Aaron Broussard rips Tim Russert a new asshole

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(Tim Russert is the host of "Meet the Press", a top-rated Sunday morning
news show that has an undeserved reputation for holding politicians' feet
to the fire. Actually, Russert--a political centrist--is only tough with
people like Howard Dean while Bush administration figures get softball
questions. He is so bad that Ariana Huffington's blog has a "Russertwatch":
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/russertwatch/. Today, Russert tried
to pull his usual bullshit with Aaron Broussard who broke down in tears on
"Meet the Press" soon after the flooding began over government abandonment.
Broussard stands up to this bully like Phil Donohue stood up to Bill
O'Reilly recently as seen on Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.com/oreilly09232005.html. The times, they are
a-changin', as Bob Dylan would say.)

Mr. Russert: Your comments this morning are in stark contrast to three
weeks ago. You're praising the federal government today. That was not the
case. As you well know, Mr. Broussard, when you appeared here last time,
very difficult time, very emotional time. You made some accusations that
ricocheted around the country and have created an enormous response. I want
to go back and play those for you. And then some things written about them
and give you a chance to respond. Let's watch.

(Videotape, three weeks ago):

Mr. Broussard: It's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New
Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New
Orleans area and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now. It's
so obvious.

Mr. Russert: Hold on. Hold on, sir. Shouldn't the mayor of New Orleans and
the governor of New Orleans bear some responsibility? Couldn't they have
been much more forceful, much more effective and much more organized in
evacuating the area?

Mr. Broussard: Sir, they were told, like me, every single day, "The cavalry
is coming." On the federal level, "The cavalry is coming. The cavalry's
coming. The cavalry's coming." The guy who runs this building I'm in,
emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was
trapped in St. Bernard Nursing Home and every day she called him and said,
"Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama.
Somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday."
"Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday." "Somebody's coming to get you
on Thursday." "Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned
Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

Mr. Russert: Mr. President...

Mr. Broussard: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The
secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press
conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and
send us somebody.

(End videotape)

Mr. Broussard: I've never watched this. Why are they taking me here?

Mr. Russert: Mr. Broussard, obviously that was a very painful, emotional
moment, but let me show you some of the...

Mr. Broussard: Sir, I've never looked at that. I've never heard that. I'm
sorry. You take me to a sad place when you let me hear that.

Mr. Russert: Well, it was important, I think...

Mr. Broussard: Go ahead. Go ahead, sir. Go ahead, sir.

Mr. Russert: Thank you very much.

Mr. Broussard: Go ahead.

Mr. Russert: All right, sir. Thank you very much. Take your time. But it's
important I think...

Mr. Broussard: Go ahead.

Mr. Russert: ...that our viewers see that again because MSNBC and other
blog organizations have looked into the facts behind your comments and
these are the conclusions, and I'll read it for you and our viewers. It
says: "An emotional moment and a misunderstanding. Since the broadcast of
[Meet the Press] interview...a number of bloggers have questioned the
validity of Broussard's story. Subsequent reporting identified the man whom
Broussard was referring to...as Thomas Rodrigue, the Jefferson Parish
emergency services director. ...Rodrigue acknowledged that his 92-year-old
mother and more than 30 other people died in the St. Rita nursing home.
They had not been evacuated and the flood waters overtook the residence.
... When told of the sequence of phone calls that Broussard described,
Rodrigue said `No, no, that's not true. ...I contacted the nursing home two
days before the storm [on Saturday, Aug. 27th] and again on [Sunday] the
28th. ...At the same time I talked to the nursing home I had also talked to
the emergency manager...to encourage that nursing home to evacuate...'
Rodrigue says he never made any calls after Monday, the day he figures his
mother died... Officials believe the residents of St. Rita's died on
Monday, the 29th, not on Friday, Sept. 2, as Broussard has suggested."

Your comments obviously...

Mr. Broussard: Sir, this...

Mr. Russert: Go ahead.

Mr. Broussard: Sir, this gentleman's mother died on that Friday before I
came on the show. My own staff came up to me and said what had happened. I
had no idea his mother was in the nursing home. It was related to me by my
own staff, who had tears in their eyes, what had happened. That's what they
told me. I went to that man, who I love very much and respect very much,
and he had collapsed like a deck of cards. And I took him and put him in my
hospital room with my prayer books and told him to sit there and cry out
and pray away and give honor to his mother with his tears and his prayers.

Now, everything that was told to me about the preface of that was told to
me by my own employees. Do you think I would interrogate a man whose mother
just died and said, "Tommy, I want to know everything about why your mother
just died"? The staff, his own staff, told me those words. Sir, that woman
is the epitome of abandonment. She was left in that nursing home. She died
in that nursing home. Tommy will tell you that he tried to rescue her and
could not get her rescued. Tommy could tell you that he sent messages there
through the EOC and through, I think, the sheriff's department, "Tell Mama
everything's going to be OK. Tell Mama we're coming to get her."

Listen, sir, somebody wants to nitpick a man's tragic loss of a mother
because she was abandoned in a nursing home? Are you kidding? What kind of
sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's
mother's death? They just buried Eva last week. I was there at the wake.
Are you kidding me? That wasn't a box of Cheerios they buried last week.
That was a man's mother whose story, if it is entirely broadcast, will be
the epitome of abandonment. It will be the saddest tale you ever heard, a
man who was responsible for safekeeping of a half a million people,
mother's died in the next parish because she was abandoned there and he
can't get to her and he tried to get to her through EOC. He tried to get
through the sheriff's office. He tries every way he can to get there.
Somebody wants to debate those things? My God, what sick-minded person
wants to do that?

What kind of agenda is going on here? Mother Nature doesn't have a
political party. Mother Nature can vote a person dead and Mother Nature can
vote a community out of existence. But Mother Nature is not playing any
political games here. Somebody better wake up. You want to come and live in
this community and see the tragedy we're living in? Are you sitting there
having your coffee, you're in a place where toilets flush and lights go on
and everything's a dream and you pick up your paper and you want to battle
ideology and political chess games? Man, get out of my face. Whoever wants
to do that, get out of my face.

Mr. Russert: Mr. Broussard, the people who are questioning your comments
are saying that you accused the federal government and the bureaucracy of
murder, specifically calling on the secretary of Homeland Security and
using this as an example to denounce the federal government. And what
they're saying is, in fact, it was the local government that did not
evacuate Eva Rodrigue on Friday or on Saturday. And they're making that, in
fact...

Mr. Broussard: Sir...

Mr. Russert: Let me just finish. I'll give you a chance to respond.

Mr. Broussard: Yes.

Mr. Russert: And, in fact, the owners of the nursing home, Salvador and
Mable Mangano, have been indicted with 34 counts of negligent homicide by
the Louisiana state attorney general. So it was the owners of the nursing
home and the local government that are responsible for the lack of
evacuation and not the federal government. Is that fair?

Mr. Broussard: Sir, with everything I said on Meet the Press, the last
punctuation of my statements were the story that I was going to tell in
about maybe two sentences. It just got emotional for me, sir. Talk about
the context of everything I said. Were we abandoned by the federal
government? Absolutely we were. Were there more people that abandoned us?
Make the list. The list can go on for miles. That's for history to
document. That's what Congress does best, burn witches. Let Congress do
their hearings. Let them find the witches. Let them burn them. The media
burns witches better than anybody. Let the media go find the witches and
burn them. But as I stood on the ground, sir, for day after day after day
after day, nobody came here, sir. Nobody came. The federal government
didn't come. The Red Cross didn't come. I'll give you a list of people that
didn't come here, sir, and I was here.

So anybody that's saying, "Oh, they were all here," you know, they weren't
living on my planet, there weren't living in my parish. They did not come.
I can't make it any more clearer than that. Did inefficiencies, did
bureaucracy commit murder here? Absolutely, it did. And Congress and the
media will flush it out and find it out and those people will be held
accountable. You've already given an example. These people in the nursing
home in St. Bernard, they're getting indicted. Good. They ought to be
indicted. They ought to get good old-fashioned Western justice. They ought
to be taken out and administered to like they did in the old West.

Yes, there's a lot of people that they're going to find that are going to
be villains in this situation, but they're also going to find for the most
part that the Peter Principle was squared. The Peter Principle is you
promote somebody to the level of incompetency, but when you promote
somebody to the level of incompetency in a life or death department, then
those people should be ousted. Those people should be strung up. Those
people should be burned at the stake. And I'm sure Congress and the press
is going to do that.

Mr. Russert: At the local, state and federal level.

Mr. Broussard: Sir, at every level. Are you kidding? This is a jigsaw
puzzle. This is a mosaic. The blame will be shared by everybody. The heroic
deeds will be magnified as individual stories of heroics come out from
different people and agencies that did eventually come here. Sir, this is
chaos. It's organized chaos at best. There are plenty of heroes that have
to be uncovered. There are plenty of villains that have to be uncovered.
Let the process go on. Let it happen. I don't have time to do it, sir. I
didn't even watch my own broadcast that you played to me in my ear. It
pained me to hear that again because Tommy Rodrigue is a friend of mine. He
works for me. I was at his mother's wake.

When somebody wants to nit-pick these details, I don't know what sick minds
creates this black-hearted agenda, but it's sick. I mean, let us recover.
Let us rebuild. If somebody wants me to debate them on national TV, hey,
buddy, be my guest. Make my day. Put me at a podium when I got a full
night's sleep and you will not like matching me against anybody that you
want. That person is going to be in trouble. If this station or anybody
else or any other station wants to do that, you just give me a full night's
sleep, sir. I haven't had one in about 30 days. But you wind me up with a
full night's sleep, I'll debate every detail of everything you want, sir.

Mr. Russert: Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana,
we thank you for coming on and correcting the record and putting it in
context. And we wish you well and to all your people in the recovery. And
we hope to talk to you again.

Mr. Broussard: Thank you, sir.