On his Tuesday Fox News Channel show, host Bill O’Reilly and former Clinton aide James Carville debated whether revelations of wrongdoing at the State Department and Internal Revenue Service, as well as widespread communications monitoring by the National Security Agency, are really “scandals.”
“I don’t know — some of these things, as far as I know, are not scandals,” Carville said. “Some of them merit looking into. In the Reagan administration they get 134 grand jury investigations and you had 13 people convicted. That’s a scandal. The fact that some people in the Cincinnati office at IRS were looking into this — if somebody audited it from Washington that’s a scandal; they ought to go to jail.”
“But if it — if this stuff that went awry, that’s not a scandal,” he said. “There is a difference between something going wrong and being a scandal or being illegal. In terms of the NSA spying, it was the executive branch, the congressional branch that authorized it, the judicial branch that signed off on it. It may be bad policy, but that’s not a scandal. There is a difference between bad policy and scandal.”
Carville also dismissed allegations a cover-up involving former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail and whether they sometimes frequented prostitutes. The U.S. ambassador to Belgium has also been accused of frequenting sex workers.
CARVILLE: I want to go — the scandals…The only thing that it says about the secretary — the former Secretary of State — is that there was a rumor that she asked her head of security had he ever used a prostitute. Well let’s stop the government there. Because there’ a rumor that the Secretary of State asked —
O’REILLY: OK but don’t you see — don’t you see scandal de jour? Don’t you see one after the other after the other after the other?
CARVILLE: I think people with fantasies that are trying to get them to play out. I don’t see —
O’REILLY: But you don’t take any of it seriously?
CARVILLE: No, I’ve said I took the IRS story seriously.
O’REILLY: IRS thing ok. But the FBI is investigating right?
CARVILLE: The State Department has taken this seriously and has said they were — it does like they’re guilty because they said we are going to report it to an outside person. Some of the allegations, for instance, like the Ambassador to Iraq who was sending salacious emails. It ended up that he married the woman.
O’REILLY: Why do you — why do you take bad behavior and always point to other bad behavior?
Next the two had a back-and-forth over Attorney General Eric Holder, and whether he should keep his job.
O’REILY: Now finally Attorney General Holder, should he resign?
CARVILLE: Well, I never — to be honest with you.
O’REILLY: Should he resign?
CARVILLE: I’ve never been — I thought he could have gotten more people in the financial scandal. But you know —
O’REILLY: Should he resign?
CARVILLE: Look, the president doesn’t want him to resign, he works for the president.
O’REILLY: Would you — if you were President Carville would you have him resign?
CARVILLE: I’m not going to answer that.
O’REILLY: Why?
CARVILLE: Because I don’t want to.
O’REILLY: Why?
CARVILLE: Because I don’t want to.
O’REILLY: Are you embarrassed to answer it?
CARVILLE: No, I’m not embarrassed.
O’REILLY: Are you disloyal to your party if you answer this?
CARVILLE: I didn’t get elected president.
O’REILLY: I’m sure you would like to be, Carville.
CARVILLE: On no, not me. No I could — if you want a scandal if they looked into my background, O’Reilly, there would be a lot of real scandals.
O’REILLY: Why won’t you answer the attorney general question? Why?
CARVILLE: Because I’m not the president. I have publicly said —
CARVILLE: Do you as an American citizen would you think the country stronger if he’s not there.
CARVILLE: I would have — I would have had somebody more aggressive in the financial crisis, but that’s just me. But not for anything that he’s done here.
O’REILLY: Right now, as an American and I know you are, would the country be better off if Holder resigned?
CARVILLE: No, I don’t think so.
O’REILLY: No.
CARVILLE: I don’t think is he like an incompetent. I just think he could have been more aggressive in the financial scandal.