This is a rush transcript from “Hannity & Colmes,” July 31, 2007. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
OLIVER NORTH, GUEST CO-HOST: The evidence against Michael Vick is mounting. Yesterday his co-defendant flipped on him and pleaded guilty. But today the troubled Atlanta Falcon finally found some support. The NAACP had this to say regarding Mr. Vick and his case.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If Mr. Vick is guilty, and he should pay for his crime. But to treat him as he is being treated now is also a crime. Please, be restrained in your premature judgment until the legal process has been completed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NORTH: Joining us are two Michael Vick supporters, the Reverend Marcellus Harris and Minister Michael Muhammad. Minister Muhammad, let me come to you first and let me make sure that we can find common ground in this. You would agree with me, dog fighting is a vicious, brutal pastime, would you not?
MINISTER MICHAEL MUHAMMAD, MICHAEL VICK SUPPORTER: Absolutely, I would agree. But I would also agree that it is brutal to beat on a man without having any evidence being presented in a court of law.
NORTH: This may come as a terrible surprise to you and my colleague here, Alan Colmes, I agree that trying to convict somebody before the jury has weighed the evidence is the wrong thing to do. I just kind of wonder where all you guys were 20 years ago when I was going through that. But we’ll set that aside for a moment. I am very serious. You guys are Virginians.
MUHAMMAD: I am glad you brought that up. Because you, better than anyone on this program, should know what it is like to be accused prior to evidence being presented.
NORTH: Absolutely. There is no doubt in my mind. But, the fact is, things do not look particularly good for Mr. Vick right now. Would you agree?
MUHAMMAD: As they did not look good for you, either. But you seem to have come out pretty good.
NORTH: But once it was all done, it all was better, and it may well turn out that way for Mr. Vick. And I fully agree that we must wait for the evidence to come in and the jury to weigh that evidence and give a verdict. But the bottom line of it is, when his co-defendant flips on him, and you have got these kinds of accusations out there in federal court, it does not look very good.
REVEREND MARCELLUS HARRIS, MICHAEL VICK SUPPORTER: He is not a reliable witness.
NORTH: You can understand, I think, the sensitivity of this, given the brutality of the accusations against him.
MUHAMMAD: The reality is, Mr. North, you are dealing with a situation that is imbalanced from the beginning. The pressure being put on all of the defendants in this case is causing a tremendous amount of stress and strain, so it is not really that.
HARRIS: Surprising…
MUHAMMAD: …surprising to us that he would come out in this way.
HARRIS: You all have beaten on this young man so badly that their families have been threatened, their lives have been threatened. They are afraid and so now they are making deals. But we look at this from the angle that is being presented, we have cases in the history of America that have been going on and you all have not prosecuted them in the media this way.
It was on this very program that you all asked for restraint for the Duke lacrosse players accused of rape. When Kobe Bryant himself was charged with rape, restraint was held, this young man was able to travel back and forth from California to Colorado and participate in the sport in which he was employed, and he was not given this type of treatment.
But Mr. Vick, however, is given the kind of treatment that a murderer that had been convicted would get.
ALAM COLMES, CO-HOST: Reverend Harris, let me ask you — this is Alan, welcome you both to our show.
HARRIS: Yes. Thank you.
COLMES: The NAACP coming in and making statements, is this a racial — is there anything racial about this? Does the color of his skin have anything to do with this?
HARRIS: Well, we understand that race always matters. Either over or subliminally. But we do not want to get into the race thing. We just want to see that justice is done.
COLMES: Why is the NAACP…
HARRIS: …and this is injustice. Because they realize like everybody else in America that this is subliminally, a journalistic lynching of a young man before he has a chance to have his day in court.
You know he has gone from a hero to a zero, I said a hero to zero almost overnight, and you can see what this is doing to the community which this young man is birthed. We did a community hug in our community, young people with his jersey on. He represents something for them that a lot of people in America will never understand.
COLMES: Let me ask you this. I know you want to do a community hug, and Minister Muhammad, Tony Taylor, one of his co-defendants who pleaded guilty to traveling in interstate commerce and unlawful activities and conspiring to sponsor dogs in a fighting venture and the indictment says that his co-defended, Tony Taylor, killed at least two dogs. He is now going to testify…
MUHAMMAD: That is Tony Taylor, not Michael Vick. You are not beating on Tony Taylor, you are beating on Michael Vick.
COLMES: Let me get this out. Why do you suppose he is not participating in this group hug that you are giving Michael Vick?
MUHAMMAD: Again, you all have put so much pressure, meaning the media, on the persons who are charged with this crime. You have people who are charged with much more heinous crimes. Much more heinous crimes.
COLMES: Let’s talk about the perspective here. How heinous is it to torture animals, to kill dogs, to have a hundred some odd…
MUHAMMAD: Excuse me, Ray Lewis was charged with murdering a human being and he wasn’t given this kind of treatment.
COLMES: We’re showing the videos now. Is this not a heinous act? What we’re looking at right now on our screen?
MUHAMMAD: Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are charged with drunk driving. These are young women who are charged with drunk driving that kills many people every year, and they are not getting this kind of treatment that Mr. Vick…
COLMES: I do not recall Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton being heroes in the press. They are pretty much despised.
MUHAMMAD: They spend millions of dollars today to promote a movie that is coming out this weekend for Lindsay Lohan. Don’t tell me she’s not a hero.
COLMES: Nobody was killed. Nobody was hurt.
MUHAMMAD: You just had a segment that came on a few minutes ago, that talked about how great an actress she was.
COLMES: You’re totally changing the topic and you’re avoiding the question, which is how heinous is it to have dogs killing each other and then shoot and electrocute those dogs that don’t succeed in those fights. Is that not a heinous crime?
HARRIS: How heinous is it for CNN, every time they show Michael Vick’s picture they show dogs eating up each other.
COLMES: We’re not CNN, you’ve got the wrong place but is that…
MUHAMMAD: …the brutality of human beings. This is a country that promotes violence every day. This is a network that promotes war in Iraq and throughout the world every day.
COLMES: Is not killing animals a heinous crime? Is it a heinous crime or not?
NORTH: We all agree it’s a heinous crime.
HARRIS: We agree it’s a heinous crime, but it is another crime to convict this man on just these charges, allegations and deny him his 14th Amendment rights.
NORTH: Reverend Marcellus Harris and Minister Michael Muhammad, thank you very much for taking time.
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