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>> in his book, "you lie! " jack cashill chronicles what he argues are president obama's falsehoods. this hour-long event was hosted by the jackson county republican club in lee's summit, missouri. >> thank you, jim. thank you all for coming out tonight, and thank someone for the fact that there's no baseball game tonight. [laughter] you know, there are several major religions that believe the second coming will be in jackson county, missouri. [laughter] and they may be right. it may be sooner than we think. okay. five years into the obama presidency, here's what liberal constitutional scholar jonathan turley said of the president. quote: barack obama is really the president richard nixon always wanted to be. liberal first amendment lawyer

james goodall was harsher still: president obama will surely pass president richard nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom. as they say, if your friends are saying about you, imagine what your enemies are saying. [laughter] the question for the day -- and this is something to consider -- is how is it that a man who launched his campaign for the presidency in springfield, illinois, literally comparing himself to abraham lincoln, will end up his presidency hunkered down in the white house being compared to tricky dick nixon? i mean, something went wrong in the process from honest abe to tricky dick. and we're here to explain that tonight. civil libertarian, another civil libertarian, longtime village voice contributor, probably summed it up best, obama can get

away with whatever he wants. and, unfortunately u there's a lot -- unfortunately, there's a lot of truth to that. i'm going to explore how that came to be, and it's a complex question, and it's one that i'm not fully sure i know myself totally, but i think i'm closer than many people to getting the answer right. he had a distinctive upbring, had much to do with what he became. he concentrated on his father in his memoir "dreams from my father," which he helped write -- [laughter] it's an inside joke. we'll let that one pass. okay. and, but we missed the real mark. the person we should have been concentrating on is her mother, and her name is ann dunham. and she was, like his father, a something of a person who held america in general contempt. there's a story he tells in

"dreams from my father" that's likely true and very instructive. she's in indonesia with obama when he's a boy, he's there at ages 6-10, and she is with her second husband who's an end nice national. -- indo nice national. and he says to her why don't you come to the party tonight, you can meet some of your own people, and she shouts back at him, those are not my people. this is a message that obama picked up as a young man, as a young boy. and he called, what he saw them as was -- he describes the americans as caricatures of an ugly american. now, she could have given him the most solid identity in the world, and that is of an american. but she didn't. she didn't like this country. she never did. and that affected obama from early on. so he comes back to hawaii as a

10-year-old, and now he's in something of a dither because he doesn't know who he is. how does he define himself? he doesn't want to be an american from what he's heard about america from his mother and from what he's seen in indonesia. and as for being an african-american, he knows no more about that than what he's seen on tv. and in hawaii, there's not that a much. there's three channels. the mod squad or, you know, that's about it in 1968, '69, '70. so what he does is he tells his friends in school, and this again he says in his own book and it's probably true, that his father was a prince, and his grandfather was a chief of an african tribe, and they kind of shined up to him, that sounded pretty cool. the story worked on his class mates and almost on himself. then he says this: another part of me knew that what i was telling them was a lie, something i'd constructed from the scraps of information i'd

picked up from my mother. and so for the next 40 years, obama would continue constructing identities for himself; high school stoner, college marxist, new york socialist, chicago -- [inaudible] harvard cosmopolitan, african-american ward healer in chicago, all-american presidential candidate. and so by the time "dreams from my father" came out in '95, obama had picked up enough postmodern patois to rationalize these identity shifts, and the lies needed to ease the transitions. so even support of obama biographer like david rem nick called dreams a mix of fact, recreation, invention and artful shaping. that's a friendly biographer. [laughter] equally friendly biographer david maraniss agreed. he said the character creations

and rearrangements of the book are not merely a matter of style, devices or compression, but are actually substantive. another friendly biographer. now, when lesser memoirists do the same and james frey comes to mind, he of "a million little pieces," they get ripped to pieces on oprah. but for obama, you make stuff up, you get away with it. he's always been allowed to get away with it. and one of hillary clinton's aides told david can rem nick -- david rem nick, he said we didn't understand why his political calculating chameleon nature was never discussed. he changed his life depending on who he was talking to, and he was correct. now, his early influences like his communist mentor in hawaii, frank marshall davis, and his marxist professors and friends

at of course city dealtal college -- occidental college did not encourage truth telling. although leftists are not uniquely guilty of lying, they are uniquely guilty of lying as a conscious strategy. this dates back to lenin, stalin, it's all the way through. they're not that hard core, and i kind of sensed it the other day. i was watching what the problem might be. i was watching this guy, and he was cnn's ebola expert. and he was just talking on tv about why we can't ban travel from west africa to the united states when it would seem like most americans would say, yeah, let's ban travel. why not? he was honest about his answer. and he gave the perfect multicultural answer. and he said that, you know, since liberia was created by american slaves, that slavery was thus responsible for the

creation of liberia, and thus we're responsible, america's the great oppressor in the world u and thus, we have the obligation to open the doors to liberia. that's how multiculturallists think. the people in the white house are multiculturallists. the problem is, they can't say that. they can't come out to america and say, hey, you know, we owe liberia because of slavery, blah, blah, blah. so they send out guys like the hapless thomas frieden, the director of cdc. and he's on with megyn kelly trying to explain why the ban makes sense. but he can't use multicultural logic, so he has to use, like, real people logic, and it doesn't work. so he's saying to megyn kelly, and this was fun to watch. go back and watch it if you can. he's saying, well, you know, because if we don't open up travel, we can't help them, and so megyn says what about charter flights? and then he says, well, commercial -- this is what he

says, almost a direct quote -- commercial airplanes can do something that contract planes, charter planes cannot. and megyn kelly says, they fly in, they fly out, what's the difference, you know? [laughter] he had no answer. so what happens is so much of the deception that comes out of the white house is because they can't give straight answers because the straight answers would fall flat with the american public. now, that's part of the reason why he became the person he became. his appearance mattered at least as much. he had the good fortune of growing up thinking, talking, sounding, you know, posturing just like a white liberal. i mean, he grew up in a white household and a white mother. but he looked like a african-american. and this gave him an advantage, because the white liberals could look at him, and they proved he looked like an african-american, sound ised just like they did and it verified just exactly who

they were. so you hear people voicing this on occasion, people who are capable of saying what they mean. actor michael kingsley, it's a gaffe, but you say what you mean, but you're not supposed to be saying it. joe biden is a master. [laughter] you remember this quote. he says about -- and i don't know how jesse jackson took it, i can imagine, he says, i mean, you've got the first mainstream african-american candidate who's articulate, bright and clean and a nice look guy. [laughter] i'm glad i didn't say that. i wouldn't be here tonight. i'd probably be in -- [laughter] san quentin. and another unwittingly honest revelation, senate majority leader harry reid found comfort in obama's having, quote, no negro dialect. [laughter] again, i'm glad i didn't say that. by the time obama emerged as a national candidate, every major newsroom in america -- save

one -- was chock full of people who thought like harry reid and joe biden. it's harder to calculate their attitudes towards race, but the collective media indulgence of well spoken black liberals, and i will say this absolutely, black conservatives get no such pass, they get the opposite treatment. just ask clarence thomas or herman cain. boilermaker, i had to say that. ask them about that. but liberals, black liberals who speak and act and sound and echo what the white liberals say get ap incredible pass in "america's newsroom"s. and that has a major factor in making obama who he was and how he could get away with things no one else could get away with. there's a story in october of 2007, new york times wrote this. i'm paraphrasing, but i'm close.

they wanted to do a story on obama's new york days, and given the fact it was the new york times and obama, it was obviously going to be a puff piece. but then they report as a matter of fact, obama would provide no leads, no transcripts, no names of friends, no addresses, no relatives, no nothing. and then they just move on. [laughter] i mean, as though it didn't matter he wouldn't provide all these things. but that's the way he rolled, and that's the way they rolled with him. i'm going to grab a drink here, one second. i have something of a cold, but i chose not to take any cold medicine for fear i'd be totally loopy be up here tonight. i'll game it out. that has a lot to do with how he became who he was. and it started right off. i mean, he started, right early

in the campaign he started deceiving in ways no one else could possibly have gotten away with. so in september 2007 when his candidacy was still a long shot, obama vowed if i am the democratic nominee, i will aggressively pursue an agreement with the republican nominee to preserve a publicly-financed general election. that's a very conscious and firm position. the problem was he found out that once he was nominated or once he took the lead in the election, he was raising much more money than john mccain was, and he quickly ditched it. so in 2008, and he's never wrong, he never goes back on his word, he says, tells "the washington post" that he still sported the idea of public financing -- supported the idea of public financing, but unfortunately the current system was broken, quote, and favored republicans who had become, quote, masters of gaming the system. every deception is justified. nothing is taken straight how.

so remember, obama momentum give a damn because he can get away with whatever he wants, and that's the way he's rolled. now, the first person to call him on it was an obscure congressman to whom i owe the title of my book, by the way, joe wilson. still a highly popular president spoke spiritedly to a joint session of congress, and there was in the air what might have been called -- do you know this line? -- the powerful odor of mendacity. [laughter] and among the mendacious lines that were trotted out that night, was this one: nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have. now, at the time obama said this, he may have thought it was true. and yet i went back and checked

the record on this, and within two days of that announcement, there were serious dissents in major publications that the white house had to be aware of saying, no, it's impossible. you can't get away with this. the first time we give him a pass. the next 45 times, no pass. that's not what got joe wilson riled up. it may have been any number of things. but when obama denounced the claim that his proposed health care system would insure illegal immigrants, that's when wilson could hold his tongue no longer, and he yelled out, "you lie! " and all hell broke loose. you have to go back and watch the video because it's fun to see. for the first time in about 20 years, nancy pelosi actually

raised her eyebrows. she's sitting behind him -- [laughter] i didn't think that was possible. joe biden -- [laughter] joe biden literally started, you could hear him tsk, tsk, you know? obama loses his place on the teleprompter, he's so shaken by this, which could be a disaster. then there's a collect i have gasp out of the democrats in the house, they're like, oh! and it's the kind that's followed in the schoolyard by, "i'm telling," you know? right immediately afterwards, the republicans rushed to mics to apologize, and the democrats rushed to the direct mail vendors to try to raise money off this which they do much too well. and that's how it broke out. what i like was the response of democratic whip james clyburn, also from south carolina. he called wilson's behavior totally disrespectful, which it probably was many a sense, and a new low for the state's congressional delegation.

representative clyburn has not studied south carolina history very closely. [laughter] those of you who know your history know what i'm going to say. in 1856, preston brooks, a congressman from south carolina, upset by the abolitionist talk from senator charles sumner, republican from massachusetts, went over to the senate with his buddy and clubbed senator sumner nearly to death. he disabled him for several years, that's how bad he clubbed him, and his fellow congressmen helped off would-be helpers at pistol point. now, that was a low. [laughter] you can't get much lower than that. anyhow, history has never been a strong suit of our progressive friends. but anyhow, missed in the hubbub over joe wilson's remark was the nature of his locution. he said -- he didn't say you're a liar, you're lying, a lie, he

said "you lie." it was like an existential declaration of the man. five years ahead of time, before anyone else really caught on. and it's like, you know, astaire dances, sinatra sings, obama lies. it was that natural declaration. [laughter] that was missed. but, i mean, all presidents finesse the truth, many prime ministers lie about their -- many presidents lie about their personal lives, some more than others. [laughter] but only one has elevated the lie to the level of strategy. even bill clinton didn't do that and that, alas, is barack obama. what i'm going to finish with or conclude with or move on to, i should say, are what i would consider the six -- in the book, you know, i had an article in the new york post, and they asked me how many lies did obama tell? and i said, so i had to go back and count because there are little subchapters in the book. by lie, by the way, it's a false

statement. it's east intentionally given or totally indifferent to the outcome of whether it's true or not, and it's usually for a stated gain like say you make some advantage out of it. so i call it false, intentional or indifference gain. and of this -- so i went back and counted the little subchapters, there were 75. at the end of the book, i pulled out the top 25, and of the top 25, there's nothing george bush said -- by the way, new york times admitted yesterday they found chemical weapons in iraq. well, that's a little late, but better late than never, nothing george bush said would have cracked the top 25. bill clinton would have cracked it two or three times. that's how thorough it is in the governing strategy of this administration. this is unprecedented. it's not just like i'm making this up. there was an effort after the clinton administration by the

left to denigrate the word "lie" by accusing bush of lying, so we've all followed those cars around that say "bush lied, people died." i was always tempted to ram those cars -- [laughter] but my car was better than those cars, so i chose not to. and there are other reasons as well. one of it's insurance. [laughter] anyhow, here they are. i just picked the top suggestion. my father left my family when i was 2 years old. president obama said this to the nation's school children a year after he was elected. by that time i knew it was false and so did most of the blogosphere. this matters more than it seems because in, what was it, 2004 when he was introduced to the nation at the democratic national convention in boston, he started his speech, if you recall, with this basic line, i'm the product of an improbable

love between a goat herder from kenya and a dorothy from kansas. and they had an abiding faith in the possibilities of nation. he built his persona and his campaign around this perfect little multicultural family that was disrupted when his father, barack obama sr., was invited to harvard when obama was 2, and he had to make the painful decision to take that choice. as david rem nick says, this was a signature appeal, the appeal to a multicultural ideal based on his family life. well, if the romance was improbable, if there was one -- and there's some doubt about that -- i suspect it lasted no longer from closing time to the moment obama sr. sobered up the next morning. [laughter] i mean, i'm -- unfortunately, i'm not even kidding here. here's what we know for a fact, is that obama, the baby obama never spent a single night under the same roof as his father. this on the blogosphere was

known from 2008. it was known before the election. in the blogosphere we knew that obama and his mother spent the first year of his life in seattle, washington. now, people who are watching this on c-span now, those who had the stomach to hang in here, are saying to themselves, what? i didn'ti didn't know this. yes. it wasn't until 2012 that david maraniss, washington post pulitzer prize winner, finally acknowledged, yes -- he didn't say the blogosphere was right -- can yes, there was no family. the first sighting of obama was in seattle as a three-week-old roughly in late august of 1961. and yet there were four major biographies written between the election and maraniss' book that skipped over that. new york times writes a biography of obama's mother, and she doesn't tell us a word about where obama's mother was from the time she left school in,

like, february of 961 -- 1961 in until the time the baby's born in august of 1961. nothing, not a word. and she knows there's a controversy about this. not a word. so what happens is that the people who used to be called reporters a generation ago are now called conspiracy theorists, because they try to fill in the gaps, they try to fill in the information, and it's not easily gotten because the people in the mainstream aren't doing the job they ought to be doing. in other words, that was -- the notion that even a after the election, a year after the election after the blogosphere had exposed this that obama could go out and tell the neigh's school children he was 2 years old when his father left knowing that no one would call him on it, no one he knew or cared about would call him on it, but that's the way he rolled. that's the way they roll. now, number five, the fast and furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration. now, obama spun this fiction at

a september 2012 univision forum knowing it was false because several months earlier white house press secretary jay carney had made the same bogus claim virtually word for word at a press conference and got spanked on national tv by jake tapper. jake tapper shows up about half a dozen times in my book as anyone who calls him on anything from the major media. jay carney says, no, i have the memos here, it was started in october 2009, you guys started it. and carney finessed his way out of it, then obama repeats it three months later, so anyone believed it was true. it wasn't. there needs to be a lot more done on fast and furious, by the way. this one is really kind of bold, i like this. for its boldness, not for its truth. not even a smidgen of corruption. [laughter] those, some of you know the question that preceded this. this came in response to bill

o'reilly's question about the irs scandal just before the 2013 super bowl. and o'reilly says, you're saying no corruption? and obama says, not even a smidgen of corruption, no. it's hard to understand that. why when news of the irs scandal first broke a year earlier, he says it's inexcusable, and americans are right to be angry about it. i'm angry about it. this was a year earlier, and now there's not a smidge general of corruption? not only that, but the investigation's still ongoing. how can he say there's not a smidgen of corruption when the investigation isn't finished? anyhow, he got away with it. at least for a time. here's one that -- this is pretty bold, and it's pretty strong. we revealed to the american people exactly what we understood at the time. he made this claim in response to o'reilly's inquiry at that

same 2014 super bowl about benghazi. then he goes on to say the notion that we would hide the ball for political purposes when a week later we all said, a week later we all said, in fact, there was a terrorist attack, you know, and as a matter of fact, then he goes on to say the day after i said it was a terrorist attack, it wouldn't be a very good cover up. he claimed that he said it was a terrorist attack most prominently during the 2012 debate with mitt romney, the second debate, where candy crowley, the cnn immediateuater -- it was actually like a tag team wrestling match and romney only gets himself, you know? he was dealing with heavyweights on the other side, too, which made it more difficult. but -- [laughter] i promised to be good to myself. [laughter] anyhow, but when you watch it, i had to go back and watch that a

few times in realtime, and it is very distressing to see what happened. romney has obama cornered, and he says to him, you're saying -- after, first of all, crowley gives him a set-up line about, something about hillary clinton says it's her responsibility, and then obama strides up like he knows this is going to happen, and he says, no, the buck stops here, it's my responsibility. i always take full responsibility for it. and the morning afterwards, i said it was a terrorist attack, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and then romney gets up and is says you said it was a terrorist attack the morning after? and now he's, obama's sitting in the back, back in the corner on his stool. and he says yes, yeah. you said -- i just want this on the record, candy, he said it was a terrorist attack the morning after. and then obama says, candy? and then she starts waving a piece of paper. yes, yes, he said it was a terrorist attack. yes, he said it was a terrorist

attack. and then the audience, against all rules, starts applauding. and now romney is looking, you know, and then candy and then obama starts talking over romney, candy starts talking, let's move on, let's move on here, you know? and she's waving this piece of paper, he says to her, get the triplet, and she's waving it like it's a transcript. that was a killer moment in the history of that candidacy. she did a similar thing with fast and furious but not -- you know, i go into that in the book. you can find that. but the first time, in fact, remember he says a week later we all said it was a terrorist attack? here's what he said a week later. do you know what show he was on when he took his first question on benghazi? david letterman. david letterman a week later. seems like an appropriate place to take a question. it was september 18th, exactly one week later, takes his first

questions about benghazi. and david can letterman asks, what happened with benghazi? were we at war here? what's going on? obama: here's what happened. you had a video released by someone who lives here, and he's sort of a shady character who made an extremely offensive video directed at muhammad and islam. these are people, by the way, who applaud for the book of mormon, so there's a double standard there. now, the usually-er irreverent letterman looked shocked. here's what he says: making fun of the prophet muhammad? [laughter] obama shakes his head in dismay, yes, making fun of the prophet muhammad. a week later he's blaming it fully on the video, and he's doing it on the david letterman show. number two. transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency. [laughter] this is what obama said to his

assembled staff on the first full day in office, and this promise has been violated more wantonly than a goat at a taliban bachelor party, i'm sorry. [laughter] [applause] it was precisely the violation of this promise that got turley and goodell so upset both on the notion of transparency and the rule of law. okay, number one promise violated, i do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute the office of united states and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united states. [applause] i mean, he had, he had his hand on the bible for that one. he better hope that god has mercy on his soul. now, mendacity has its consequences, and i'm going to update this a little bit. it's not in the book, but it's

relevant as we're seeing the world today. on september 16th of this year, 2014, obama spoke to a gathering at the cd can c. he said what people wanted to hear, as he often does. he says the chances of an ebola outbreak in the united states were, quote, extremely low. the u.s. has increased airport screening so that no one with this disease fly here n. the unlikely event someone with the disease does come to this country, the government has taken new measures to assure that doctors are are trained and hospitals ready, quote, to deal with the possibility or the possible case safely. three days later, september 19th, thomas eric duncan left his house in liberia he'd been sharing with a mortally ill ebola patient, he apparently lied about his contact with the woman, then boarded a plane for dallas by way of brussels and dulles airport with almost no screening at all, and on

september 25th, he walked into texas health presbyterian hospital in dallas newsous and feverish, despite his illness, no one thought to test him for ebola. and three days later he was finally admitted only after a friend called the cdc. in essence, nothing obama said on november 16th was true -- september 16th was true. the arrival of an ebola patient here seemed much too likely. with this an anomaly, one could shift the blame to obama's health officials or the principals at the cdc. unfortunately, obama's failure to tell the truth is not an anomaly at all, it's the norm. in my book, "you lie," subtitled -- i have to read it because i keep forgetting what it is -- i document more than 75

significant deceptions by obama and his staff. but in chronicling the untruths, i ended up writing a history of the presidency. thank you. [applause] now, those of you who are bold enough to want to be on national tv can do so by walking up to the mic and asking a question. >> let me do that. >> okay. [laughter] >> my name's bill preston. is this mic on? >> yeah, on. >> it is on? >> yeah. >> my name's bill preston. i recently returned from new orleans where i had to bury my 54-year-old sister. and one of the things that

sustained me was knowing that i'd get back to independence and get back to my church, the nolan road baptist church. and arriving there, of course, i went to a wednesday evening bible study, and one of the good members there was talking about humility. and i'll get to the point real quickly. and everything that he said defied humility. and to humor him and myself, i confessed that i was just returning from burying my baby sister and how distaught i was -- distraught i was and how they were spitic it was knowing -- therapeutic it was knowing i'd return to independence. because i was going to return to this wonderful church of good

people that i identified with that were such great christians, and i loved them because they were the best bunch of liars and cheats and two-faced, double-minded liars i'd ever seen, that i just loved them. my question is, how different then is barack obama than the ip call member of my -- than the typical member of my church at nolan road baptist church? >> amen, brother. >> well, you know, we're all sinners, and i'm sure we've all told lies. i would say the difference with this is that the members of your baptist church don't lie strategically, consciously, relentlessly and for the sake of gaining power. [laughter] that, i would say, is the difference. [applause] but that we all, i mean, as i mentioned, all presidents have lied. it's inevitable given the job. sometimes the lies are

understandable even. but in obama's case it's just relentless. it's a policy. it's not even interesting anymore. i hate to say it. yes, sir. >> jack, the gentleman just before me spoke the truth about what's going on in our nation regarding our religious leaders. this is the problem: taxing income is stealing. the johnson amendment in the 501(c)(3) portion of the irs tax code has our pastors' mouths gagged to the point where they're almost imto tent. and my question -- impotent. and my question to you is how do we break that bond so that our pastors may be able to again, like the black robe regiment of

the revolutionary period, can speak truth the power so the folks will understand what we're facing today? >> i mean, it's somewhat off the point, but i would say all they have to do -- i'm familiar with that law -- is realize the law and read the case history of the law. no one's ever been prosecuted under the law. they use it to intimidate people. no preacher has ever been prosecuted under that law. they may be trying in houston, but i don't think they'll succeed. yes, ma'am. >> my name is barbara stockton. i just wanted to say that i saw on television today that, to that point, houston was trying to get the ministers -- this is great -- was trying to get the ministers to give them their sermons, and i know this is off the point where you started. i just wanted to throw this in. and the minister said, hey, they're online, we're happy for you to see our sermons.

>> yeah. >> and so they just kicked back on it. >> boy, you know, it's a freer country than the paranoid among us would like us to think, and my being here right now on c-span is testament to that. thank you, c-span, by the way. which, by the way, was founded by a purdue alum, brian lamb, so there you go. [laughter] boiler up. >> jack, my name is mark weber, and my question is, what do you think the long-term impact on the next presidency and the following one on this men dollarocracy, you know, this government by, you know, continue allying -- continual lying will have on following -- >> i just saw a clip the other day of a leading democrat strategist on the morning joe show with joe scarborough saying, you know, i think we made a mistake in 2012, we didn't elect mitt romney.

i think what you need for the next president is someone who you trust and who is a fixer, someone who can fix things and who can lead and who can organize. and there may be, on the republican side, a battle between the idealogues, one of them myself, actually, and the pragmatist, one of whom is also mideast. [laughter] myself. >> both ways. >> yeah, both ways. but i would like someone -- in 2016 we need someone who can lead and who can fix, so, in my opinion. yes, sir. >> hi, floyd gingrich. jack, the news came out this week that obama's popularity is at its nadir, it's at 40% right now, and amidst that, several programs, several efforts are crumbleing. our effort against isis is crumbling, even the joint chiefs of staff are murmuring about, no, we need people on the ground

to be able to handle this. the dictum if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor period, if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance period, that's become even a late night talk show joke -- >> yeah, right. >> so do we think the drop in popularity has to do with the people understanding that this has been an era of falsehood telling, or is it just until they can get some kind of band-aid on the programs? >> no, i think the, i think the independents in america -- quite honest. if you see the poll numbers, you'll see this register. and a lot of it has to do with credibility. and the credibility really, you know, people don't care about

that because it doesn't affect them on a daily basis. they may not even care about taxes because so many people don't pay taxes. but they do care about it when someone down there, the nurse who lives down the street dies. you know, from something that didn't have to happen. and that's where the sense, where people really begin to pay attention. that's why they paid attention -- some presidents have signature achievements, obama had a signature lie. and that's when people started paying attention, because it hit them personally, and they caught on. i don't think there's any recovery for the obama administration. i don't -- i'm really worried about the next two years, in fact. i just hope that good things happen. hope that lord up above takes care of us somehow. yes, sir. >> hi, jack. my name is dave, and there's a debate going on now as to whether or not this current administration under obama is incompetent or if this is really their grand plan and they're achieving their objectives as

they go through? what can you speak to that issue on? >> yeah. i would say, you know, i talk about this in the book in a sense, and that is that obama's a master at the slight of hand. during the campaign in 2008 and even afterwards, people were left debating is he a pragmatist, is he a progressive, is he a socialist, a communist? or there were religious debates, christian, muslim, atheist? what they weren't debating was did he really care? i mean, how serious was he? you know, he's been immersed in leftism from his earliest days, but he always swam in the shallow end of the pool. you know, when i look at the history of the presidency, i don't see someone who cared enough to get things done. so from day one he promises he's going to close guantanamo. he has a democratic house and senate. this you can do by executive order. and six years later he's blaming the republican congress?

and unfortunately, too many people in the street think that the republicans control the congress because that's the way congress is presented to them in the media. republicans may control the congress by the time this is aired, but right now they don't. i think that's participant of it. i just -- part of it. someone says they think he wants to be a dictator, no! you've got to care. you've got to get up in the morning wanting to conquer nations and do things. that's not our president. yes, sir. >> my name's robert houston. i'm a vietnam veteran. i remember 50 years ago when i was 17 years old, i knew lbj was a liar. as far as i'm concerned, barack obama is the liar of lbj. i'm a danger to the country because i'm a gray-haired old man, and i know the truth. they wouldn't know the truth if it oscillated their gluteus maximus, as far as i'm concerned. [laughter] >> colorfully put.

>> i'm also retired, 25 years service, responsible for millions of dollars and thousands of patients. this thing with the v.a., it doesn't surprise me one bit. i'm 45 years dealing with the v.a. one way or the other. thank god most of me came home, but i could file for dual citizenship in vietnam because part of me is still there. >> thank you, sir, for your service. appreciate you coming out tonight. [applause] >> young men are suffering right now. i'd rather pay $5 a gallon for gasoline than send another person overseas. anyway, i've said enough. >> yeah. speaking to the. >> v.a., there's a curious back story to that. when obama was running for president in 2008, he told the story about how his uncle came home having liberated auschwitz, went home -- [laughter] was trauma tuesdayed by what he had seen, went up to the attic and stayed there for six months because there wasn't adequate v.a. care, right?

then someone pointed out to him, well, your mother was an only child, and your father was a kenyan. who's this uncle, you know? it was a great uncle, actually, and his great uncle was in the war, and he didn't liberate auschwitz, because the soviets liberated auschwitz which was pointed out to obama after the fact. they interviewed the uncle later on, and he said i never had any problems like that. he was interviewed, by the way, by a german magazine. but they made up that story to highlight the inequal treatment at the v.a. then later in the campaign he was speaking to a group of hispanic veterans, and he told them that -- now he changed the story. now he said his father was the one who fought under patton and people are saying, your father was like a 14-year-old kenyan, what's he doing fighting under patton, you know? [laughter] fought under patton, blah, blah,

blah. and he came home, but when he came home with problems, the v.a. took care of him. see, they take care of the white veterans, they don't take care of the hispanic ones. so he would tell stories all the time just to make a point, regardless of whether they were true or not, and often creating divisions where divisionings didn't have to exist. >> my name is stu tarlow. i have two points, and the first one falls in the category of what mr. prescott alluded to when he mentioned people defying humility. because you are responsible for urging me to write for "american thinker." t and one of the first articles or pieces that was published of mine if "american thinker" was could "don't be fooled by obama's incompetence." [laughter] and i know that i'm far more sun call than you are -- cynical than you are about that issue,

but i stand by my premise that obama is not incompetent and that he's following a design, takes in a strategy and other elements and that piece is still widely quoted all over, and you're all welcome to read it. my second point is more of a statement, not necessarily a question. it seems that obama's lies fall into several categories. there are the statements that are patently false at the time that they're uttered, and we all know it, there are the statements that facts come along to expose them as lies, and then there are the contradictions where he makes a statement and later makes another contradictory statement such as it wasn't a terrorist attack, it was a terrorist -- >> i didn't set a line in the

sand, i didn't set a red line. >> yeah. and i think, and you can say that i'm defending the president here, but i think that in that category, that last category i'd mentioned, i think there is precedent for that, and i think that i know the model that mr. obama is following when he issues a statement and then later issues a contradictory statement. and that model is the most holy quran where we know that the verses that come later render the earlier verses inoperate operative. >> could be, you know? i am, i have a chapter in the book on gaffes. to that point. and one of the gaffes -- again, this could be a kingsley gaffe where you say what you mean, but you don't want it to be said -- is when he's talking to george

stephanopoulos, and he's talking about john mccain attacking his muslim, my muslim faith, you call this. and stephanopoulos says your christian faith. he says, oh, my christian faith. [laughter] that doesn't inspire confidence, especially a person who's history so clouded. i disagree with you somewhat. i think he's following the strategy you cited. i don't think he's following it -- if he was following it well, people would warm up to it. but instead, they're doing just the opposite. he stands the real chance of alienating a great deal of america on election day, and we'll see how that workings out. concern how that works out. i'm going to take the next question. yes, sir. >> good evening, i'm bill kidd. question for you, sir. if he's not following the script -- excuse me, if he is following the script, who's writing the script for him? who's putting all those things out there?

is he doing this extemporaneously, or is this being written for him behind the scenes? >> well, i mean, you know, he has had in his life ghost writers help him out. [laughter] actually, he had two books. bill ayers helped him with his first book which was the story i broke and was punished for. the second book, though, was most likely largely written by his speech writer, young speech writer john favreau. but it was written by committee. these people, i hate to say it, they tend to think alike. when you see people up there saying that we can't ban travel out of west africa today, and you saw the democratic congress approve of that, you're thinking they don't have to be told by a larger -- no soviet union now masterminding things as they used to do right up until the end of, at the end of their era.

i think i it's self-generated. i mean, we could see valerie jarrett is doing this or that, or these other people, bill axle rod, bill ayers or whatever, but i think the will among them so collective and so oriented in the same direction, they don't need prodding from some great outside source. my opinion. anyone else who hasn't spoken yet who hasn't raised a question? yes, ma'am. >> i'm beverly worth. i have a question for you, jack. today i found out that barack obama deployed the national guard to west africa. now, my question is, isn't he pushing the envelope as far as his legal grounds of these young men? they didn't sign up to fight infectious disease, they signed up to protect our country.

>> i would say yes and no to that. i mean, i think it was complicated by fact that they may die, can they may kill other people back home fighting infectious disease. i think it's within the, you know, the province of the president to do that. the one -- i'm going to vary a little bit from that question. i'm going to tell you about, in the book i talk about one action that didn't get attention that deserves attention that i think was fully unconstitutional was our initial engagement in libya. and in 2011 when we went in, we went in -- obama told us. first of all, he doesn't mention it at the state of the union speech. as far as anyone knows, because john mccain told us just a year earlier, libya was our ally in fighting terror. gadhafi was our ally in fighting terror, bad guy that he was. two month later we're signing on to lead from behind in attacking libya. and the reason obama gave was

that there was an imminent bloodbath in benghazi from gadhafi if we did not engage him and that we would leave a rwanda-sized stain on the conscience of the world if we did not get engaged in libya. now, there was a fellow named alan cooperman, he's a harvard guy, democrat strategist, he went in and did the math. he said, look, the surest way of knowing whether there'd be a bloodbath is what happened in misrata, the second largest city in libya, i believe. when gadhafi fought the rebels there, only 200 people died, and they were all soldiers. no women were killed, no children were killed. there's no bloodbath. why would he not duplicate that in benghazi? what was the imminent bloodbath? but, in fact, this was the same strategy bill clinton used in

serbia, in kosovo in 1999. it worked then, it worked now. let's take one more question because i know these guys want to wrap up. yes, ma'am, in the back. why don't you come on up, okay? >> okay. first of all, thank you so much for being here, and i can't wait to read your book. >> oh, great. >> and my question is, do you personally think that we will be able to flip the senate in three weeks? >> well, you know, kind of interesting because this show won't be on until after that. [laughter] >> what do you think now? >> so i'm going to give -- i'm going to skirt that answer altogether. i think there's a good chance we'll do that. i think there's a chance we will. [applause] i don't want to seem to be a prognosticator. okay, last question, ma'am. okay. >> i just want to say this: when dineshty size d'souza wrote the book "root of obama's rage --" and we all need to pray for him because he's being closely

monitored by the government. >> yes. >> anyway, the thing is, is that what has come of movie and the book and all the information that came out is that obama -- and this is something that a lot of the low information voters do not understand, what a non-colonialist is. >> right. >> they don't know what that is or care probably. but the thing is that when you look at how his mother had to live and it's even in "dreams from my father" that she had to go to the bathroom over a hole in the ground and all that. now, he apparently resented that. >> i would too. >> you know, that his mother had to live by that. and by the way, she left her second husband when he wanted to join and fight with the, our side. >> right. >> okay, so she left him then.

but the thing is, i think that if -- i'm not saying the man is a muslim, okay? what i'm saying is if he were, i don't think he would do anything different from what he's been doing and is doing now including helping the, or the result of having isis. i don't know if they've taken baghdad yet. i don't think so. but i know that they, that they're just marching on and on and on. and i i don't -- this is what i don't get. if he has all of us, if he has all these millions come in from the southern border and bringing all the diseases, he's trying to turn us, i think -- with the help of the money of george soros -- the money, he's trying to turn us into a third world country. i do think he's doing that to get even with us, and i think to

prove it the first thing he did was ask to have the bust of winston churchill removed from the white house because britain did something to his grandfather in the rebellion. [laughter] >> good points. many points well made. now, here's -- to sum up your question, here's the problem with where we are right now in our obama -- [inaudible] whatever the world is. [laughter] there's so much we don't know. i mean, you know, shameful thing -- and i address this in the american media -- is we know more literally about george washington's first two years than we know about barack obama. i mean, jesus christ's birth was much better documented than barack obama's. that's 2,000 years ago. [laughter] and so we're left six years into the president i with a cipher. -- presidency with a cipher. big holes. and we can only speculate.

and when people like you and i speculate, the people in washington -- [laughter] how dare they say that. well, i haven't seen anyone inside the beltway talk about what a literary genius obama is in a couple years now. so sometimes word does get out. but in the meantime, i want to thank you all for coming and thank you for keeping the faith, and go, royals, okay? [laughter] [applause] ..

on booktv. >> doctors jennifer percy, kenneth macleish and kayla williams at third had the 2014 southern festival of books in nashville, tenn. to discuss the topic of war and its aftermath. the authors all have reason books on the topic. be advised ver