Transcript of Michael Schiavo interview on MSNBC (Countdown with Keith Olbermann), Feb 2, 2005
Keith Olbermann drooled over Schiavo during his interview.
Schiavo Interview
Tonight, our third story on the COUNTDOWN, Michael Schiavo‘s first television interview since his wife died. If you were with us last night, in a preview you heard him announce he‘s launched a political action committee, Terri‘s PAC, named in her memory to try to keep another family from having to answer those kinds of questions. Our exclusive interview in a moment.
OLBERMANN: On the day Terri Schiavo died, Mr. DeLay said the time will come when the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior. He may have been far more correct about that than he could have imagined.
In his first TV interview in more than a year, Michael Schiavo told me that he had invited all the politicians to come to the hospice to hear his story, to meet his wife, to judge her condition for themselves. But Governor Bush was once just 20 minutes away but none accepted the invitation. Now comes Terri‘s PAC dedicated in part to defeating the politicians who decided the Schiavo‘s lives were their business.
OLBERMANN: Michael, the people who opposed your position on this clearly politicized Terri‘s life and death, do they not now have an opportunity to come back and say, aha, now Michael Schiavo is also politicizing her life and her death?
MICHAEL SCHIAVO, CHAIRMAN, TERRIPAC.ORG: I don‘t think I‘m really out there to politicize. I‘m not out there to do that but to hold these people accountable. These people should not have done what they had done. Any American. You look at the polls. Eighty seven percent of the people disagreed with what these politicians did. They walked into somebody‘s personal lives and took over. And then, then you have Tom DeLay making the same decision for his father. I‘m not understanding that point. Two weeks prior to Terri dying or the feeding tube even being removed, they never even knew who Terri Schiavo was.
OLBERMANN: What about the president? President George Bush?
SCHIAVO: I think I was most stunned with him. I have never in my entire life have ever seen a president slide back from his vacation to sign a bill. He gets up at 1:10 in the morning to sign a bill. OK. That‘s just unbelievable.
I mean, the amount, the millions and millions of dollars it took to do this. It just blew my mind. And it was basically because his brother called him up and said hey, can do you this? I‘m sure that happened. But that just blew my mind.
OLBERMANN: Some of the other figures who were key to this, Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania senator. A thought about him?
SCHIAVO: The man is clueless. He came down here on one of his campaign trips, stopped by the hospice and pulled up in his limousine and got out and walked the path like Jesse Jackson and the rest of them. Standing in front of this crowd of people talking stuff he had no clue about.
OLBERMANN: Do you think that some of the politicians were sincere but mistaken as opposed to merely trying to make an opportunity for themselves out of this or make an opportunity for a certain aspect of the political spectrum? Was anybody in this who was just sincerely mistaken?
SCHIAVO: I don‘t think anybody was sincerely mistaken. I think Bill Frist, if you look at him now, he is trying to backtrack and use the Terri Schiavo case to win more votes because he knows he was wrong. He should have never opened his mouth. He diagnosed-He‘s a doctor. He diagnosed a patient from watching an hour‘s worth of tape. But then he says he didn‘t do that. That‘s not true. Look at Tom DeLay. He used Terri to hide behind his own problems. He used Terri as a front.
OLBERMANN: To mention Senator Frist, he was on “Meet the Press” last Sunday. Let me read the quote. “I‘ll tell you what I learned from it, which is obvious,” meaning the entire experience of interjecting himself and the American political system into your wife‘s life. “I‘ll tell you what I learned from it, which is obvious, is that the American people don‘t want you involved in these decisions,” using that term you, he‘s referring to himself and the other politicians. When you heard that statement was that vindicating to you? Was it startling to you? Do you think that‘s the best you‘ll get from these politicians?
SCHIAVO: I think it‘s the best we‘ll get from them. They know they were wrong and wrong from the beginning. They should have stepped aside and should not have gotten involved in the first place.
OLBERMANN: Let me wrap it up with a couple personal things. You are married again.
SCHIAVO: Yes, I am.
OLBERMANN: Congratulations.
SCHIAVO: Thank you very much, Keith.
OLBERMANN: How did you preserve that event without it being a tabloid affair? Without it being helicopters overhead with cameras?
SCHIAVO: It was hard but we did it. I guess when we went down to apply for our marriage license the day before, that‘s when it started hitting the news wire. But we were pretty good at that. We kept it quiet. In our invitations, they all know, friends, family, loved ones, supporters, they all knew. They were there to support us. They came and we had a wonderful wedding. It was beautiful. My children were in it.
OLBERMANN: And you even got a honeymoon?
SCHIAVO: Yeah, about 10 of us, we all went to Vegas.
OLBERMANN: Did you have to use an assumed name or is life not that
SCHIAVO: Everything we did for the wedding was under a different name.
OLBERMANN: And I guess that‘s a legacy that unfortunately, that is going to be with one way or another the rest of your life.
SCHIAVO: Yes, it will be. You know something? Terri was a beautiful woman. And she‘ll always be with me. [Michael sheds his fake crocodile tears at this point]
OLBERMANN: Michael Schiavo, our great thanks for your time today, sir.
SCHIAVO: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OLBERMANN: Michael added that until last year he was a Republican. Apart from Terri‘s PAC, Michael Schiavo has another project coming to fruition, his book, “Terri, the Truth,” will be released March 27.
