[VIDEO] Trump on Obamacare: "Insurance Companies Are Making A Fortune Because They Have Control Of Politicians"

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS: Gentlemen, the next series of questions deals with Obamacare and the role of the federal government. Mr. Trump, Obamacare is one of the things you call a disaster. 

DONALD TRUMP: Complete disaster, yes.

BAIER: Saying it needs to be repealed and replaced.

TRUMP: Correct.

BAIER: Now 15 years ago you called yourself a liberal on health care. You were for a single-payer system, a Canadian style system. Why were you for that then and why aren't you for it now? 

TRUMP: First of all I'd like to go back to [Iraq] -- in July of 2004 I came out strongly against the war with Iraq because it was going to destabilize the Middle East. I'm the only one on the stage that knew that and had the vision to say it and that's exactly what happened. So I just want to say that. 

As far as single-payer, it works in Canada, works incredibly well in Scotland. Could have worked in a different age, which is the age you're talking about here. What I would like to see is a private system without the artificial lines around every state. I have a big company with thousands and thousands of employees and if I'm negotiating in New York or New Jersey or California, I have like one bidder. 

Nobody can bid. You know why? The insurance companies are making a fortune because they have control of the politicians. Of course with the exception of the politicians on the stage. But they have total control of the politicians. They're making a fortune.

Via: Real Clear Politics Video

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How Will the 10 Candidates in Fox News' GOP Primary Debate Be Selected? share this email

The clock is ticking for GOP presidential candidates to get into the top ten spots to be included in Fox News' Republican presidential primary debate on Aug. 6.

On "Hannity" tonight, one of the anchors of that debate, Bret Baier, explained the criteria for how those top ten contenders will be chosen.

Baier said that candidates must be in the top ten of five national polls from major organizations.

The determination of who is on the stage will be announced at 6p ET on Tuesday, Aug. 4, he added.

For the candidates who don't make the cut, they will still have an opportunity to be on the stage and speak to Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum before the official debate.

"All of the candidates will be there in Cleveland, we expect," Baier said.

Baier also revealed how some of the candidates are currently doing in recent polls.

Watch more from "Hannity" above.

Via: Fox Insider

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[VIDEO] Krauthammer: It Will Snow in Hell Before DOJ Launches Criminal Investigation into Hillary

On Fox News today, Bret Baier brought the subject to Hillary Clinton‘s emails, which got renewed media focus following a report that the Department of Justice received requests to open a criminal investigation into the scandal. The DOJ later backtracked by saying that the referral they received was not actually criminal in nature.

After reading a statement from a Clinton spokesman, Baier said that it was a common maneuver of Hillary to place the blame on “reckless, inaccurate leaks” whenever she is being pressed on her emails.

Charles Krauthammer agreed, saying that whether the Times report was false or not, the substance of the charges against Clinton are still present, and she is trying to create distractions and shift blame onto others.

He said it’s be up to the DOJ to actually determine the criminality of any charges brought against Clinton, but was doubtful on that prospect, saying “I think it will snow in Hell before the DOJ is going to go after her.”

Krauthammer also blasted the DOJ as “an extremely politicized department,” saying they weren’t going after her for being untruthful like they were when former CIA director David Petraeus was discovered having an extramarital affair.

He concluded by saying that even though Clinton insisted otherwise at her speech today, the intelligence community made it clear that the emails she sent out had classified information, and she resisted handing them over.

Via: Mediaite

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Ben Carson Dodges CNN’s LGBT Question: Can’t We Talk About Something ‘More Important?’

In an interview on Fox News Wednesday night,Ben Carson said he doesn’t equate gay rights with civil rights because he’s never seen a “straight only” water fountain. So, when he joined CNN’s Brianna Keilar by phone Thursday afternoon, she had a very simple question for the Republican presidential candidate: “Do you think that gay Americans are discriminated against, that they face discrimination?”

Over the next two minutes, Keilar asked him some variation of that question at least six more times. At first Carson said he didn’t want to talk about the “gay issue” except to repeat the question he posed to Fox News’ Bret Baier: “What position can a person take who has no animosity toward gay people, but believes in the traditional definition of marriage that would be acceptable?”

Keilar decided not to take a stab at that one but instead told Carson she felt it was “fair” to ask him her original question because as a candidate for president part of his job was to explain his positions. When she repeated her question, he would only say that the Constitution “protects every single American” and “everybody has equal rights, nobody has extra rights.”

“Can we move on to something more important?” Carson asked, as Keilar attempted to elicit a yes or no answer. “Is there anything more important to talk about?”

After she asked him two more times, Carson admitted that “every group faces some type of discrimination,” including Christians. “I wish we would talk more about that.”

When Carson insisted he had answered her question, Keilar stated, for the record, “I think you gave me part of an answer, but not a complete one.”

Via: Mediaite

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Krauthammer On Obama: 'Who Cares What He Feels?'

BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our diplomacy as it worked respect to Iran, where for the first time in a decade we've halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you square that with the IAEA announcing that they a 20 percent increase in their nuclear field?

EARNEST: The IAEA report that was published at the end of last week is merely a snapshot in time. And the joint plan of action requires Iran by the end of that joint plan of action period, in this case by June 30th, to be at the appropriate cap on their stockpile.

(WATCH VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Well, the snapshot in time is the time over the last 18 months as this nuclear deal has been being negotiated with Iran, the nuclear fuel increasing by 20 percent according to the IAEA. This as a former key aide to the commander in chief telling the Israeli press that the president was pretty frustrated by the perception that he wasn't a strong supporter of Israel. David Axelrod telling Israeli TV Channel Two the president said to him, he also recalled Obama venting in a moment of contemplation, telling, "You know, I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office. For people to say that I am anti-Israel or even worse, anti- Semitic, it hurts."

So with all this, let's bring in our panel, Steve Hayes, senior writer for "The Weekly Standard," Mara Liasson, National Political Correspondent of National Public Radio, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. Mara?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, in terms of Iran increasing its nuclear stockpile, I mean, Josh Earnest just stated a fact, which is according to the agreement it's supposed to get rid of it all by June 30th. What he didn't say is how they are going to, and why if they are trying to negotiate an end to the nuclear weapons program they were increasing their nuclear weapons program as the negotiations were going on.

So it's not a good sign. You know, if the administration does get something that it says is good, it's going to have a lot of explaining to do.

Via: Fox News

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"Special Report" Runs Down Early 2016 GOP Primary Schedule

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Last night we announced the first GOP debate of the presidential season, August 6th in Cleveland, 11 weeks from now.

Fox News and Facebook will host. Tonight, how the primary calendar is shaping up. Here's senior national correspondent John Roberts.

JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: After the chaos of 2012, when a race to be first nearly pushed the Iowa caucuses into Christmas week, Republicans are counting on a far more orderly calendar this time around.

IOWA REPUBLICAN: We're confident it's going to be February 1st. We haven't heard any serious indications of any state jumping ahead of us.

ROBERTS: At the moment, Iowa will kick off the first of the primary season on the first of February.

New Hampshire follows a week later.

South Carolina is Saturday Feb. 20th with Nevada on the 23rd.

Under new rules laid down by the Republican National Committee, those are the only states that can go in February.

Anyone who tries to upset the apple cart will face harsh penalties.

REINCE PRIEBUS, RNC: In the past states could jump around and the penalties were basically slaps on the wrist. And they really weren't upheld. Where nowadays the rules that we've changed actually almost completely eliminate a state's relevancy.

ROBERTS: March 1st is the next big date highlighted by the primary in Texas, a so-called S.E.C. primary, banding together with Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas.

GEORGIA REPUBLICAN: It's well warranted. The south is growing. There's a lot of people moving here. We should be involved in the process of deciding who the nominees will be.

ROBERTS: By March 8th, some 50% of delegates will be awarded but in such a wide field no one may have broken from the pack.

Which makes the March 15th contest in Florida extremely important. It will be the first winner take all state. 

It's then that a clear front runner may emerge or as some Republicans fear, a prolonged battle may shape up.

PREIBUS: I think we've set it up in such a way to give us the best process that allows for the most participation and a quicker resolution. Now, that doesn't mean it's always going to happen that way.

ROBERTS: And while Iowans are at the moment confident their outsized influence will be preserved, don't expect they'll take any challenge to their supremacy lying down...

Much of the primary calendar remains in flux with many states still considering moves. While there may not be a competition to go first, it's clear everyone wants a bigger say in who the nominee is.

Via: Real Clear Politics

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Kirsten Powers: I'm Tired of 'Having to Defend This President' and ObamaCare

KIRSTEN POWERS: Well, I think his explanation is probably the true explanation, that they need to do this, but at the same time, it's now gotten to the point where it seems like there's an exemption made for pretty much everybody except for individuals. A lot of people who have really been screwed over by the law, you know, who are left without insurance or with extremely expensive insurance. So, I think that Ron Fournier of The National Journal wrote something that ran today about --

BRET BAIER: This was after he expressed himself last night on the panel.

POWERS: The headline is why I'm getting tired of defending Obamacare. And I'm going to say amen, brother, because it's exactly how I feel. People who have supported the law, who support universal health care, are constantly put in the position of having to defend this president, who has really incompetently put this together, rolled it out, and that's why he has to do this. It's why he has to keep doing this, because it's not working.

Via: Fox News

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Brit Hume's AWESOME Takedown of Obama: The Jobless Benefits Push Is an Admission of Your Own Failure

Hume: Jobless benefits push an admission of WH 'failure'?

Fox Senior Political analyst Brit Hume sounds off on the political implications of jobless benefits extension fight

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BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Senior political analyst, Brit Hume, has some thoughts tonight on the political and practical fallout from the fight over the jobless benefits. Good evening, Brit.

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hello, Bret. The administration's appeal for a further extension of unemployment benefits may succeed in putting Congressional Republicans in a tight spot if they resist. In that sense, it may be a shrewd political move, yet embedded in it is an extraordinary acknowledgment of failure by the president and his party.

We're now four and a half years into an economic recovery that Democrats keep telling us is getting better all the time, yet, the job market remains so weak, the jobless rate so high that the president considers it an emergency. Indeed, that is the official name of these extended benefits, emergency unemployment compensation. Normally, unemployment payments run out after 26 weeks, but that was extended five years ago to 99 weeks and has been repeatedly extended since.

Now though, it's running out for an estimated 1.3 million people. No one is arguing that these benefits should go on forever, and the White House notes it is only asking for another three more months at a cost of about $6 billion. So, will that be the end of it? Will the emergency at last be over? All Obama advisor, Gene Sperling, would say today is that three months would provide time to discuss what to do for the rest of the year.

Upon taking office, the president and the party set two big goals. One was to revive the economy, the other to reform health care. The Obamacare mess tells us where we are on one, the call for further unemployment payments tells us where we are on the other -- Bret.

BAIER: Well, the White House denies this, but what about this as a political tool and what are the prospects of jobless benefits getting through this Congress?

HUME: Well, if the administration and the Democrats are willing to find some offsets -- another spending to cover the cost of these extended unemployment benefits, my guess is it sells through. If they don't, Republicans at least have a talking point to counter the administration's argument that they once again typical Republicans are being hard-hearted and not showing sufficient compassion to downtrodden and those who are out of work.

I still think the issue has some mileage for the president and his party, particularly, if the Republicans resist, but I don't think it overcomes the other issues that I mentioned earlier.

BAIER: Okay, Brit, thank you.

HUME: You bet.

Via: Fox News

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Here is the email I read on the air tonight by Bret Baier

This message came to us from Bill in Kentucky. 

"Putting things in perspective: March 21st 2010 to October 1 2013 is 3 years, 6 months, 10 days.  December 7, 1941 to May 8, 1945 is 3 years, 5 months, 1 day.  What this means is that in the time we were attacked at Pearl Harbor to the day Germany surrendered is not enough time for this progressive federal government to build a working webpage.  Mobilization of millions, building tens of thousands of tanks,  planes, jeeps, subs, cruisers, destroyers, torpedoes, millions upon millions of guns, bombs, ammo, etc. Turning the tide in North Africa,  Invading Italy, D-Day,  Battle of the Bulge, Race to Berlin - all while we were also fighting the Japanese in the Pacific!!  And in that amount of time - this administration can't build a working webpage."

Via: Daily Brett Blog

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Hume: Tea Party pushed budget stand-off because GOP 'utterly failed' to restrain bloated gov't

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume explained on "Special Report With Bret Baier" Monday night why Tea Party Republicans originally started their confrontation with Democrats over the bid to defund ObamaCare. 

He argued that they're taking an unconventional approach, because the mainstream GOP has "utterly failed" to stop the growth of government. 

Hume said: 

"Veteran political observers on both the left and right are still trying to figure out what the House Tea Party caucus and its Senate pied piper Ted Cruz were thinking when they insisted on using the threat of a government shutdown to defund ObamaCare. 

"It was a hopeless strategy that has not only failed in its stated goal, but helped send the Republican Party to its lowest favorability ratings ever. 

"In conventional terms, it seems inexplicable, but Senator Cruz and his adherents do not view things in conventional terms. They look back over the past half-century, including the supposedly golden era of Ronald Reagan, and see the uninterrupted forward march of the American left. Entitlement spending never stopped growing. The regulatory state continued to expand. The national debt grew and grew and finally in the Obama years, exploded. They see an American population becoming unrecognizable from the free and self-reliant people they thought they knew. And they see the Republican Party as having utterly failed to stop the drift toward an unfree nation supervised by an overweening and bloated bureaucracy. They are not interested in Republican policies that merely slow the growth of this leviathan. They want to stop it and reverse it. And they want to show their supporters they'll try anything to bring that about. 

"And if some of those things turn out to be reckless and doomed, well so be it."

Via: Fox News

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NY Times Called Bush’s 2.7% GDP a ‘Letdown,’ But Obama’s Lower GDP a ‘Steady Improvement’

The leftist bias of the New York Times beautifully encapsulated in seven words used about a week before two presidential elections. Headline over Saturday’s editorial on the third quarter GDP creeping up to 2.0 percent under Democrat Barack Obama: “Slow but Steady Improvement.” Headline twenty years ago (October 29, 1992) when Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush was in the White House and the third quarter GDP nearly doubled to 2.7 percent: “Gross National Letdown.”

FNC’s Bret Baier noted the contrasting spins, speculating in his Tuesday night “Grapevine” segment: “The New York Times seems to be changing with the time when it comes to interpreting the country’s economic outlook.”

He then read from the portions of the two editorials which were highlighted in Monday’s “Best of the Web Today,” where James Taranto headlined his item: “Two Papers in One!”

From the New York Times editorial, “Gross National Letdown,” of Thursday October 29, 1992:

President Bush smiled when he learned this week that economic growth during the third quarter reached a surprising 2.7 percent, almost twice the previous rate. But his smile shouldn’t be broad. The new figure almost certainly exaggerates the health of the economy, which continues to creep along at a painfully slow pace. Even the 2.7 figure is half the normal rate of recovery and not enough to bring down unemployment.

New York Times editorial, “Slow but Steady Improvement,” from Saturday October 27, 2012:

The slow pace of the nation’s economic recovery has picked up a bit lately. In the third quarter, the economy grew at an annual rate of 2 percent, beating expectations and the dismal 1.3 percent growth in the second quarter. Over the past year, the growth rate has been 2.3 percent. At that pace, there’s enough momentum to keep unemployment, currently 7.8 percent, from getting much worse.

Via: Newsbusters,
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Report: Jihadist Who Led Benghazi Attack Was A Former Gitmo Detainee, Released By U.S. In 2007…

On tonight’s Special Report, Bret Baier reported on an exclusive breaking news alert: intelligence sources are convinced the Mideast attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya was directly tied to Al Qaeda.

Catherine Herridge reported that they believe that Sufyan Ben Qumu (whose name has also been transliterated as Sofiane Ibrahim Gammu) was likely involved in the attack, and even may have led the attack on the consulate.

Qumu – a Libyan – was released from the US prison atGuantanamo Bay in 2007 and transferred to Libyan custody under the condition that he would be kept in jail. He wasn’t.

According to his Gitmo files, he was also tied to 9/11 financiers, and his alias is “found on a list of probable Al Qaeda personnel receiving monthly stipends and family support.”

CLICK HERE FOR THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT: Gitmo Transfer Papers for Al Qaeda Employee Who May Have Led Libya Attack

Via: Fox News Insider

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