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Edwards' Wife Asks Coulter to Stop Attacks

Elizabeth Edwards pleaded Tuesday with Ann Coulter to "stop the personal attacks," a day after the conservative commentator said she wished Edwards' husband, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, had been killed by terrorists.

"The things she has said over the years, not just about John but about other candidates, lowers the political dialogue at precisely the time we need to raise it," Edwards said by phone on MSNBC's "Hardball" program, where Coulter was a guest.

Elizabeth Edwards said she did not consult her husband before confronting Coulter on the air, adding that she felt the pundit's remarks were "a dialogue on hatefulness and ugliness."

  "It debases political dialogue," Edwards said. "It drives people away from the process. We can't have a debate about issues if you're using this kind of language."

Coulter responded with a laugh and charged that Edwards was calling on her to stop speaking altogether. She questioned why Elizabeth Edwards was making a phone call on behalf of her husband, and she criticized John Edwards for "stealing doctors' money" during his successful career as a trial lawyer.

"I don't think I need to be told to stop writing by Elizabeth Edwards, thank you," Coulter said.

On ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday, Coulter was asked about a March speech in which she used a gay slur to refer to Edwards.

"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," Coulter said Monday, picking up on remarks made by HBO's Bill Maher. Maher suggested in March that "people wouldn't be dying needlessly" if Vice President Dick Cheney had been killed in an insurgent attack in Afghanistan

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"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," Coulter said Monday, picking up on remarks made by HBO's Bill Maher. Maher suggested in March that "people wouldn't be dying needlessly" if Vice President private Cheney had been killed in an insurgent attack in Afghanistan

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Furious Ann Coulter Strikes Back

An obviously angry Ann Coulter this morning ripped into critics who deliberately distorted her comments about former senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards.

After a relentless 24-hour firestorm during which much of the mainstream media used selective quotes to mangle the meaning of several of Ann’s comments about Edwards, Coulter set the record straight while talking with Joe Scarborough host of MSNBC’s "Morning Joe” program.

Coulter told Scarborough: "I’ve never seen people avoid ideas so much in such an obvious way and try to alert Americans not to read anything, not to listen to something someone said — not because of what someone is saying, but to try to portray her as a Nazi. This happens every time I put a book out and I’m getting a little bored with it . . .”


She further explained that she never wished John Edwards would die. She simply said on "Good Morning America" on June 25 that Bill Maher had wished the death of Vice President Cheney by terrorist attack and got away with it, so perhaps if she wanted to avoid criticism in the future while mentioning Edwards, she should say the same thing.

"Oh yeah, I wouldn’t insult gays by comparing them to John Edwards,” Coulter said on "Good Morning America." "That would be mean. 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 controversy over Coulter's comments heated up when she appeared on Chris Matthews’ "Hardball” show the next day, and was blindsided by a phone call from Edward’s wife Elizabeth. Apparently, the call was pre-arranged by Matthews without Coulter’s knowledge.

Edwards’ wife told Matthews that she was very offended by Coulter’s interview on "Good Morning America" because Coulter said Edwards’ husband John should be killed by a terrorist attack.

Scarborough asked Coulter on his program, "Why would you say such an awful, awful thing about John Edwards?”

Coulter replied, "That is how it is being reported by the Associated Press, apparently all over NBC, except on your show . . . because liberals lie. I’ve written lots of books about it and this happens to be a good example of it.”

Explaining that the terrorist attack comment was in reference to a comment by Bill Maher about wishing Dick Cheney had been killed by terrorists Coulter said, "I described the entire Bill Maher scenario in one sentence. The 'Good Morning America' audience, which is pretty large and pretty broad, [got] the joke, and no one figured out a way to truncate that sentence until 36 hours later.

"It’s not like the liberal blogs weren’t, as they always do, watching my appearance and instantly posting, from the moment I walked off 'Good Morning America,' all of their indignation, which apparently centered on my comparing George Bush to FDR because he is great on foreign policy, lousy on domestic policy.

"Nobody even thought of how to lie about what I said for 36 hours, so don’t tell me I was giving them ammunition.”
About her comment regarding John Edwards and the word "f*g**t,” Coulter told Joe, "If you want to go back to CPAC, I was speaking to a group of 7,000 college Republicans and, no, I will not be rearranging my words so the stupidest person in the liberal blogosphere understands what I’m saying.”


Following that "Good Morning America" appearance the Washington Post’s "Reliable Source” gossip column by Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger, omitted the full context of Coulter’s complaint that Bill Maher can get away with saying Dick Cheney should be killed by terrorists.

Wrote the Post, "The conservative shock-pundit, who sniped on ‘Good Morning America’ Monday that she hoped the Democratic candidate would be ‘killed in a terrorist assassination plot,’ was a guest on MSNBC's ‘Hardball’ Tuesday night, prompting a live call-in by Elizabeth, who demanded that Coulter ‘stop the personal attacks.’" According to NewsBusters.


After noting that "If you are going to hate Ann Coulter, hate her for the right reasons,” Scarborough ran the "Good Morning America" clip that started the firestorm. "Some of these wire reports and some of these news shows are deliberately taking this quote out of context,” he said.


Replied Coulter "Yeah, I don’t even know why, or how I have the capacity to be surprised anymore. You can take someone’s words and chop them up and put them together to say ‘Heil Hitler.’ [This is] the media — the mass mainstream media. This isn’t just a few nuts. This isn’t just John Edwards campaign. This is AP, The Hill and TV . . . I can count the exceptions more quickly than I can count the ones telling the truth.”


Scarborough pointed out that, "You are talking about the Bill Maher incident . . . The part of the Elizabeth Edwards interview that jarred the most people, and jarred me . . . Was the part where she brought up that you had written some column where you had made light of John Edwards’ dead son. What’s the story behind that?”


Coulter explained "Needless to say, that is not true, and coming from people who have done what we have just seen them do in the earlier segment, I don’t think they deserve a lot of credibility on this. You can look it up, it’s all over the Web. It’s a fabulous column entitled ‘The Party of Ideas’ written in 2003. I had to go back to get the full gist of the column. It was about all of the Democratic primary opponents.

"And, by the way, listing a quote out of context from a short five minute TV interview is a little quicker to correct than an entire column written four years ago. There is a point to a column . . . Let’s see, I’m the only person in America that has to go back and constantly explain an entire column when it is lied about like this and describe why I chose this adverb, rather than that adverb, and was this a joke, was that a joke . . .


"I am getting a little fed up with being described as the aggressor in these matters . . . it was about the Democratic presidential nominees back then — Gephart, Dean, this guy, the trial lawyer [Edwards] — and how they were not talking about the war, they were not talking about the economy . . .

"They were talking about either they were running for president because they had a dead relative — Vote for me! — or had suddenly discovered a Jewish heritage. In the various dead relative category, that included of course one who wasn’t running but was the one who started it all, Al Gore in two speeches at the Democratic National Convention.

"Once it was his sister, once it was the near fatal accident of his son, so that it got to the point that all of his family members had to start fearing more runs for higher office. You had Dean’s brother, you had Gephart’s sister or the close death of a child, and then I went through the trial lawyer, a fact that is now memorialized in Bob Shrum’s book who describes John Edwards . . . John Kerry felt queasy about him and almost didn’t put Edwards on the ticket because Edwards kept telling him this tear-jerking story about [how he dedicated his public life to his son]."


Coulter said, "I’m a little sick of being browbeaten by a bunch of harridans about why I chose this word or about why I told that joke . . . and then people turn around and say "you’re so mean, you’re so mean.”

Political analyst Craig Crawford thinks that the Edwards’ attacks on Coulter are part of the Democrats’ efforts to fight back against conservative domination of the talk radio airwaves. He writes on CQPolitics.com that there is a concerted effort by the left to fight back "on several fronts — from challenging their foes on air to endorsing the revival of the Fairness Doctrine, the abandoned federal regulation that once obligated broadcasters to balance the political opinion they air. Behind the scenes, prominent Democratic lawmakers are exploring the idea of more regulation.”

As Rush Limbaugh said on his Web site, "Ann Coulter was clearly ambushed” by the Edwards phone call. And if Craig Crawford is correct, we can expect to see more of the same in the future.

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That Was No Lady -- That Was My Husband
by Ann Coulter  (More by this author)


  
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 knows 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 Web sites 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 to simply 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."

Let me also quote from campaign consultant Bob Shrum's book "No Excuses":

"(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.

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Boy, I'll tell ya...this broad don't back down from nothing!

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The 'Bumper Sticker' That Blows Up
by Ann Coulter

Posted: 07/18/2007

For six years, the Bush administration has kept America safe from another terrorist attack, allowing the Democrats to claim that the war on terrorism is a fraud, a "bumper sticker," a sneaky ploy by a power-mad president to create an apocryphal enemy so he could spy on innocent librarians in Wisconsin. And that's the view of the moderate Democrats. The rest of them think Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks.

But now with the U.S. government -- as well as the British and German governments -- warning of major terrorist attacks this summer, the Treason Lobby is facing the possibility that the "bumper sticker" could blow up in their faces.

The Democrats' entire national security calculus is based on the premise that "we have no important enemies," as stated by former senator Mike Gravel. He's one of the Democratic presidential candidates who doesn't know he's supposed to lie when speaking to the American people.

Ironically, the Democrats' ability to sneer at President Bush hinges on Bush's successful prosecution of the war on terrorism, despite the Democrats. It's going to be harder to persuade Americans that the "war on terrorism" is George Bush's imaginary enemy -- the Reichstag fire, to quote our first openly Muslim congressman Keith Ellison -- if there is another terrorist attack.

So naturally, they are blaming any future terrorist attacks on the war in Iraq.

The Democrats blame everything on Iraq, but their insane argument that we are merely annoying the enemy by fighting back has been neurotically repeated since the failed terrorist bombing in London a few weeks ago. The venue of the terrorists' latest attempt, a hot London nightclub, might even shake up the young progressive crowd. Apparently their soirees are not off-limits, notwithstanding their dutiful anti-imperialism.

In anticipation of their surrender strategy becoming substantially less popular in the wake of another terrorist attack, the Democrats are all claiming that the threat of terrorism was nonexistent -- notwithstanding 9/11, the Cole bombing, the bombing of our embassies, the bombing of the World Trade Center, the Achille Lauro, etc. etc. -- until George Bush invaded Iraq.

In the past week, B. Hussein Obama said the war in Iraq has made us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Americans are "more at risk," he said, "and less safe than we should have been at this point." We would be safer with "better polices" -- such as, presumably, Bill Clinton's policy of pretending Islamic terrorists don't exist and leaving the problem for the next president.

Hillary Clinton said we need to start "reversing our priorities. Let's stop sending troops to Iraq and let's start insuring every single child." Yes, that should put a good healthy scare into the insurgents. "Run for your life, Ahmed! All American children are getting regular checkups!"

Sen. Chris Dodd miraculously straddled both arguments -- that the threat of terrorism is a fraud and that the Iraq war had increased its danger. He said "al-Qaida is insurgent again" because we've "turned Iraq into an incubator" for jihadists. But simultaneously with warning of a terrorist attack, Dodd also said he was "more skeptical than I'd like to be" of the Bush administration's warning of a terrorist attack. Damn that Bush! He's inflamed an imaginary enemy!

As with the Democrats' claim that the greatest military in the world is "losing" a war with camel-riding nomads, the claim that the war in Iraq is what created our terrorist problem -- a terrorist problem that began about 30 years ago -- has entered the media and is now stated as fact by the entire Treason Lobby.

CNN correspondent Suzanne Malveaux matter-of-factly reported this week: "President Bush says the central front in the war on terror is Iraq. But when the U.S. first invaded the country almost five years ago, al-Qaida had very little presence. But the intelligence report says that has changed. Al-Qaida not only has become a dangerous threat, the intelligence community expects the terrorist group will use its contacts and capabilities there to mount an attack on U.S. soil."

Say, wasn't the attack of 9/11 an "attack on U.S. soil"? How could that have happened since we hadn't invaded Iraq yet? What a weird aberration. How about the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? How about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing? The taking of our embassy in Tehran?

Another CNN correspondent, Ed Henry, followed up Malveaux's report with the somber news that "the president was warned before the war in Iraq that if you go in and invade Iraq, you're going to give al-Qaida more opportunities to expand its influence."

Similarly, Hitler and Goebbels never had much to say about the United States -- not, that is, until we started fighting them!

But as soon as we entered the war -- taking the bait of Hitler's declaration of war against us, which Democrats are urging us to avoid falling for in the case of al-Qaida -- Hitler began portraying FDR as a pawn of the Jews. Soon posters started appearing in Germany showing the United States as a country run by Jews and Negroes. Fake dollar bills with the Star of David were air-dropped over Paris.

According to the Democrats' logic, FDR's policies made the United States less safe. Had Germany attacked us at Pearl Harbor? No. Was Hitler able to use America entering the war as a recruiting tool? Yes. Fighting the enemy always seems to make them mad. It's as plain as the nose on your face.

Democrats think they have concocted a brilliant argument by saying that jihadists have been able to recruit based on the war in Iraq. Yes, I assume so. Everything the United States has done since 9/11 has galvanized the evil people of the world to fight the U.S. In World War II, some Frenchmen joined the Waffen SS, too. And the good people of the world have been galvanized to fight on the side of the U.S. The question is: Which side are the Democrats on?

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Hillary Clinton said we need to start "reversing our priorities. Let's stop sending troops to Iraq and let's start insuring every single child." Yes, that should put a good healthy scare into the insurgents. "Run for your life, Ahmed! All American children are getting regular checkups!"

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Obama Hails a Unicorn
by Ann Coulter
Posted: 07/25/2007  

Fox News ought to buy a copy of Monday's Democrat debate on CNN to play over and over during the general election campaign. For now, the Democratic candidates need to appeal only to their nut-base. So on Monday night, the candidates casually spouted liberal conspiracy theories that would frighten normal Americans, but are guaranteed to warm the hearts of losers blogging from their mother's basements.

B. Hussein Obama got the party started by claiming he couldn't get a cab in New York because he's black. This line was a big hit with white liberals in the audience who have never been to New York.

Even writers for The New York Times don't drag this canard out anymore. Last year, a black writer in the Times pointed out how things had changed in New York in the 10 years since he had been out of the country. Not only did he have no trouble getting a cab, but he cited statistics from taxi sting operations that showed a 96 percent compliance rate among cabbies in picking up blacks. (Remarkable, considering that New York cabbies' compliance rate on daily bathing is less than half that.)

As the Times writer noted, even 10 years ago, "most of the drivers who refused to pick me up or take me to my destination during that time were of African descent." When he asked one cabbie -- 10 years ago -- why he avoided picking up black customers, the driver displayed a scar across his neck, a souvenir from a black customer who had robbed him. "I have to choose which is worse," the driver said, "a fine or death."

Thanks to Rudy Giuliani, cab drivers in New York no longer have to make that choice. Under his mayoralty, New York City became a lot safer for cab drivers -- and everyone else. The murder rate went from about 2,000 murders a year under Mayor David Dinkins to about 700 by the end of Giuliani's term. The last time a cab driver was killed in New York was in 1997.

In addition to making it safer for (mostly African-American and Muslim) cabbies to pick up African-Americans, Giuliani made it costly for them not to. He started "Operation Refusal" in 1999, sending out teams of black undercover cops and taxi commissioners to hail cabs and give fines to those who refused to pick up blacks.

Even back in 1999, in the first 12 hours of "Operation Refusal," out of more than 800 cabs hailed, only five cab drivers refused to pick up a customer -- one of whom was a white woman with children. And by the way, I've had dozens of cabs refuse to stop for me on Fifth Avenue. Sometimes they forget to turn on the "off duty" light, or they're daydreaming or maybe they've read my columns on Muslims.

Next time, B. Hussein Obama ought to tell us the one about Kool cigarettes being owned by the KKK and causing impotence in black men. There may not be overwhelming evidence disproving that one as there is for the yarn about blacks not being able to get a cab in New York.

Overall, Hillary appeared to be the only Democrat even dimly aware that there will eventually be a general election. But she too played to her audience with wacky conspiracy theories. Oops, I mean she "discussed the Democratic platform in detail." No need for me to get judgmental.

Hillary raised the Bush-stole-the-2000-election fairy tale, saying: "I think it is a problem that Bush was elected in 2000. I actually thought somebody else was elected in that election, but ..." (Applause.)

On Nov. 12, 2001, The New York Times ran a front page article that began: "A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward."

Another Times article that day by Richard L. Berke said that the "comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots solidifies George W. Bush's legal claim on the White House because it concludes that he would have won under the ground rules prescribed by the Democrats."

On Nov. 18, 2001, notorious pro-abortion zealot Linda Greenhouse wrote in the Times that the media consortium's count of all the disputed Florida ballots -- in which the Times participated -- concluded "that George W. Bush would have won the 2000 presidential election even had the court not cut the final recount short."

If three prominent articles in the Treason Times isn't enough to convince Hillary that Bush won the 2000 election, forget the White House: ABC ought to hire her to replace Rosie O'Donnell on "The View." I know that's a big seat to fill, but maybe she can finally convince Elizabeth Hasselbeck that 9/11 was an inside job.