Arafat going to heaven?

By Les Kinsolving

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 Scott McClellan about President Bush’s comment last week when he was erroneously told that Yasser Arafat had died.

WND: At the president’s news conference, when the Washington Times informed him of the story that AP later had to retract about Arafat’s death, the president said, quote, “God bless his soul.” And my question: Did the president mean to say, “God cleanse his soul”? Or is the president a universalist in believing that everybody goes to Heaven?

McCLELLAN: I think you know what the president meant by his remarks. I don’t think I need to elaborate.

WND: Is he a universalist?

McCLELLAN: I don’t think I need to elaborate when the president addressed that last week.

WND: On talk radio, which with the Internet countered so much of old Big Media’s attempt to drive you and the president out of the White House, there have been a number of callers who have wondered why Helen Thomas has been moved from the front-row reserved seat at presidential news conferences to the rear.

And my question: Knowing that you and the president both try to be fair, could you tell us what Helen ever did that was as bad as the network that used forged documents to try to malign the president, and whose reserved seat has not been –

McCLELLAN: I don’t know. You connected a lot of things there. But I don’t have anything against any of these people in the front row.

WND: No, no, no, I’m just asking for a fair answer: Why was Helen moved back, but not that network? Give us an answer, please.

McCLELLAN: Helen has been the longest serving White House correspondent here, and I think it’s a nice tradition. I don’t believe she has been –

WND: Yes, she was in the press conference.

McCLELLAN: No, she was here just the other day, sitting on that front row.

WND: I don’t care. It’s the press conference that I’m talking about. Why was she moved back? (laughter) You’d like to evade that, wouldn’t you?

Les Kinsolving

Les Kinsolving hosts a daily talk show for WCBM in Baltimore. His radio commentaries are syndicated nationally. His show can be heard on the Internet 9-11 p.m. Eastern each weekday. Before going into broadcasting, Kinsolving was a newspaper reporter and columnist – twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his commentary. Kinsolving's maverick reporting style is chronicled in a book written by his daughter, Kathleen Kinsolving, titled, "Gadfly." Read more of Les Kinsolving's articles here.


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