PBS Host Charlie Rose Praises Pro-Democracy George Soros, Ultra-Curious Bill Clinton

MRC intern Michael Lanza reports that late-night PBS talk show host Charlie Rose is nothing if not complimentary toward the glitterati of the left. On the June 12 show, he had to insist that leftist hedge-fund philanthropist George Soros was a "promoter of democracy" when a guest who worked for him started noting he was a socialist. On June 4, during his interview with Carl Bernstein on his Hillary biography, Rose oozed that the impeached former president was "the most curious human being on the planet." Rose also asked Bernstein if there was a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against the Clintons:

ROSE: Is this something like a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy?

BERNSTEIN: The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy I think existed.

ROSE: Okay, fair enough. That's my point; why I raise that question. How does she blame others for who she is?

BERNSTEIN: Because, because there is a way to walk into the fan of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and get chopped up in the blades.

ROSE: And how does she do that?

BERNSTEIN: And, and she did that by having a disdain of really good people in Washington that she could have put in the White House. She staffed the White House. She took the health care job when people like Donna Shalala, who was quoted in length at this book, and Lloyd Bentsen said "Do not, Mr. President, appoint your wife to this job." And Donna Shalala says, "not just because she is your wife but because she really isn't qualified."

ROSE: She’s not the right person to do the job.

BERNSTEIN: She hasn't had the experience.

ROSE: And so why did the president do that?

BERNSTEIN: "I think he felt beholden to her. She saved him. In the Gennifer Flowers mess, she went out and gave connubial credence to his claims that he hadn't had sex with Gennifer Flowers, the same as she did with Lewinsky. Certainly that is what the people closest to her and him believe. There has been a shifting equation in their relationship that when she is judged by him as having solved huge problems for him, he owes her. And in that case she is more dominant in the relationship which is to be expected. And again I don't want to over-psychologize.

Later, Rose added this casual, typical Clinton praise nugget: "Is she a curious person? You made that point about George Bush and others have as well. Bill Clinton is the most curious human being on the planet."

On the 12th, Rose was interviewing author Alex Goldfarb on the poisoning death of his friend Alexander Litvinenko when Goldfarb mentioned he was an employee of Soros:

ROSE: Doing what for George Soros?

GOLDFARB: I was running his charities in Russia; various charities including the tuberculosis control in prisons and so on. So Berezovsky called me one day out of the blue and said, ‘you are the only American we can trust, so why don't you fly to Turkey and help this guy, this poor guy and his family to get to the American embassy to request protection and asylum?' I did that. So I went to Turkey, found them, you know, on the beach –

ROSE: Now, now was Soros and Berezovsky, did they know each other?

GOLDFARB: Oh yes.

ROSE: Were they friends? And they worked together and– .

GOLDFARB: Yes. They are described in the book, it's the whole side story through this. They started as friends and partners. Then they quarreled over business and over politics, because, you know, George Soros is a, more a socialist type – (crosstalk).

ROSE: And a promoter of democracy.

GOLDFARB: Yes, he's promoter of democracy, but his view of the state versus capitalism is unconventional. And –

ROSE (Laughing): He's a man of socialist views who's done well in capitalism.