I always suspected the White House watches this program.
Hearing Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday, I can now confirm it:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: Can I say this? I watched Fox yesterday…
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Actually, that was good to hear.
Here’s what was not: Robert Gibbs jumping all over my colleague Wendell Goler for something former FEMA Director Michael Brown said about the administration’s handling of this Gulf oil spill on my program the night before.
First, here’s what Mr. Gibbs said, Mr. Brown said:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIBBS: Mr.Brown, FEMA Director Brown under Katrina, intimated on Fox — and it wasn’t, I will editorially say, that it didn’t appear to be pushed back on real hard — that this spill was leaked on purpose in order for us to walk back our environmental and drilling decisions, and that the leak that we did on purpose got out of control and now is too big to contain.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
After going back and forth with Wendell, Mr. Gibbs went back to that line:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIBBS: Your network put out the former FEMA director to make an accusation that the well had been purposefully set off in order to change an offshore drilling decision…
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Michael Brown never said the administration deliberately set off the leak. Not once. Not ever.
He was invited on to compare this administration’s response to this Gulf disaster to the Bush administration’s response to another famous Gulf disaster, Katrina.
Here, for the record, is what Mr. Brown did say:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEIL CAVUTO, ANCHOR: Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, says the differences are night and day. Where do you see the similarities?
MICHAEL BROWN, FORMER FEMA DIRECTOR: I think here are the similarities, Neil.
First of all, you have a disaster occur, and the Coast Guard shows up immediately. That’s their job. In Katrina, FEMA showed up immediately. The president is off in San Diego strumming the guitar. Obama is back East going to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. You’re now nine days into the storm — into the disaster, and actually now, only now is the president appearing to be engaged.
And I think the delay was this: It’s pure politics. This president has never supported big oil. He has never supported offshore drilling. And now he has an excuse to shut it back down.
You’ve already heard Bill Nelson, senator from Florida, talking about offshore drilling is DOA. They played politics with this crisis and left the Coast Guard out there by themselves doing what they’re supposed to do.
CAVUTO: So, Michael, you don’t take him at face value when he says a temporary halt in offshore drilling is just that, a temporary halt?
BROWN: No, no. Look, Bill Nelson — and, you know, they don’t say these things without it being coordinated. And so now you’re looking at this oil slick approaching, you know, the Louisiana shore, according to certain — NOAA and other places, if the winds are right, it will go up the East Coast.
This is exactly what they want, because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, “I’m going to shut it down because It’s too dangerous,” while Mexico and China and everybody else drills the Gulf. We’re going to get shut down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
I’m sorry for the length of that, but only to prove this:
Nowhere in that exchange, nor in the rest of the interview — now available for you to see in its entirety on our foxnews.com/yourworld site, as is the entire Gibbs exchange — did Brown ever say this White House was behind this spill or started this spill. That would be laughable.
Here’s what’s not: Dismissing what Mr. Brown did say about a president who might have botched a lot since that Gulf spill, just as Mr. Brown argued the last president did in the immediate aftermath of that Gulf hurricane.
Mr. Brown says he’s become an expert on botched responses — that’s why I had him on.
Robert Gibbs seems to have done the same for botched White House pressers. That’s why I invite him on.
Whenever you want, Robert, whenever you want.
— Watch Neil Cavuto weekdays at 4 p.m. ET on “Your World with Cavuto” and send your comments to cavuto@foxnews.com
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