This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” June 2, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And this is a Fox News alert. Another job scandal may be hitting the White House. Now according to the AP, unnamed White House officials say they raised the possibility of a federal job with Colorado Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff in the hope that he would abandon his primary challenge against incumbent Democrat Michael Bennett.
Now Romanoff released a statement earlier this evening confirming that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina called him in September of 2009 and mentioned three jobs that would be available to him if he dropped out. Now he insists that none of those positions were promised or guaranteed to him.
Now White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton confirmed all of this but maintains no official offer was made.
If you think president’s team has handled these matters poorly, well, look at their approach to the catastrophic oil spill. It’s been even more pathetic. Even Democrats are now criticizing the administration. And now the most liberal left-wing organization of them all is joining the chorus. MoveOn.org.
Let’s take a look at this ad:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 2009 Obama appointee Ken Salazar chooses Sylvia Baca to co-run MMS. Guess where Baca worked for eight years prior? BP. Yes. That BP.
Isn’t having a former BP executive heading up the government agency responsible for inspecting BP kind of — I don’t know — insane?
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: All right. Now clearly the president’s day as community organizer and his brief stint as senator haven’t exactly made him a skilled manager. But somebody who knows real crisis management is the man who took the lead during 9/11. That’s former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He joins us in studio.
Mr. Mayor, how are you?
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER NYC MAYOR: I’m good, Sean. How are you?
HANNITY: All right. We got Rod Blagojevich’s trial starting. We got the admission that Clinton — “I offered him a job” — he acted, you know, on behalf of the administration. Now Romanoff is admitting he was offered a job.
Do you see — you’re a former attorney, U.S. attorney. Do you see a possible violation of law?
GIULIANI: Sure. Sestak’s first description I believe on Greta Van Susteren’s show, if I’m correct about this, was that they bribed him with a job.
HANNITY: I didn’t hear that but he —
GIULIANI: Yes.
HANNITY: He did say in his first interview that he was offered a job. It was high ranking. Now Romanoff is confirming just now tonight he was offered a position.
GIULIANI: But I mean the reality is that it should be investigated. We need to know the words. This is very important that we know exactly what the words were because the two statutes involved say, if a job is offered, federal job is offered, then that would be a misdemeanor, it would be a crime.
HANNITY: A position of value.
GIULIANI: A position of value.
HANNITY: In exchange for a political act.
GIULIANI: Correct. In exchange of any kind of political activity or nonactivity. So dropping out of a race would be political activity.
The question is, were they offered, weren’t they offered? Sestak — at least him talking about when I heard it — sounded like he believed the job was offered to him.
HANNITY: I mean —
GIULIANI: And he said it, right?
HANNITY: And Romanoff is saying the same thing. Well, yes, I got three calls. Maybe it is the Chicago way but —
GIULIANI: And then the question is, was it Bill Clinton’s — was there another conversation which he was offered secretary of the Navy? Which is what everybody believes he was offered.
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: The only way to find out about this is —
HANNITY: Put them under oath.
GIULIANI: Put them under oath in front of a grand jury. And we’ll find out.
HANNITY: All right. All right. You’re known for your leadership in 9/11. I mean you walked out there. You were with the people of New York on a daily basis.
How would you rate the president’s handling of the gulf crisis?
GIULIANI: It couldn’t be worse. This would be an example, if you are taught leadership 101 of exactly what not to do. Minimize it at first. Two days after or three days after it happened, go on vacation. He’s been on vacation more often than he has by far been to Louisiana or Mississippi or any of the places affected.
HANNITY: Or playing golf or shooting hoops.
GIULIANI: He gives the sense that he’s very nonchalant and very lackadaisical about it, which I think are the words of Jim Carville, lackadaisical.
Now what that does is, that sends a whole signal right into the entire bureaucracy that they’re also very lackadaisical about it. But one of the things you understand as a leader is your actions are going to energize your bureaucracy to do the best it can or to kind of make it — they did the same thing on Christmas Day — Christmas Day bombing — stays on vacation for 11 days. So the other guys go on vacation.
The reality is that the administration has made every mistake it could make right down to this criminal investigation of BP.
HANNITY: All right.
GIULIANI: How can — why are you criminally investigating them until this is over? Are you going to distract them from the job of what they are supposed to be doing? And if they are being criminally investigated, then why are we allowing them to do it?
HANNITY: Listen —
GIULIANI: If you’ve got a bunch of criminals doing it, then why don’t we —
HANNITY: We knew at a minimum 5,000 gallons a day. We knew at a minimum it was going to be huge. We knew 5,000 feet in the ground this was going to be difficult to plug. So here’s the question: What should we have done?
GIULIANI: What we should have done is president of the United States should immediately taken control; should have gone there; should have been there a lot more than twice; should have been leading the charge from the front, not this “oh you know I’m not going to touch it.”
And BP — for the longest time Gibbs was saying BP was in charge. The president announced a week ago that he was actually in charge.
HANNITY: He’s in charges, but he’s not responsible.
GIULIANI: If he was in charge, he was in charge while he was on vacation. And the reality is, he should have brought in the best experts. And he should have set up a team of independent advisers; could be advising him directly. So he wouldn’t be just in the hands of BP.
HANNITY: Yes.
GIULIANI: And he wouldn’t put the entire responsibility just on them. And now if he’s telling us through his attorney general that they have real suspicions that BP committed crimes then why the heck have they allowed BP that they believe might have committed crimes to be doing this?
HANNITY: It’s a great point. What do you think — I was asking in the last segment the environmental question. We can’t use chemical dispersements. We can’t build barriers. They didn’t deliver the booms that they were supposed to deliver and it’s 44 days in. We couldn’t have a burn because that’s environmentally not safe.
So it seems that they left very little options. Now the Gulf Coast of Florida, the panhandle, is going to get hit with this oil. We expect —
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: Back in — I think it was May 23rd.
HANNITY: Yes.
GIULIANI: They asked for permission to be able to do their own —
HANNITY: Yes.
GIULIANI: — work in — and they can’t seem to make a decision about it.
HANNITY: Yes.
GIULIANI: So, I mean, the reality is, this has been handled — you know, it’s been handled like a political problem which is — which is what I think — it’s not handled like a real crisis.
HANNITY: Does he pay a political price at the end?
GIULIANI: Oh my gosh, yes.
HANNITY: Huge.
GIULIANI: Of course. I mean listen: This is Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, like Obama, not like him — you can’t possibly argue that this has been handled any way close to competently.
It was incompetently handed from day one and it gets worst. As I said before, to start criminal investigations right now on a company that you want to be focused just on doing that, they’re going to have to divert an enormous amount of attention to dealing with these criminal investigations which I think is all about scapegoating.
HANNITY: Mr. Mayor, good to see you. Thank you. Appreciate you being with us.
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