November 28, 2000 [ Cheers and applause ] Bill: All righty, thank you very much. Let's meet our panel. He's the controversial midday man on 790 A.M. talk radio, Al Rantel. Al? [ Cheers and applause ]

Al Rantel: Yes.

Bill: There's Al. How are you? Good to have you back. A very, very talented actress, she can currently be seen on "The District," and her "Divas Simply Singing" CD is available at Virgin Megastores everywhere, Sheryl Lee Ralph. [ Cheers and applause ]

Sheryl: Hello. Bill: Hello, babe. How you doing?

Sheryl: Fine, thank you. Bill: He is an international icon who transcends the millennia. Wow, who did you pay for that intro? [ Laughter ] I don't say that about anybody, but for you I would. A swell star who could be the world's leader himself, Adam West is right here! [ Cheers and applause ]

Adam: Thank you, Bill. Bill: Transcend the millennia.

Adam: You got any dimples in your chad? Bill: And the very funny comedian, to say the least, talented actor, and the author of the book -- where's the book -- "Why Not Me?" Oh, you should have this. It's so appropriate at this moment in history to have a book called "Why Not Me?," the seer, Al Franken. [ Cheers and applause ] Okay. Well, I want to get to tonight the Bush transition team, because that's -- but before I do, you know, let's get to something else which has been bothering me. Which is people are saying that Dick Cheney should step down, because over Thanksgiving, you know over Thanksgiving, people usually do what they traditionally do. Most people eat Turkey with their family. Robert Downey Jr. had drugs in a hotel room. [ Laughter ] And Dick Cheney had a heart attack. People do what they just normally do. [ Laughter ] And I -- [ Applause ] I don't like Dick Cheney. I don't agree with much of what he says, but I defend his right to have a heart attack or as many as he wants. I'm going to be 50 myself not that long from now, and I object to this idea that, you know, this guy should recuse himself or somehow step out of the race just because he's had four or five heart attacks. [ Light laughter ] I'm serious. I think that's ageist.

Adam: No, I think George W. should step out because of his boil. [ Laughter ] Really, Bill, to me –

Al Franken: He's only had one boil. br>
Bill: Yeah.

Adam: To me it's about as ludicrous. I think Cheney's a very strong and good man, and his doctors have given him a good prognosis. He doesn't live the lifestyle of Oscar Wilde, you know. Al Rantel: And what's the worst thing that could happen?

Bill: What does that mean? [ Light laughter ] His daughter's gay.

Adam: True.

Bill: That's what gave him one of his heart attacks. [ Laughter ]

Adam: Nothing shocks me.

Al Franken: The most interesting thing to me wasn't the heart attack, although it was interesting, thank God he's recovering.

Adam: Are you a doctor?

Al Franken: I think that he should stay as the defeated vice presidential candidate, which he will be in a couple of weeks. But -- [ Cheers and applause ] -- When all the votes are counted. [ Laughter ] But what I found interesting was how -- what a poor job Bush did with his press conference immediately -- when he was sent out to reassure everyone. And --

Bill: An anxious nation. [ Light laughter ]

Al Franken: Yeah. But, you'll remember that he had already had his angioplasty, but Bush said he's fine. "I talked to him, he's fine. It was just precautionary. He's vigorous." And he didn't mention it, and they didn't, evidently, tell Bush that he had had an angioplasty, because I don't think they thought he could pronounce angioplasty. [ Laughter and applause ] So now the Bush people are defending this by saying, "He's not a doctor. That's why we didn't tell him. He's not a doctor."

Bill: You know, that's -- that's what Bob Dole -- that's exactly what Bob Dole said in '96. Bob Dole, who took a lot of, like many politicians, tobacco money, and they said, "Do you think that there's a connection between cancer and cigarette smoking?," and Dole said, "I'm not a doctor." [ Laughter ] "How can I answer that question, not being a medical man myself?"

Al Rantel: And he probably went on viagra. But, you know, the worst thing that could happen with Dick Cheney is what? I mean, why worry about it now? If anything happens to Dick Cheney, George W. Bush would have to choose a replacement, assuming he's even president, if Al's people don't steal the election -- and the -- [ Mixed cheers and boos ]

Al Franken: The person's who stealing --

Sheryl: Al's people are my people. We are the same people. [ Cheers and applause ]

Bill: Okay.

Adam: Isn't there --

Bill, isn't there something, a safeguard setup in the Constitution for this?

Bill: Yes.

Adam: I believe so.

Bill: I believe -- [ All talking at once ]

Sheryl: But the part that gets me, I'm not a doctor. Batman takes over. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a lawyer, but guys, gentlemen, the man has had a couple of heart attacks into the second most --

Bill: So? Four.

Sheryl: -- Four, going into the second most powerful office in the world.

Bill: You know what?

Al Rantel: If you don't like him, you ought to be --

Sheryl: It's not a migraine, it's a heart attack, people!

Bill: If you took away all the presidents who had severe problems, you would never have had Kennedy, FDR --

Adam: That's right.

Sheryl: What's wrong with Kennedy?

Bill: He was dying when he ran.

Al Rantel: He had a really bad disease. [ Light laughter ] He did.

Sheryl: Really?

Bill: Kennedy was on steroids and lots of stuff. You wouldn't have Kennedy, you wouldn't have FDR.

Sheryl: FDR wasn't -- FDR had what --

Bill: He was dying when he ran. He was dying, and Reagan, of course --

Sheryl: Oh, well. [ Laughter ]

Bill: -- And Woodrow Wilson. I mean, it's a stressful life. They're all not in perfect health.

Al Franken: Okay, but he's only going to be vice president. I mean --

Sheryl: Only?

Al Franken: If --

Bill: Right.

Al Franken: If they steal the election, he'll only be vice president. And you know, he'll -- he'll be fine. He'll be fine, and he should, he shouldn't really, like, go back to work right away. I know that. So they've assigned him -- because they want to give the impression that they want -- because they want to run out the clock and make it a fait accompli, then give everyone the impression that they won, which they did not. They will -- I'll say, now the transition's starting, and he's starting it, which is very irresponsible for a guy who had a heart attack a few days ago. Also, just for public relations purposes, the rule is when you've had a heart attack, and they've done an angioplasty on you, you go out in a wheelchair.

Bill: Right. Anything from a hospital, you go out in a wheelchair.

Al Franken: Yeah, he would not go out in a wheelchair.

Bill: No, because he had to wave and say, "Hi, my heart's good." Yeah, good heart. Yes, to be fair, they gave him a new regulating valve and also a major league [ Bleep ] they put in. [ Laughter ] We've got to take a break. We'll be right back. [ Applause ]

Bill: Al Gore says he needs one more week to count up all the votes, and the Republicans are saying now, even if he somehow does pull the election out at this point, he would be an illegitimate president, and that would take all the fun out of manufacturing some bogus charge to impeach him with. [ Laughter ] [ Applause ] Okay. Here's Al's book. We found it. Okay, we're talking about -- not much of a plug, Al but --

Al Franken: Thank you. Screw the book.

Bill: Okay. We were talking about Dick Cheney who started out with the older Bush administration, and he was the guy who was going to find the little Bush's vice president, found it in himself. What do you know, right in the mirror. Now he's in charge of the transition. And I've been saying for a while now, I really don't care who wins. I didn't vote for either one of them. It's fine if they give it to Bush. That's what people wanted. But here what bothers me is always the lies. The lie, lie, lies. And here's the latest one that bothers me. Cheney said yesterday, "We are rapidly running out of time to put together a new administration." It's a lie. The reason we have, may I point out, three months between the election and the inauguration, is because they used to have to get to Washington by horse! [ Laughter ] It was about horses. [ Applause ] There's not a rush. That's a lie.

Al Rantel: That's not true. I mean, it may be true they went by horses, but you have -- from November 7th to January --

Al Franken: March.

Al Rantel: Well, it wasn't March, but till January 20th now, and a third of the time's gone while this guy tries --

Bill: So what?

Al Rantel: -- Tries to steal the election from Bush.

Al Franken: He should not let that stand. But go ahead.

Al Rantel: But, I mean, the point is, you have 6,000 appointments to make, and for Bush it's harder than for Gore. Yeah, you do.

Bill: Because he's stupider. [ Light laughter ]

Al Franken: His father has picked the cabinet.

Al Rantel: Oh, that's not true. That's not true. I mean, for Gore, he's got a Democratic bureaucracy already in place by Clinton. He can leave it in place. Bush has got --

Al Franken: Okay, the point is, is you really can't start transition until you've been elected president.

Al Rantel: Oh, I think he has been elected. I think he has.

Al Franken: I know you think that, but he hasn't. [ Laughter ]

Al Rantel: As far as I know.

Al Franken: And you guys would like everyone to think it.

Al Rantel: What would you have said if Gore had been certified by Florida on Sunday night --

Al Franken: By his campaign manager?

Al Rantel: What would you have said? No, by the counties that reported the numbers, what would you have said?

Al Franken: I would have said, recount the votes.

Al Rantel: Oh, you would not have.

Sheryl: But what about the three counties that they didn't count the votes from? [ Applause ]

Al Rantel: Come on, Al.

Al Franken: I would have taken up Bush on the statewide recount.

Al Rantel: If Gore was elected you would have said recount the votes?

Bill: Okay.

Al Franken: I would have if --

Bill: What about the lie that I was just talking about? [ Laughter ] The lie that we have to rush to appoint a cabinet.

Al Rantel: But it isn't a lie.

Bill: -- When, of course, they don't.

Al Rantel: Everybody at this point has got to go through FBI background checks. They've got to be, if they're cabinet members, they've got to be approved by the Congress, by the Senate. That takes time.

Bill: And that takes three months?

Al Rantel: Well, it's already almost December.

Bill: Just admit it's a lie.

Al Rantel: No.

Bill: It's just a lie.

Al Franken: He and I hate each other, but you're wrong. [ Laughter ] [ Applause ]

Al Rantel: Thank you. You know, I've been hated by worse.

Bill: You know, hate is a terrible thing to waste.

Al Franken: I know.

Sheryl: Oh.

Al Rantel: Is that a hate crime,

Bill?

Al Franken: The lies are -- I'll tell you what the lies are. The lies that I'm hearing are, "They have to divine the intent of the voter," this is Jim Baker. They're playing Carnak. You see that? Like Karen Hughes, going like, "Carnak, you see that's the thing where they look through the light." Well, that's the law in Texas! That's the law in Texas! Dimpled chads, Texas. George W. Bush signed that. Now -- I know he knows, I know he doesn't know he signed it. [ Laughter ] And I'll give him that, we cannot expect the man, if he does become president, to read everything he signs or to be familiar with it. But those are manual recounts --

Al Rantel: No, that's wrong. They only use those ballots in 14 counties out of 250-odd counties.

Al Franken: And in those counties they use dimpled chads.

Al Rantel: It's like 10%, 5% of the counties.

Al Franken: But he signed an amendment to the law saying that manual recounts are preferred to machine recounts. And you know why?

Al Rantel: Would you want me to look at your chads to see if you had won? Knowing that we're just --

Al Franken: You cannot look at my chads, I'll tell you that. [ Laughter ]

Adam: I hear they're dimpled.

Al Rantel: They're dimpled.

Adam: Yes, I heard they're dimpled.

Sheryl: I thought they were butterflied.

Adam: Oh.

Sheryl: Hello?

Adam: Really, the transition is a little awkward at the moment, I'm sure, but I heard today that Al Gore has started -- [ Laughter ] It doesn't matter. Al Gore has started construction on a second White House. [ Laughter ] Just --

Al Rantel: Himself?

Adam: Yes, just on the street. [ Laughter ]

Bill: All right, we have to take a commercial -- I can't top that. [ Applause ] Announcer: Join us tomorrow, when our guests will be from the hit show "Titus," Christopher Titus, from "Gideon's Crossing," Ruben Blades, recording artist Shine, and GOP pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick.

Bill: The Clinton White House today said they would start to give national security and intelligence briefings to George Bush. [ Laughter ] And, I tell you, I don't know how well this is working out. Today, after the first one, Bush said, "I've got one question. What color is the red phone?" [ Laughter ] [ Applause ]

Al Franken: That's unfair.

Bill: I know.

Al Franken: That's unfair. He's not that stupid. [ Laughter ] That's really unfair.

Bill: Right. You're right, he's not --

Al Franken: He's stupid, but he's not that stupid. [ Laughter ]

Bill: You're right. You're right, Al. That's comedic exaggeration, and I apologize. [ Laughter ] Okay, speaking of apologies, we talked about this last week when Clinton was in Vietnam, and he -- he didn't apologize. I thought he should have. I've always defended the war itself against -- most people on this panel have said that's a dumb war. We shouldn't have gone. I disagree, but I do think since we fought the war over there in their country, we should apologize. And then I heard, you probably saw Clinton went out to look for some, I guess bones, really. They're looking for those 2,000 guys who are still missing. And somebody's son, who was lost over there, said about the Vietnamese, he said, "We don't hold any animosity toward them." And I thought, you know what, how big of you. You don't hold any animosity toward the Vietnamese. That's really big of you. We go over there to their country, 8,000 miles away, we drop three times the number of bombs we did in all of World War II, we kill 3 million of their people. We napalmed them. We raped them, but we don't hold any animosity toward them.

Adam: Yeah, but

Bill --

Bill: How big of you buddy! Thanks so much. [ Applause ]

Adam: But

Bill,

Bill, wait. You know, war -- wars have to be fought somewhere. Right?

Bill: Yeah.

Adam: So I'd rather have had this war happen there --

Bill: Right.

Adam: -- Than in Montana or New Jersey --

Bill: Absolutely.

Adam: -- With the rapes and whatever you're talking about, and the napalm and so on.

Bill: Right.

Al Franken:

Adam's point is well taken, but I don't understand it. [ Laughter ] In regard to what you said.

Adam: No, because you're still working on the transition.

Bill: No. [ Laughter ] No, I understand. That's really what I'm saying is I believe the Vietnam War, some war had to be fought somewhere to show the Communists, you know what, we have to fight you. We will fight you. We have the will to spend some of our blood and treasure. We're not going to do it in New Jersey, but we're going to do it in some out of the way place like Vietnam.

Al Rantel: Well, you supported John McCain, understand as I did --

Bill: Yeah.

Al Rantel: -- And if you think about the way the Vietnamese authorities treated John McCain, I know you've probably read some of that stuff, the torture, not just to John McCain. The unbelievable inhumanity --

Bill: Well, he was bombing them.

Al Rantel: No, no, I'm sorry, but still, even in war -- no, no, even in war there are civilization. There are rules.

Bill: Yeah, in every war there are atrocities by every side.

Al Franken: That's right.

Al Rantel: I don't think we ever did the kind of thing that they did. [ All talking at once ]

Sheryl: You'd be amazed at the kind of things that we've done as a country, and we continue to do, and we still don't talk about a lot of it.

Al Rantel: Like what?

Sheryl: But you know something? With the Vietnamese War, I don't remember an awful lot about it, but I do remember as a child, my birthday came up. Because the next day, if I was 18 years old and a male, I had to go down and register, and that was going for forever change our family. Now I buried nobody in my family for the Vietnamese War, and my heart goes out to every mother and father that lost a child, but I do believe as an American, when we go out there and fight a war, we are fighting for justice and freedom truly in our heart, and that was a war that nothing was truly gained! [ Applause ]

Bill: I disagree. I think a lot was gained. I don't think the Berlin Wall would have fell without that war.

Al Franken: But whether or not that's true, and we can argue that.

Al Rantel: But what are you apologizing for?

Al Franken: This is what I would say. Those two sons of this pilot who died, this is a personal story.

Sheryl: It was a personal moment, too.

Al Franken: This is not about them saying, "We hold no ill will against you as a nation." It was about these two guys who lost their dad.

Sheryl: Lost their dad.

Al Franken: But to me, I think that --

Bill: But it's so American. It's such that American narcism and arrogance to think --

Al Rantel: If we think we're right -- if we think we're right, what are we supposed to do? There's no moral equivalents between us and the Communists in Vietnam. We were the good guys.

Bill: We were the good guys, really?

Al Rantel: Well, you think we should have been there, so you must think we're the good guys.

Bill: I think we had to do something that was necessary globally. The fact that we did it right there in their house. 3 million --

Al Rantel: Well, that's where the --

Bill: We lost 58,000. They lost 3 million.

Al Rantel: Of course.

Bill: You know, an American life -- How many foreign lives are worth one American life?

Al Rantel: When we fought the Nazis --

Sheryl: A life is a life. A life is a life.

Al Rantel: We killed a lot of Germans.

Bill: Not on the news.

Sheryl: Well, no, wait a minute.

Bill: 300 people went down in a plane crash, two were Americans. Two were Americans?

Adam: I know, I know. [ Laughter ] Yes, yes. [ Applause ]

Bill: Two were Americans? Oh, my God!

Adam: It's a formula that defies reason. It really is. And I think in the dark heart of man, there are atrocities on both sides, no matter what the war, no matter who the armies are.

Bill: Right.

Al Rantel: Yeah, but it depends on who you think the good guys are. You were Batman, for God's sake, you were the good guy. [ Laughter ] Right?

Adam: You blew my cover.

Al Rantel: I mean, the good guys --

Al Franken: We were not the good guys in Vietnam. We weren't the bad guys in Vietnam or the good guys. We really screwed up big time. And we lost the war by the way.

Al Rantel: We didn't lose the war.

Al Franken: We did lose the war. We left with our tail hanging -- [ All talking at once ]

Adam: But we won something else, Al.

Bill: We did. The bigger battle was saying to the Communists of the world, you will not get away with it. We are willing to do that. We are willing. We will spend --

Sheryl: Do what? Do what?

Bill: Well, I hate to tell you, but it was an evil empire that was bent on world domination. And if we didn't stand up to them somewhere, they would have taken over.

Al Franken: You know where we could have stood up to them? In Germany. I mean, if you're talking about --

Bill: But we didn't.

Al Franken: No, but we -- I don't buy what you're saying. I just don't.

Al Rantel: Are you a fan of President Kennedy as a liberal?

Al Franken: In certain ways, I'm a fan of --

Al Rantel: President Kennedy said we will pay any price, we will bear any burdens. That's exactly what we did.

Al Franken: I'm not talking about the 58,000 Americans who died there, although I think that those are tragic lost lives. I'm talking --

Al Rantel: You said we weren't the good guys.

Al Franken: Yeah, I don't think we were the good guys in that war, because I think that was a nationalistic war. I think Vietnam wanted to be free from the French and they wanted to be a nation, and we drove them into communism. And believe me, they don't like the Chinese. We didn't know, we just didn't understand. They were at war with the Chinese a few years after we left.

Bill: Right.

Al Rantel: Well, the Russians didn't like the Chinese either, but they were still Communists and still trying to destroy the United States. And thanks to Ronald Reagan we won the cold war.

Al Franken: Thanks to the Beatles we won the cold war.

Bill: Luckily, we saved the world from capitalism. Speaking of which, here's a commercial. [ Applause ] [ Applause ]

Bill: All right,

Sheryl Lee Ralph, "Here Comes the Rain Again,"

Al Franken, again, what a seer you are, "Why Not Me?" He should have been president. Tomorrow, Christopher Titus, Ruben Blades, Shyne and Kellyanne Fitzpatrick. Give us your 2 cents! Mouse over and mouth off on the Politically Incorrect message board! Politically Incorrect with

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