Michael Hirsh, Senior Editor of Newsweek, joins Cenk to talk about the Clinton-initiated whispering campaign against Obama in the Jewish-American community, the role of Karl Rove in the Don Siegelman conviction, and the significance of the election results in Pakistan. Click here to watch the interview. Click here to watch what Hirsh had to say about Karl Rove working at Newsweek.
Transcript of Karl Rove related questions:
Michael Hirsh: There was clearly, you know, a number of U.S Attorneys were claiming that they were politically targeted…being pressured. And, you know, it may well be that this case of Siegelman, the former governor, fits that pattern.
Cenk Uygur: You know, one of the things that the story explained was that one of the U.S Attorneys in Alabama pursuing the case was the wife of the campaign manager of Siegelman’s opponent…Bob Riley, the Republican in the race against Siegelman. So that’s a pretty clear conflict of interest right there. And then they had Republican operatives from Alabama saying Karl Rove wanted basically dirty pictures of Don Siegelman in an affair, but he wasn’t having an affair. And then he pressured U.S Attorneys to go after him whether right or wrong. If that’s true, did Newsweek make a mistake in hiring Karl Rove? Is he too tainted by these scandals?
Michael Hirsh: Oh boy…look, you know obviously this has been a question raised about Rove from the start, and I certainly think that, you know, Rove has seemed to escape whipping in any number of ways. Obviously he got out of the Scooter Libby allegations involving whether the U.S sought to falsely build up a case against a former U.S Ambassador, who had made allegations about the case for going to war with Iraq. You know, he was named in that but was not indicted, was not charged. So I think that if in fact if Rove is shown legally to have been involved with what was clearly a set of, or may be a set of trumped up charges, then yeah. I think that Newsweek and anyone else that hires him would have to definitely have to second guess that. But, in the famous phrase, he’s got to be innocent until proven guilty here.
Cenk Uygur: Michael, let me ask one follow-up question to that, which is, you know, if we don’t have an indictment on Rove on this, but there’s clear evidence outside the court of law…you know this Republican operative says, “look he asked me to take these pictures, and I was basically a spy there. And then I grew a guilty conscience when they actually…I was on a conference call where they said ‘lets go get em for political reasons,” and then they did and this guy is spending seven years in jail. Would Newsweek evaluate that outside of a situation where he gets indicted and go, ‘maybe we don’t want to do business with this guy?”
Michael Hirsh: You know, I would hope so Cenk, but that’s kind of above my pay grade. I think there are a lot of people, journalists in Washington, who question the hiring of Rove. We’re not happy about it. I mean, some people say he’s actually turned out to be a half decent columnist for the Right. But, yeah…I mean I certainly would hope that we would re-evaluate that on the basis of this. But, you know, I think everyone would have to independently, we would have to independently look into these charges that 60 Minutes raised.
posted by yturks 
