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!
Today, on Scott McClellan’s first day as the new presidential press secretary, the Washington Post reported that this reporter started the applause yesterday at the beginning of Ari Fleischer’s final press briefing.
Post correspondent Dana Milbank described me as “a conservative talk-radio personality whose offbeat questions provide comic relief during press briefings.”
I am indeed honored to be off the beat of so many of the questions asked at the White House. And I am glad to provide Mr. Milbank some relief from those questions, whether comic or otherwise.
Almost all of today’s questions were on the same subject that dominated Fleischer’s last briefing – Iraqi nuke plans – which McClellan answered effectively. But he evaded both of WND’s questions:
WND: I’m at long last able to welcome you. Scott, the NAACP president, Kweisi Mfume has bitterly denounced Sen. Lieberman and Congressmen Kucinich and Gephardt for their refusal to attend the NAACP convention in Miami Beach, where Julian Bond last year compared American conservatives to the Taliban and this year said, “Republicans appeal to the dark underside of American culture.”
And my question, since the president also refused to attend this annual convention, he doesn’t believe these three members of Congress deserve to be so pilloried, does he, Scott?
McCLELLAN: I don’t know I agree with some of your characterization within there. And, frankly, I didn’t hear the specific comments that were made about these individuals.
WND: Page one of the Washington Times. Page one. You have no comment?
McCLELLAN: I saw the reports. But what’s your question?
WND: Well, the president doesn’t believe these congressmen should be pilloried like that, does he? He’s not going.
McCLELLAN: Well, the president focuses on what brings us together. He’s an inclusive leader. And he’s going to keep focusing on what can bring us together, not things that might divide us or separate us. And he’s going to continue reaching out to people from all walks of life.
WND: On July the 4th, Chairman Elijah Cummings of the Congressional Black Caucus, in a tape-recorded interview, said he hoped the president would speak out on both historical slavery as well as black slavery today in Sudan, which he said is atrocious.
But in the president’s speech on Goree Island, he said not one word about today’s black slaves. But, instead, said Christian men and women blind to the clearest command of their faith, added hypocrisy to injustice, which indicts a number of Texans. How does the president believe it is not hypocritical to denounce historic slavery while ignoring thousands of black slaves in the neighboring country of Mauritania?
McCLELLAN: I think the president’s Goree Island remarks were very clear, and he spoke very clearly, and he –
WND: No mention of slavery today.
McCLELLAN: And his visit to Africa was a very successful visit. It’s a great continent of possibilities, like he talked about.
WND: No mention of slavery today, as Elijah Cummings asked.
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