On Thursday’s Joy Behar Show on CNN Headline News, Behar hosted a discussion of the health care negotiations between President Obama and Republicans. Introducing the segment, she charged that "the Democrats brought a plan and the Republicans brought an attitude." At one point, after playing a clip of President Obama speaking, Behar gushed that, "He is so civilized," and, after playing another clip of Obama getting cocky with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Behar exclaimed, "Oh, I love that! Don’t we need more moments like that?"
Notably, Behar mispronounced House Republican Leader John Boehner’s last name as "Boner," possibly intentionally, during the show’s opening teaser as she derided him, McConnell and Senator John McCain as "the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse." Behar: "President Obama makes his health care pitch at a health care summit attended by Republicans John Boner, Mitch McConnell and John McCain, or, as I call them, the Three Horsemen of the Apocalpyse."
During the segment, guest Ron Reagan lamented that a single payer health care system, which he asserted "the rest of the world enjoys," has been ruled out, and charged that Republicans want the government to fail.
Below is a transcript of relevant portions of the Thursday, February 25, Joy Behar Show on CNN Headline News:
JOY BEHAR, IN OPENING TEASER: President Obama makes his health care pitch at a health care summit attended by Republicans John Boner, Mitch McConnell and John McCain, or, as I call them, the Three Horsemen of the Apocalpyse.
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Democrats and Republicans met today for a health care summit that was billed as bipartisan -- and by that I mean the Democrats brought a plan and the Republicans brought an attitude. President Obama admitted it was bipartisanship, bickering that derailed his health care reform plan.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Unfortunately, over the course of the year, despite all the hearings that took place and all the negotiations that took place, and people on both sides of the aisle worked long and hard on this issue and, you know, this became a very ideological battle. It became a very partisan battle, and politics, I think, ended up trumping practical common sense.
He is so civilized. President Obama has tried to reach out and touch the Republicans more than AT&T, but will the President’s last-ditch effort at working with the GOP really work? With me now is Representative Maxine waters, Democrat from California. Political commentator Ron Reagan. And Liz Winstead, comedian and co-creator of the Daily Show. Okay, let me start with you, Ron. Is this just theater going on today or is there really any substance to it?
RON REAGAN: I doubt that anything that happened today will leave the Republicans to endorse any sort of health care legislation. Yes, it is theater, but it's useful theater, I think. The American public, anybody who tunes in or tunes in to cable shows and sees some clips from this will probably get the impression, the accurate impression that the Republicans here are not involved in this summit in order to seriously negotiate. There are two fundamental points we have to get straight here. One, the most effective way to control costs and provide better health care for Americans was taken off the table from the get-go months and months ago – and that is universal single payer. That is what the rest of the world enjoys but we can't have it here. It was taken off the table. Second, the second point is the Republicans here, not only want health care legislation to fail, not only want President Obama and his administration to fail, they want government to fail. They have made a short-term political calculation that it is in their best interest that nothing happen in government. Whether it's health care, stimulus, job creation, anything else, their answer is no, because they want this government to fail.
BEHAR: I hear you, Ron. Maxine, I'll call you Maxine, is that okay?
REP. MAXINE WATERS Yes, yes.
BEHAR: All right, Maxine, do you agree with Ron that they want the government to fail?
WATERS: I really do. I mean he stated it so well. I agree with him 100 percent. They didn't come to the summit today because they wanted to be in a bipartisan effort to try and find a way to provide health care insurance for Americans and all those 30 million who are uninsured. They came today because the television cameras were going to be there, they were going to cover it and they thought they may as well get in on the act. But they came with the idea that they were going to stick to their strategy and their plan that the democrats would have to scrap this and start all over again in order to have any kind of bipartisan effort. They know that that's not going to happen. And they came with their props. They had the old legislation with all of the 1,100 pages or so to show that they could continue to say, "See, all of this that they put into their health care plan. They just want to take over, the government wants to take over, ObamaCare," all of that.
BEHAR: There is that fear, the fear, the mongerers. Obama got a bit tough with the Republicans. Watch this.
MITCH MCCONNELL, SENATE REPUBLICAN LEADER: To this point, the Republicans have had 24 minutes, the Democrats 52 minutes. Let's try to have as much balance as we can.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You’re right. There was an imbalance on the opening statements because I’m the President.
BEHAR: Oh, I love that! Don’t we need more moments like that, Liz?
LIZ WINSTEAD, COMEDIAN: Yes, but there's nothing more offensive to me than hearing men who have – and mostly men – who have graduate degrees and some doctorate degrees complaining that they have to read too much. Now, Maxine, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't basically the tenet of your job to read things and write things? And yet they’re complaining about it.
WATERS: All the time. You've got to read, read, read. You know, I'm five hours between California and Washington. I read all the way there, all the way back. It's hard to keep up, but you have to read. You have to keep up.
BEHAR: Maxine, we're not going to get the public option in this bill.
WATERS: No
BEHAR: That's dead, right?
WATERS: Yes, yes.
BEHAR: Is that a failure on Obama's part? How do we construe this now?
WATERS: Well, he did not put public option in his plan. As a matter of fact, he never really got out front even when he was saying that he was for a public option. As you know, a lot of us, particularly the progressives in the house, are for a public option. We've been fighting for it. We want it very badly. We're disappointed that we won't have public option in the plan that he's proposing. And that's going to cause some trouble on the floor. There will be some people who won't vote for it because it does not have public option, nor does it have national exchanges that will be regulated nationally.
