Beck: I "Hated" Bush for the Bailouts!

Glenn Beck claims he has the archives to prove how much he hated President Bush at the time of the bailouts. It's curious that Beck doesn't feel the need to show us any of these archives to back up his point. He goes on to say this:

He [Obama] will say that Bush started us down the path toward socialism, and he’d be right by that. Bush started the crazy spending. He would be right again. Bush started the bailouts. Yes, he did — hated him for it.

That's not how most people remember Beck behaving at the time. Indeed, his own archives show that he was falling over backwards to explain why the bailout needed to be done.

Last week, our financial system was -- October 1929, it was a heartbeat away from experiencing its own 9/11. But there were no cameras there. There were no live television feeds, no horrifying pictures or stunned news anchors to make it all seem real for us. To most of us, it`s like it never even happened.

But Beck assured people that something terrible had, indeed, happened. He then spelt out the consequences according to Paulson if the US did nothing.

OK. Dennis, you wrote just an absolutely fantastic article on this. Let me -- let me go back to the actual Wednesday night. When he was looking at the money markets, when he saw that no one was willing to lend any business any kind of money in America, he knew at that point, Paulson did, we`ve got to do something. We have to meet with the president, and we have to bail all these -- have a massive just change in strategy.

One of his people said, "What happens if they don`t do this?"

And he responded with something that should shake Americans to their core. He said, "If they don`t do this, then heaven help us all," right?

Beck then reminded the viewer that Paulson wasn't the only person making these Armageddon like claims:

OK. Dennis, the -- there was a report that came out that said Bernanke, who is always very -- these Fed guys are always very measured in what they said. He said -- he met with members of Congress. He said, you`re going to have massive failures within days. Large brand-name companies could go under in the next few days.

Christopher Dodd said it was as sobering a meeting as any of us have ever attended in our careers here. People who saw these congressmen leaving the meeting said they were shocked by the pictures of Armageddon that came from Bernanke.

[..]

Bernanke would never speak in Armageddon-type terms if it really wasn`t.

So, having prepared his viewer for supporting the bailout, by telling us that Bernanke and Paulson were always very "measured" and wouldn't talk of Armageddon unless that was, indeed, what was upon us; he finally said the words:

To put it in another way, we are in the middle of an all-out financial emergency, and emergencies have a way of really testing people. In normal times, under normal circumstances, if you tune in to me, you know me as somebody who would tell the federal government exactly where to take their bailout plan and shove it right up their you know what.

But these are anything but normal times. I thought about it an awful lot this weekend, and while it takes everything in me to say this, I think the bailout is the right thing do.

And not only was it the right thing to do, but Beck insisted it wasn't big enough to sort the problem:

The "REAL STORY" is the $700 billion that you`re hearing about now is not only, I believe, necessary, it is also not nearly enough, and all of the weasels in Washington know it.

I happen to think Beck was right when he stated that the bailout was the right thing to do. Because, it was either do that or watch financial Armageddon.

But, Beck is simply flat out lying when he states that, at the time, he "hated" Bush for doing it. He didn't. He said, "while it takes everything in me to say this, I think the bailout is the right thing do."

That's wasn't hating Bush, that was agreeing with him.

Hat tip to Think Progress.

Tags: Glenn Beck, Bush, Obama, bailouts