spiritual adviser, which by the way I thought was the title of a ninth grade girl's diary. But --
PERINO: "The Audacity of Hope."
GUTFELD: "The Audacity of Hope."
PERINO: Yours, but not Eric.
GUTFELD: Yes. I collect these diaries, so I know.
What do you think? Does this matter now?
PERINO: It probably doesn't matter. No, probably not that much, although for people who would not be inclined to vote for Obama again, an maybe anybody that's on the fence, I think that it does take a look at somebody like a Victor David Hanson who wrote on National Review today that maybe the media will now not protect President Obama as well as they used to.
BECKEL: Oh, yes.
TANTAROS: And if they make -- if the Democrats try to make Mormonism an issue, do they really want to do this? Do they really want to have this pastor debate of where Obama got his religious beliefs and where --
BECKEL: All I can -- sorry.
(CROSSTALK)
TANTAROS: If it's Mitt Romney --
BECKEL: All I can say is "The Five" deserves a lot of credit for breaking this incredibly new news story. This has been only around for about eight years. And I got to give the producers credit for digging this stuff up all the time.
GUTFELD: Well, here's --
BECKEL: No, it's just a ridiculous shot at Obama. Admit what it is. It's a shot at Obama.
GUTFELD: Here's the point -- if we found out that not to that Newt Gingrich's spiritual adviser was David Duke, wouldn't that be kind of a problem?
BECKEL: He's Mitt Romney's spiritual adviser?
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: Oh, I'm sorry.
BOLLING: So think about what we have now. We have a president who admitted to smoking pot, admitted to doing lines of coke, admitting to stealing. What's left? Are we going to find out he has sex tape --
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: I don't know, that's about 90 percent of the country.
BOLLING: -- Michael Moore or Oprah, or what is it?
BECKEL: So what's the point?
GUTFELD: The point is we got to go to a break.
BECKEL: Yes, OK.
PERINO: Probably a good idea.
BECKEL: Are you sure we don't have older Obama tape that we should break the news story on?
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELD: Bob, we can't find older tape of Obama. He didn't exist before 2005.
BECKEL: OK. But we sure we run everything we've got right here on "The Five." That is all we got.
GUTFELD: Why are Democrats featuring Andrea Tantaros in a 2012 campaign ad? We'll show it to you and discuss next.
And Bob told me before the show he's looking for a pantsuit for his pet iguana, Sergeant Webbed Toes. If you have suggestions, e-mail us at thefive@foxnews.com. Sergeant Webbed Toes is adorable.
BECKEL: He is. He's a nice guy.
Content and Programming Copyright 2011 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2011 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/obamas-toughest-critic