Dana Perino Accuses President Obama Of 'Saying Offensive, Crazy Things' In Budget Speech

By Heather — April 17, 2011

Well it looks like we've got another Republican who is terribly offended by President Obama's budget speech; former Bush Press Secretary turned Fox shill Dana Perino. Perino accuses President Obama of "saying offensive, crazy things" in his budget speech, but doesn't bother to fill us in on just what those things were, other than to lie and say that President Obama called the Republicans un-American, which he didn't. I'm sure she thinks that expecting anyone to possibly pay more in taxes is just crazy talk as well, but she didn't bring that up here.

Here's a little reminder for Perino of what the President did say:

Now, to their credit, one vision has been presented and championed by Republicans in the House of Representatives and embraced by several of their party’s presidential candidates. It’s a plan that aims to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years, and one that addresses the challenge of Medicare and Medicaid in the years after that.

These are both worthy goals. They’re worthy goals for us to achieve. But the way this plan achieves those goals would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known certainly in my lifetime. In fact, I think it would be fundamentally different than what we’ve known throughout our history.

Full transcript below the fold.

WILLIAMS: -- in terms of this Republican field, right now the big money is standing on the sidelines. Everybody is holding their powder dry because they don't see anything out there that indicates that any of these guys can beat President Obama.

So what do you see going on? You see Donald Trump rise to the top of the polls. Donald Trump, out there yesterday, talking to Tea Party people.

And they're all talking to Tea Party people now. Sarah Palin, talking to Tea Party people. Pawlenty, talking to Tea Party people. Haley Barbour, talking to Tea Party people. And they're saying crazy stuff.

I mean, how is Haley Barbour going to get away with saying, oh, we shouldn't be involved in the war in Afghanistan? Donald Trump saying, you know what? Those Japanese -- after the tsunami and earthquake, those Japanese have been ripping us off for a long time. These are offensive, crazy things, but they just like to stir it up.

WALLACE: OK. All right.

But let's talk, though -- I'm going to take one of your points -- don't look at me like that.

WILLIAMS: Well, I'm surprised.

WALLACE: I'm going to take one of your points, which is the idea that there is -- people are waiting to see who else is going to jump in.

And I want to address that with you, Dana, because given the relative lack of excitement about the current field, some people are suggesting that -- and let's put a couple of candidates on the screen -- that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, or Congressman Paul Ryan could get in the race as late as next fall and still have a chance.

Is that possible?

PERINO: Well, I think anything is possible. And I call that the "maybe someone will emerge caucus," because there is not anyone that has really taken fire.

I want to address one thing on the point, though, which is that there is another person in this presidential race saying offensive, crazy things. And that is President Obama, who called the Republicans un-American this week in a speech in which he invited people.

Now, you can do that if you want to make it a hyper-partisan thing. But the poll you haven't shown yet is that 70 percent of the American people, according to Gallup, think the country is on the wrong track.

So, I think if I were President Obama's political team, I would think, wow, we should have had a better week last week than we did. Rising gas prices will continue to dog them, and maybe somebody will emerge out of this Republican field that will be able to catch people's attention and go the distance.