NBC’s slogan for the Today show is "what a difference Today makes." FNC on Monday illustrated how for the cable network it’s "what a difference the network makes." Conservative-basher David Brock, author of Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, was interviewed early Monday afternoon on the Fox News Channel by Fox News Live anchor David Asman. But it was quite a different experience for Brock than the adoring treatment he received last week on NBC’s Today from Matt Lauer and on CNN from Aaron Brown.
Asman actually challenged Brock’s broad accusations and took on some of the specific allegations in the book, demonstrating they are inaccurate.
Asman got Brock to concede he really never was a committed conservative, just one of convenience, suggested that maybe conservatives had "values" beyond just that Clinton "got under their skin" which caused them to criticize him, pressed Brock to say whether he believed the charges leveled by Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey and wondered: "Do you think we’ve all misunderstood, David, and that Bill Clinton is a moralist?" Brock maintained that "there’s a question about where you weigh what Clinton did against versus what the right-wing did to destroy him and what was a greater threat to the country and I think it was what the right-wing did and not what Clinton did."
Raising Brock’s claims that former FBI agent Gary Aldrich misused a baseless allegation Brock had passed along to him, Asman asked: "We’re supposed to believe you, a person who has admitted that you’ve lied in print as opposed to an FBI agent who was assigned to two different administrations?" Asman, who was with the Wall Street Journal editorial page before jumping to FNC, showed how Brock was inaccurate in his claim about how the Journal had identified Aldrich.
Last Wednesday morning on NBC’s Today, in contrast, Matt Lauer did not once question any Brock’s claims as he prompted him to elucidate on how wealthy conservatives who directed the anti-Clinton conspiracy allowed him to smear people. Lauer even cued up Brock to endorse Hillary Clinton’s insight into the "vast right-wing conspiracy." Setting up the segment, Lauer enthused:
"His specialty was character assassination and throughout the 1990s he made a living as a right-wing hatchet man. But after years of lies and, some would say, malicious journalism, this Washington insider wants to clear his conscience. In his new book, Blinded by the Right, best-selling author and ex-conservative David Brock, exposes how he says the GOP tried to destroy the Clinton presidency through a series of well-plotted smear campaigns."
For a complete rundown of the March 13 interview, refer back to the March 14 CyberAlert:
http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020314.asp#1
Last Thursday night on CNN’s NewsNight, anchor Aaron Brown assumed David Brock’s charges were beyond dispute. Brown set up the segment: "He helped trash Anita Hill, went looking for the illegitimate children of Bill Clinton, took money from conservative patrons, and made things up if it made Mr. Clinton look bad. And then he says he saw the light, the errors of his ways." Baffled by why conservatives would so distrust Clinton, Brown wondered: "What is it about Clinton? I've asked this question on this program about five different times to five different people." After not challenging anything Brock charged as he outlined his claims about a conservative conspiracy against Clinton fueled by anger at Clinton’s anti-segregation policies, Brown inquired: "Are you ashamed of that period of your life?"
More on the Brown interview below, following the rundown of the FNC interview.
FNC’s Asman set up the March 18 segment aired live at about 12:45pm EST, as taken down by the MRC’s Brad Wilmouth: "We’re going to take you back, the book, The Real Anita Hill, that was a book that slashed the woman who brought discussions of pubic hair and porno films into Senate hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The book was used by members of the conservative movement to defend the first black conservative appointed to the Supreme Court. Well, the author of that book has since taken on the conservative movement itself and his own earlier work, both of which he now claims were blinded by arrogance and ideology."
After Brock explained he had become a conservative in college, what he dubbed his "knee-jerk overreaction" to politically correct criticism of an editorial he wrote in favor of Reagan’s liberation of Grenada, Asman observed: "So your conservative beliefs were just based on a reaction to the left, not on solid beliefs about conservatives?"
Brock conceded and charged: "Originally, yes, and one of the things I write about in the book is that my philosophical commitment to conservatism was never really that deep, and I don’t think I’m actually unusual in that. I think in my age cohort among the conservatives I knew in Washington, it was pretty much the same way. It was a marketing device, it was shtick."
Asman: "Marketing device? Well, again, I don’t quite follow you. Marketing device was just to emphasize the outrageousness of the left in order to get more people joining your cause?"
Brock: "Well, I mean, I think as you know, ‘anti-Clintonism’ became a very lucrative device in the 1990s for conservatives, and so I think that was part of what was impelling it...."
Asman: "Well, why do you think they were so obsessed by this guy?"
Brock: "Well, I think a combination of things. I think one is the better that Clinton did, the more desperate conservatives became. They were lacking issues because Clinton took some good issues away from the Republicans, they turned to scandal-"
Asman: "Some people would say he co-opted some good issues by Republicans, but anyway-"
Brock: "Absolutely."
Asman: "But let me just, David, again, just the attitude that Clinton did nothing other than to get under their skin, I still don’t understand what it was about his activity that got under their skin so much?"
Brock: "Well, as I said, I think it wasn’t his activity. I think that was what the Clintons symbolized, the liberal social values that they symbolized, the perception that Clinton played things close to the line, I think, irritated people. And finally, I think a lot of the Clinton hatred was actually a projection, that people saw their own flaws in the Clintons and projected them on."
Asman pointed out: "So they did have values, these conservatives that were criticizing Clinton, that they reacted against? You can’t react against something if you don’t have anything of your own."
Asman soon pressed: "Do you believe the things, do you believe, for example, people like Juanita Broaddrick, like Paula Jones, like Kathleen Willey, all these people that say that Clinton attacked them?"
Brock insisted: "In the Paula Jones case, I tell a story in the book where her own lead lawyer told me, and he certainly would know more about the case than I would, that he didn’t believe her. I looked into the Juanita Broaddrick case myself, and I tell the story here again that the Republicans behind that case, they didn’t believe it, either."
Asman suggested: "But, you know, you get a woman like Juanita Broaddrick, who we’re looking at right now, who gives a very plausible case that she was frightened to come forward first. In fact, she contradicted herself. At first, she said President Clinton didn’t go after her. Then she said he did. Don’t you think she was intimidated by the fact this guy was President?"
Brock: "She may have been, but, I mean, there’s another side of it as well which is that there were Republican operatives in Arkansas trying to put that story out back in 1992 and they didn’t believe it-"
Asman wondered: "So do you think, do you think we’ve all misunderstood, David, and that Bill Clinton is a moralist?"
Brock flipped back to disparage conservatives as more dangerous than Bill Clinton ever was: "No, I don’t. I just think that there’s a question about where you weigh what Clinton did against versus what the right-wing did to destroy him and what was a greater threat to the country and I think it was what the right- wing did and not what Clinton did."
Following an ad break, Asman picked up: "David, the key here, everybody has different opinions about things. You do, about a lot of social and political things. But was there any lying that took place either in the work that you did or in the work that you participated in with the American Spectator and the other journals you were working for?"
Brock replied only that "I lied in print" in an American Spectator book review of a book on the Hill-Thomas matter, but that in articles he did not write there were "reams of lies in the American Spectator."
Asman then decided to assess Brock’s accuracy by raising Brock’s claims about an FBI agent who wrote a book about what he saw inside the Clinton White House: "Well, the reason, of course, why all this is important is because you are bringing, even in this book, this newest book that you just came out with, you mentioned people like Gary Aldrich, for example, somebody who I happen to know because I used to work at the Journal and published him, was involved in publishing his articles. You mention some things about him that you claim are duplicitous at best and outright lies at worst. Are you calling him a liar?"
Brock: "Well, I think he himself even conceded that the things in his book were not solid or credible, so-"
Asman: "Well, no, that’s not true."
Brock: "I mean, you can use whatever you word you want for it."
Asman: "Yeah, I gotta argue with you because I just talked to him on Friday. He hadn’t seen this book. And I read certain passages to him. He claimed that a lot of the stuff that you write about him and about even your introduction to him was a fabrication, that, in fact, you say that you called, you say that he called you. In fact, he says he called you originally to get information from you about Bill Clinton. Is that true?"
Brock: "No, I was put in touch with him by a friend of his on Capitol Hill when I was doing research for my book on Hillary Clinton and undertook to interview him, which is what I thought he was doing, and then he took some fourth hand information that I gave him and published it as if it were true, and, as you said, it was excerpted on the pages of the Wall Street Journal, which continued to defend him even after it was acknowledged that this wasn’t a credible story."
Asman: "Well, the story he claims was made more credible by insiders that he talked to in the White House, but it all boils down to this, David: We’re supposed to believe you, a person who has admitted that you’ve lied in print as opposed to an FBI agent who was assigned to two different administrations -- one Republican, one Democratic."
Asman got to a specific allegation: "Well, let me just point out one thing in your book that I take issue with. You talk about Gary Aldrich and say that when his article was published in the Wall Street Journal, and again, I had a hand in this, that Aldrich was identified only as, quote, ‘an investigative writer.’ Do you stand by that?"
Brock, anticipating what was coming: "As far as I know, yeah."
Asman: "Well, you’re wrong. And we’ll put up the quote that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It described Mr. Aldrich as an ‘investigative writer, comma, retired from the FBI in June of 1995.’ Are you willing to admit now that that was a mistake?"
Brock grudgingly admitted: "Well, the word ‘only’ is a mistake, yeah. But the point is that he wasn’t an investigative writer."
Asman: "The word ‘retired from the FBI in June 1995,’ your point in the book was the Wall Street Journal wasn’t interested in pointing out his connection with the FBI. We did, in fact, point out his connection with the FBI."
Brock: "No, that wasn’t my point. That wasn’t my point. My point was you were falsely portraying him as an investigative writer."
Asman: "He was a retired FBI agent. He was writing a book at the time."
Brock: "He was not an investigative writer."
Asman: "He was writing a book at the time, and he was a retired FBI agent. That was an apt description. My point again, David, is we’re forced to note little disparages from the truth that appear even in your most recent book."
Brock: "Look, his whole book was discredited even by his own later statements."
Asman concluded: "All right. Once again, this controversy could go on a long time. But, David Brock, we thank you very much for joining us."
Compare Asman’s suspicious approach to Brock with how CNN’s Aaron Brown bought Brock’s premise and employed him to try to teach Brown why conservatives so hated Bill Clinton that they would lie about him.
Brown introduced the March 14 NewsNight segment with Brock, which came just after a story on the defeat of the Charles Pickering judicial nomination:
"This sort of partisan battle is nothing new to David Brock. As one of the country's best known young conservative writers, he helped fuel them for a while. He helped trash Anita Hill, went looking for the illegitimate children of Bill Clinton, took money from conservative patrons, and made things up if it made Mr. Clinton look bad. And then he says he saw the light, the errors of his ways. He says he's written a book called Blinded by the Right.
Brown’s first question to Brock, who was in-studio with Brown: "Help me understand something. When you were writing the conservative, in that phase your life, when you were writing that stuff, when you were chasing after the Clinton stuff and all of that, were you a believer? Or were you just doing it for the dough?"
Brock: "It started out as belief. I think at a certain point, particularly in the Clinton era, it became a really lucrative marketing device. And my heart really wasn't in, you know, attacking or hating Bill Clinton in the way that a lot of other conservatives did."
Brown: "Yeah, but they were writing you big checks and saying go get him?"
Brock: "Yeah, basically. And as I said, you know, I came to Washington. I was a young, ideological true believer. But over time, you know, it became an issue of careerism to a certain extent."
Brown wondered: "Is there something inherently wrong, somebody who has strong conservative beliefs and a fair amount of money in his pocket, to hand you some of the money and say, ‘Go see what you could find?’ Is that what they were saying or were they saying go ‘find this’?"
Brock: "Well, I think what was wrong with it was they didn't care whether what was found was true or not. And yet, they still pumped it up and they put it on talk radio all over the country. And there was sort of a sort of an echo chamber in the right wing that even extended to The Wall Street Journal editorial page and other places. And these stories were false. They were fabrications. And I think that was wrong."
Instead of demanding a specific, Brown moved on: "Do you feel distrusted now by both the left and the right?"
Brown soon got to his favorite topic, trying to figure out why people don’t like Bill Clinton: "But are there not, particularly when you deal with former President Clinton, there are blinders out there. People have such incredibly strong feelings on both sides, in fact, that I wonder if anyone will give you an objective view in that regard, anyone on the political right, in this case?"
Brock answered with his conspiracy theory: "Well, I don't know. I mean, I just hope people outside of the organized political movement would. Because there's conspiracy here that's pretty well documented. And you've seen it in the book. It starts back in 1993 when I did the Troopergate article. And the people behind that were talking about impeaching Bill Clinton. This is 1993, you know, five years before the name Monica Lewinsky surfaced."
Brown didn’t challenge any of it, and remained flummoxed: "What is it about Clinton? I've asked this question on this program about five different times to five different people."
Brock alleged Clinton’s enemies were motivated by his civil rights views: "I think it's complex. I think one is the better he was, the more desperate and crazy the right became. And so when he triangulated and took some of their issues away, he left them nothing but scandal. Two, I think there's sort of a generational issue, where the Clintons were represented, certain social values that the right disagrees with. And so, the Clintons were larger than themselves. And so, when you get to that level, you know, there's no truth or falsity. It's all symbolism. And I think that was part of it. Part was in Arkansas, the people I've dealt, the Clinton haters in Arkansas. Goes back to segregation. And it goes back to Bill Clinton's progressive views on race."
Brown assumed Brock’s current claims are accurate as he wound down the interview: "Let me ask you a final question. Are you ashamed of that period of your life?"
Brock: "Yeah. I have a lot of regrets about it, sure."
Brown empathized: "Yeah. It's difficult, isn't it?"
Brock: "It's been hard."
Brown: "How old are you now?"
Brock: "I'm 39. And so, I, you know, I wasted a good dozen years of my life."
Brown sympathized some more: "It's nice to meet you. I assume this wasn't easy to do? All of this wasn't easy to do?"
