This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” June 14, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: A Democratic member of Congress is coming under heavy fire after he was caught on a tape getting into a physical altercation with a student on a Washington, D.C. street. North Carolina Congressman Bob Etheridge is the man at the center of this storm.
Now take a look at this shocking video.
HANNITY: Now just hours after that footage went viral Etheridge called an emergency press conference to address the incident. Let’s take a look at this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. BOB ETHERIDGE, D-N.C.: I came here today to do one thing and that was to apologize for my actions. Because as I said, no matter how intrusive or partisan our politics has become there is no excuse. I know better.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you talked to them personally?
ETHERIDGE: I don’t know who they are.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you feel —
ETHERIDGE: I would, if I knew who they were.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: All right, here with analysis of all this, is the reporter who first posted the video, Mike Flynn; he’s with BigGovernment.com. Mike, welcome to the program. Thanks for with us.
MIKE FLYNN, BIGGOVERNMENT.COM: Hey thanks, Sean.
HANNITY: All right, do you support the Obama agenda?
FLYNN: Yes, it’s a pretty innocuous question, isn’t it?
HANNITY: It’s not that hard a question. Yes, no, or I have no comment.
FLYNN: Well, that’s what really struck me about this video when I first got it. Is that, I mean, this is a leading member of the House Majority, a top Democrat in the House who is asked a pretty innocent question. And within about a nanosecond he goes from zero to 60 and starts physically attacking the student.
HANNITY: Yes, well, first of all, I know you’ve spoken to the students, correct?
FLYNN: Yes. Well, I’ve e-mailed with them, yes.
HANNITY: OK, what are their plans? Because I — I would think that assault charges may be warranted here. Is there any talk about — filing charges?
FLYNN: Well that is — but — but — well, they are considering that. But keep in mind, like you know, after Etheridge did the good thing and apologizing and said there are no excuses, the National Democrats, the DNC, immediately put out talking points advising other Democrats to start attacking Breitbart, start attacking Big Government, start attacking me, start attacking the videographers.
And then of course, within minutes of that one of your competitors with very low ratings started parroting those lines and attacking the people who shot the video. So —
HANNITY: Right.
FLYNN: I think they are a little spooked by this.
HANNITY: I — I think that big time spooked by this. But you raised a point that I was going to ask you about. So I’ll bring it up now.
FLYNN: Right.
HANNITY: It’s interesting to watch the — the — what I call the Obama-mania media’s reaction to this. Because if we go back to 2006, the candidate was George Allen, it was a student following him.
FLYNN: That’s right.
HANNITY: He makes the statement, all he says was macaca over there, he didn’t assault anybody, he didn’t attack anybody, he apologized, it never went away.
FLYNN: That’s right.
HANNITY: The Washington Post stayed on it and on it and on it. Here’s a Congressman on video assaulting a kid who is being very polite. “Yes, sir, we are students sir, this is a project, sir, yes Congressman.” I mean, for my mind they were only nothing but polite to the guy.
FLYNN: No, now really — it really is telling how they react to this. I mean all of a sudden they are wringing their hands over who these students are. What their motives might be. I mean, motives, the question is do you support the president’s agenda and he reacts with physical assault.
You know, I don’t — I don’t know what are going to glean by finding out any motive or who these people actually are, I mean, the video speaks for itself.
HANNITY: Yes, what do you think — I thought his apology is pretty interesting; “intrusive and partisan.” I’m like there’s nothing intrusive and partisan.
Look, if he didn’t want to answer the question, he could have said, “Gentlemen, I’m on my way to a meeting, I don’t have time for the interview but you can contact my office.”
FLYNN: Yes.
HANNITY: And he could keep walking.
FLYNN: You keep walking and we wouldn’t be talking about this.
HANNITY: Right, I’m a public figure — I’ve had cameras thrown in my face in every situation. And you just see, if you think you want to stop and say something, you stop say something, if not you keep going.
I can’t believe how aggressive he is here in this.
FLYNN: Well and — and again, that’s what struck me. Is that within just a nanosecond of the question being asked he immediately goes and tries this, you know, to knock the camera out of one of the student’s arms and then grabs the other student.
I mean, there’s no — it’s so — it happened so fast.
HANNITY: Yes.
FLYNN: He’s such on a hair trigger. I mean, I think it tells you what kind of razor’s edge the House Democrats are in right now.
HANNITY: You know I —
FLYNN: I mean, they are really, really nervous.
HANNITY: I said the very same thing on the radio today. Because I think, it shows we’re 141 days outsides of an election here.
Now what was interesting, they made allegations all throughout last summer and into the fall about the Tea Party Movement and potential acts for violence, et cetera. None of these things came to fruition. So the question I have —
FLYNN: No.
HANNITY: — is now that we have a real act of violence by a real Congressmen where the very people that were attacking the Tea Party Movement and people that were asking tough questions at town halls, do they now, does the media have an obligation to ask them will they condemn this Congressman for this act of violence against these young — these young kids that were involved in a student project?
FLYNN: You know that is an excellent question and you know for all the talk we’ve been hearing about this rise of right-wing violence all the violence has come from the left. And it’s come from the Democrats. And you had a couple weeks ago we had a story at Big Government about a Congressman Phil Hare from Illinois who when somebody criticized him at town hall sent his staff to go get the guy’s license plate number so he can track him down at the DMV.
I mean that’s blatant intimidation. And the media’s silence on this is deafening.
HANNITY: All right, Mike great work again. BigGovernment.com, Breitbart — they attack the messenger, don’t attack the Congressmen.
FLYNN: That right. Thanks Sean.
HANNITY: Welcome to my world, too. Tell Breitbart we said “hi”.
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