Alright, I’ve always kinda appreciated the fact that he’s an “honest” conservative, and I’ve always enjoyed watching his commentary on MSNBC. He has kind of a quirky agenda, which means that even though I oppose him ideologically, almost all liberals find a few areas of overlap with the man (Iraq? Trade?) But I think he officially won me over with an exchange on Morning Joe today with Lawrence Kudlow.
To set the scene, Mika Brzezinski played lead host today, with Pat Buchanan, Mike Barnicle, and (oddly) Jack Welch rounding out the panel. Early in the show, Welch celebrated the fact that former NYSE chief Dick Grasso won the full amount of his pension – $187 million. Grasso is best remembered as Elliot Spitzer ’s #1 target during his days as NY Attorney General, and later in his um… shortened term as governor. Buchanan grumbled a bit about Welch’s praise of Grasso, but mostly stayed quiet on the subject until Lawrence Kudlow came on set as a late-morning guest:
BUCHANAN: We’ve had the worst month since the Great Depression, and last night, you were celebrating the fact that Mr. Grasso has been awarded…
BRZEZINSKI: Oh dear…
BUCHANAN: … his $190…
KUDLOW: Dick Grasso, a friend.
BUCHANAN: OK… Dick. Do you think he deserves a $190 million thing?
KUDLOW: I do.
WELCH: Me too.
BUCHANAN (to Jack Welch): You said he was earning peanuts at the New York Stock Exchange…
WELCH: Not peanuts…
BUCHANAN: … Define peanuts.
WELCH: No, I didn’t say that because I said his pay is a pension pay-out over 35 years of work.
BUCHANAN: But what was he getting a salary for those 35 years?
WELCH: We all put in money in pensions and so do you, and so does, uh…
BUCHANAN: But you guys are portraying him as Captain Dreyfuss on Devil’s Island.
WELCH: No, we’re not.
KUDLOW: I don’t portray him. What I said on Kudlow and Company last night, I want to repeat it here – thank you very much – Dick Grasso is a great American… for a number of reasons. At 9/11 – which was, as you well know, a very difficult time in American history – in the next ten days, with Herculean efforts, he got the New York Stock Exchange, which is the symbol of capitalism that the terrorists were trying to attack…
BUCHANAN: Alright, did he…
KUDLOW: He got it up and going.
BUCHANAN: Alright, did he…
KUDLOW: Herculean efforts to get it going. The shot heard round the world…
BUCHANAN: Alright, let me ask you…
KUDLOW: … the day that stock market opened it was said to the terrorists, ‘you guys are not going to defeat this country.’ Right there is worth $100 million in my opinion.
BUCHANAN: Did he get a $5 million bonus for doing that?
KUDLOW: He got… I don’t know what the details…
BUCHANAN: He got a $5 million bonus… what did the guys…
KUDLOW: From the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange.
BUCHANAN: But what did the guys down…
KUDLOW: Listen. Whatever MSNBC’s paying you, Pat, that’s between you and MSNBC.
BUCHANAN: Alright, forget…
KUDLOW: We can debate whether you earn it. We can debate whether I earn it at CNBC.
BUCHANAN: Alright…
KUDLOW: They made a contract with Grasso, and there is no way that Elliot Spitzer – who has lost every case he has ever brought into court – there is no way he should’ve done that, except for crass political reasons, and he lost.
BUCHANAN: Let me as you a question…
KUDLOW: He lost, Spitzer, and Grasso won.
BUCHANAN: Alright, but what about the guys that are pulling the bodies out of the trade center? How many of them got a $5 million bonus for the work they were doing?
KUDLOW: That is… look… they were doing… God bless every one of them, let me say that first. They were doing their job, Grasso was doing his job. And his job was absolutely essential. Whatever he was paid, it was not up to Elliot Spitzer…
BUCHANAN (laughing): But look…
KUDLOW: … to negate his contract.
BARNICLE (laughing): I’m…
BUCHANAN: $190 million bucks going away present and after 9/11 ?!? You don’t see the problem there?!
KUDLOW: He earned… wait a second… I don’t…
BUCHANAN: the problem in middle America?
KUDLOW: I don’t see any middle America… Middle America does not want to take from the rich, Mr. Obama. You sound like Obama on this for God’s sake.
BRZEZINSKI: Wow…
BUCHANAN (looking at the headline about Grasso): Take from the rich? (laughs)
KUDLOW: Middle America does not want to take from the rich. Middle America wants people to do their jobs and open up opportunity. And I want to say, the New York Stock Exchange in particular, at that moment in history, was precisely what the Al Qaedas were going for.
(Buchanan turns to Barnicle in disbelief)
KUDLOW: They wanted to cripple American finance, and for Grasso to have gotten that open in ten days was Herculean.
BUCHANAN (laughing, to Barnicle, who now has his hand on Buchanan’s shoulder): They were after Grasso???
BARNICLE: I gotta tell you… I gotta tell you…
BUCHANAN: They were after Grasso???
KUDLOW: Symbolically, they were after…
BUCHANAN: Come on! They were after Grasso and the stock exhange???
KUDLOW: … the epicenter of finance in this country which is the center of…
BUCHANAN: You are confusing…
KUDLOW: … and they got whooped…
BUCHANAN: You’re confusing…
KUDLOW: because of Grasso.
BUCHANAN: … you’re confusing finance with America.
KUDLOW: No, I’m…
BUCHANAN: They were killing Americans, my friend.
KUDLOW: Yes they were, but they targeted the World Trade Center…
BUCHANAN: The biggest, the tall… the largest buildings in town.
KUDLOW: … and downtown for good reason. They knew just what they were doing symbolically…
BARNICLE: This is fabulous…
KUDLOW: And they ran up against, they ran up against a tough Italian worker who put the thing back together in days… this is ten days…
BARNICLE: This is terrific…
BUCHANAN: Why were they going after…
KUDLOW: … and did the country a service.
BUCHANAN: Why were they also later on targeting the Sears Tower?
KUDLOW: Well, they…
BUCHANAN: Because they were against consumers, or what?
KUDLOW: I’ll tell you Pat, because there’s a lot of Dick Grassos around to help this country defend against these bombing attacks, and let me add one more Dick Grasso who never gets credit, and that guy’s name is George W. Bush because this country is safe now, seven years after those attacks.
BUCHANAN (looking at the newspaper headline about Grasso): He not only got credit, he got $190 million bucks.
KUDLOW: He earned that over 35 years. And if you take that away from him…
BUCHANAN: Where, what is his salary? Are you telling me he didn’t get a salary?
KUDLOW: He was vested in pension…
BUCHANAN: Did he get a salary for 35 years, and can you tell me what it was in 2000?
KUDLOW: He started out earning about $100 a week for God’s sakes as a runner in the back office…
BUCHANAN: What should he get… $5 million a year for a runner?
KUDLOW: He’s the American dream, Dick Grasso, and I celebrate it.
WELCH: Pat — you are fighting the battle that exists out there today, and that is the battle ‘what’s right for CEO pay?’
BUCHANAN: Yeah.
WELCH: And that is a steady argument between…
BRZEZINSKI: Excess…
WELCH: … what one group would like to pay or free market. Or free market.
BUCHANAN: This is free mar…
WELCH: (shouts) Or free market!
BUCHANAN: Free market is a bunch of directors saying ‘here’s $190 million bucks?!’
WELCH: Because that’s what they thought they had to pay Dick Grasso…
BUCHANAN: To do what?
WELCH: To keep him doing the job he was doing. That’s the choice.
BARNICLE: We could stop right now…
BRZEZINSKI: Oh no, please.
BARNICLE: I’ve achieved one of my life’s goals, and that is to see Pat Buchanan involved in a class warfare argument on my side.
BRZEZINSKI: Yes!
KUDLOW: Pat sounds just like Obama. In fact, with faith-based initiatives, Buchanan’s probably going to declare for Obama any day now. ‘Get those rich guys, they’re ruinin’ the country.’ But it’s a pleasure to see you reading the New York Times. Does my heart good.
By the way, before I started typing this up, I checked around – Google News’d it and whatnot. I now have what appears to be the only transcript on these here internets of this exchange. I also (at word count 1,359) apparently have too much time on my hands. Still, my thanks to Tivo.
As a sidenote, at the end of the show – the ‘What We Have Learned Today’ segment, Mike Barnicle stated that he used to think Joe McCarthy was Pat Buchanan’s idol, but “turns out it’s Eugene Debs.” Nice.
and later in his um… shortened term as governor.
Well, we can’t all have a long term.
Mika, being the bimbo that she is, uttered:
Oh dear
wow
excess
yes
Pat Buchanan’s new book makes some great points but falls apart when he spins he tries to spin his antisemitism in to something he thinks people can digest. He poises him self in a position where you have to agree with him, but then drops a bomb in your lap. Nice tactics, but none the less futile. I suggest reading this book review on his new book.
Thanks for the post
You’re welcome
Isn’t there a video clip of this somewhere?
Would be PRICELESS!
If there is, I’ve never been able to find it. It is too bad because it certainly was priceless.