That was no lady - that was my husband [ANN COULTER responds to Elizabeth Edwards]

The Edwards campaign is apparently still running low on donations, so this week they went back to their top fundraiser: me.

I doubled the ratings of the lowest-rated cable news show on Tuesday by agreeing to go on for a full hour to promote my new paperback version of "Godless" – a mistake I won't make again. As I was walking to the set, minutes before airtime, it was casually mentioned to me that Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, might call in.

For the first time in recorded history, the show's host did not interrupt a guest, but let Elizabeth Edwards ramble on and on, allowing her to browbeat me for being mean to her husband.

Say, did any TV host ever surprise Al Franken, Bill Maher or Arianna Huffington with a call by the wife of someone they've made nasty remarks about? How about a call to John Edwards from the wife of a doctor he bankrupted with his junk-science lawsuits?

I think I may have tuned out at some point, so I can only speak to the first 45 minutes of Elizabeth Edwards' harangue, but it mostly consisted of utterly dishonest renditions of things I had said on my "Good Morning America" interview this week and a column I wrote four years ago. (You can't rush Edwards' "rapid response team"!) She claimed I had launched unprovoked attacks on the Edwards' dead son and called for a terrorist attack on her husband.

These are bald-faced lies, and the mainstream media know they are lies. Yet they were repeated ad nauseam on Wednesday by the Associated Press, the AOL pop-up window, CNN, NBC and – stunningly – the host of the lowest-rated cable show himself, who personally told me he knew the truth.

So for those of you who haven't read any of my five best-selling books: Liberals are driven by Satan and lie constantly.

Here is my full sentence on "Good Morning America," which the media deceptively truncated, referring to a joke I told about Edwards six months ago that made liberals cry: "But about the same time, you know, Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack – so I've learned my lesson: If I'm going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

The usual nut websites posted a zillion denunciations of my appearance on "Good Morning America" immediately after I appeared Monday morning. But it didn't occur to any of them simply to lie about what I had said. No, it took them nearly 36 hours to concoct a version of that quote that included the Edwards part, but not the Maher part, or what English language speakers call: "the point."

By tomorrow it will be: "Ann Coulter tried to kill John Edwards on 'Good Morning America'!"

Judging by his fundraising efforts so far, I gather most of you don't know who John Edwards is – unless you're an overpriced hair dresser. He's the trial lawyer who pretended in court to channel the spirit of a handicapped fetus in front of illiterate jurors to scam tens of millions of dollars off of innocent doctors. According to The New York Times, Edwards told one jury: "She speaks to you through me. ... And I have to tell you right now – I didn't plan to talk about this – right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you."

"(Kerry) was even queasier about Edwards after they met. Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else – that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before – and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again."

Apparently every time Edwards began a story about his dead son with "I've never told anyone this before," everyone on the campaign could lip-sync the story with him.

As a commentator, I bring facts like these to the attention of the American people in a lively way. Thus, for example, in a column about the Democratic candidates for president written in 2003, I pointed out that the Democrats refused to discuss the economy or the war, but had recently "discovered a surprise campaign issue: It turns out that several of them have had a death in the family."

Among several examples of Democrats talking about a death in the family on the campaign trail was this one:

John Edwards injects his son's fatal car accident into his campaign by demanding that everyone notice how he refuses to inject his son's fatal car accident into his campaign.

Edwards has talked about his son's death in a 1996 car accident on "Good Morning America," in dozens of profiles and in his new book. ("It was and is the most important fact of my life.") His 1998 Senate campaign ads featured film footage of Edwards at a learning lab he founded in honor of his son, titled "The Wade Edwards Learning Lab." He wears his son's Outward Bound pin on his suit lapel. He was going to wear it on his sleeve, until someone suggested that might be a little too "on the nose."

If you want points for not using your son's death politically, don't you have to take down all those "Ask me about my son's death in a horrific car accident" bumper stickers? Edwards is like a politician who keeps announcing that he will not use his opponent's criminal record for partisan political advantage.

Manifestly, I was not making fun of their son's death; I was making fun of John Edwards' incredibly creepy habit of invoking his son's tragic death to advance his political career – a practice so repellant, it even made John Kerry queasy.

I'm a little tired of losers trying to raise campaign cash or TV ratings off of my coattails, particularly when they use their afflictions or bereavement schedules to try to silence the opposition. From now on, I'm attacking only serious presidential candidates, like Dennis Kucinich.

Vice President Coulter was great on O’Reilly last night, too...I am just in awe of her brilliance.
From another thread: They're claiming Coulter knew it was going to happen.
Sort of.

Ann apparently only found out about it a few minutes before the show began.

See also, from www.foxnews.com

-- snip --
O'REILLY: Continuing now with Ann Coulter. A brand-new FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll says is favored by just 10 percent of Democratic voters. That is not good. So Edwards needs attention, and he needs money in order to jumpstart his campaign. Maybe that's why Elizabeth Edwards called a television program to confront Ms. Coulter the other day.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "HARDBALL")
ELIZABETH EDWARDS, WIFE OF JOHN EDWARDS: The things that she has said over the years, not just about John, but about other candidates, it lowers our political dialogue precisely at the time we need to raise it. So I wanted to use the opportunity, which I don't get much because Ann and I don't hang out with the same people, to ask her politely to stop the personal attacks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: OK. Now after that interview, and nobody knows this, we called Elizabeth Edwards and we said, you know, we're really interested in this personal attack stuff because we have a problem with that on the left. Would you come on, either sit on a set or on a phone? No.
Now I am saying to myself, wait a minute, you call into a program that no one watches, all right. And you have a point, right? No one watches. Because nobody sees this.
COULTER: That is accurate.
O'REILLY: I'm giving you a forum where 10 million people on radio and TV are going to see it and you say, “No.”
(LAUGHTER)
O'REILLY: Then I'm saying, maybe there's something else here. And I think they used you. I think the Edwards, John and Elizabeth, used you to get attention to him. Because what he is doing this morning? You saw him.
COULTER: Well, they're all over the networks, including , lying about what I said.
O'REILLY: But it doesn't even — look, we expect that kind of thing when you are involved. But what's John Edwards doing this morning? He's screaming about, they're giving me money.
COULTER: I think he is taking orders from Elizabeth.
O'REILLY: I think Elizabeth is smarter than he is.
COULTER: I am not sure this is a brilliant fundraising ploy.
O'REILLY: They have gotten a lot of money.
COULTER: Not as much as I have off of his attacks on me. And I mean, as is evident even today, they're going to be a lot more Americans who like Ann Coulter than hate Ann Coulter. Good luck with your fundraising, John.
O'REILLY: All right. So you don't think that you were taken here? You don't think they set you up on the show?
COULTER: Well, I don't know what you mean, set up. I don't think there's any possible way.
O'REILLY: Well, I mean, they said, look, we got Coulter on the show.
COULTER: Oh yes, they called her in advance.
O'REILLY: Right. They called in advance. We're going to do this because we're getting a little — look, it's just like me and , Franken, that idiot. I played right into his hands when he had his book out. You know, they want to get in a fight with you.
COULTER: If I could just say, I sort of object to your description of this as if I lost a fight. I don't think they would have done it to anyone else. I don't think they would have called in on…
O'REILLY: Were you surprised that she called in?
COULTER: …your pal Al. If were on, they wouldn't have had the wife of someone he had made a nasty joke about call in. But still I am more of a man than any liberal is. So you know, I don't care.
(LAUGHTER)
O'REILLY: But did they tell you she was going to call in?

COULTER: As I was walking to sit down, right before, “She might call in.”
O'REILLY: All right. So they gave you a little big of a head's up.
COULTER: No, I think what was — I think that isn't so bad. What was a little weird was how she was allowed to talk uninterrupted for 45 minutes browbeating me. I felt like I was in kindergarten.
O'REILLY: Well, you got your shots in.
COULTER: Oh, no, no, no. Every time I thought it was my turn to respond, I get interrupted. "No, no, no, Elizabeth Edwards is still talking..."

And from the self-described "chick with a gun, and a mike" --TAMMY BRUCE -- at tammybruce.com:

Ann Coulter Answers the Edwards Slime
During the past few days it's amazing how the Edwards' suddenly decided to go after Ann Coulter. One has to ask, Why? Considering Ann isn't running for president, why are Edwardses so obsessed with her. The answer, of course, is money. Once an ambulance chaser, always an ambulance chaser.
Here's the deal: the 2nd quarter fund-raiser date is here. This is the point where candidates have to reveal how much money they've raised. This announcement can make or break a campaign. As a matter of fact, days before the Edwards attack on Ann, it was revealed that Edwards' fundraising for the 2nd quarter has plunged. Other people will draw conclusions, good or bad, on therelevancy of your campaign based on the money you have. Complaining about Coulter has been Edwards best fundraising vehicle, so they needed her again.
As a matter of fact, the night Elizabeth Edwards called into Hardball to sandbag Ann, the Edwards campaign dropped a fundraising email about the confrontation. It included a note from Elizabeth urging donations.
And they accuse Ann of 'lowering the debate' and cynicism. The Edwards, IMHO, are the sleaziest people in this campaign. Sleazier than even Hillary. We don't like Hillary's ideas, but at least she has some. Edwards is a homophobe who is now apparently using his cancer-striken wife with the hope that people will be less inclined to question her motives or confront her. Remember, cancer doesn't elevate or transform the moral foundation of a person, especially when they're as opportunist as the Edwardses.
Here's Ann's answer to the absurdity:
THAT WAS NO LADY — THAT WAS MY HUSBAND

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