Editor’s note: Each week, WorldNetDaily White House correspondent Les Kinsolving asks the tough questions no one else will ask. And each week, WorldNetDaily brings you the transcripts of those dialogues with the president and his spokesman. If you’d like to suggest a question for the White House, submit it to WorldNetDaily’s exclusive interactive forum MR. PRESIDENT!
At today’s White House news briefing, WND asked presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer about the antiwar comments of a Methodist bishop, noting that President Bush is a Methodist.
WND: Ari, the National Council of Churches, led by a former Democratic congressman, the Rev. Bob Edgar, has enlisted a bishop, Melvin Talbert, of the president’s Methodist Church, to do a TV commercial, reported by the Washington Post, in which this Methodist bishops claims, “Going to war against Iraq violates God’s law and the teachings of Jesus Christ.” And my question is: Since the president is widely known to be a deeply religious person, he surely does not want you to suggest by any evasion that he agrees or doesn’t care about this Methodist bishop’s claim. So what is his answer to this bishop’s claim regarding violating God’s law?
FLEISCHER: Lester, the decisions that the president makes about war and peace about whether or not force needs to be used in Iraq, are based on the president’s role as a secular leader, about what is necessary to protect this country. The president is a deeply religious man. But these are decisions that the president will make based on intelligence reports, based on information that he is aware of on how to protect us from potential attack. That’s what’s on the president’s mind, particularly since Sept. 11.
At the end of the briefing, the subject was raised again by Russell Mokhiber of a legal newsletter called Corporate Crime Reporter and a radio personality on Pacifica radio station WPFW. Mokhiber asked Fleischer:
Q: You just said the president is a deeply religious man. Jesus was an absolute pacifist. How does the president square his militarism with Jesus?
FLEISCHER: I think there may be a debate in the press corps about your question, Russell. I –
WND: How about Jesus – at the Temple with a whip – where he beat the hell out of those moneychangers? Does that sound like he’s an absolute pacifist, Ari?
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thank you.
FLEISCHER: Thank you (signaling the end of the briefing).
After the briefing ended, WND asked Mokhiber, “Since Jesus knew about Jewish hero Judas Maccabeus, who fought five Syrian armies, where is there any evidence that Jesus ever condemned Judas Maccabeus?”
But Mokhiber insisted that “Jesus was an absolute pacifist” – which he attributed to American University professor Colman McCarthy, a pacifist who was at one time religion editor of the Washington Post.
WND was able to ask a second question midway through the briefing:
WND: By way of an attack on a well-known part of the Bush administration, the Media Research Center reports that on Jan. 25, on national television, Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift said – and this is a quote: “Ari Fleischer is a mouthpiece. He gives away nothing, and the press can’t stand him.” (Laughter.)
FLEISCHER: Eleanor, did she really? (Laughter.) She’s off my list. I won’t leak to her anymore. (Laughter.)
WND: Thank you. I have to ask my question. (Laughter.) Since we all voluntarily come to your briefings, and since I can certainly stand you (Laughter) – do you believe that all –
FLEISCHER: Is that good or bad, Lester. (Laughter.)
WND: Do you believe that all the rest of us can’t stand you, or isn’t Clift an extremist who made up such an outrageous charge?
FLEISCHER: Lester, I have no idea. (Laughter.) Whether you can –
WND: What do you think?
FLEISCHER: Lester, whether you can stand me or you can’t stand me, my job is to stand here and take your questions. (Laughter)
WND: Well, you don’t think all of these people can’t stand you, do you?
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