Transcript of Jack Cafferty's "goons and thugs" comment, April 9, CNN

CNN

THE SITUATION ROOM

Transcript

YouTube video clip

Aired April 9, 2008 - 18:00 ET

*****PART 1*****

BLITZER: All right. Abbi, thanks very much. We will stay on top of this story.

I want to go to Jack Cafferty right now. He's got "The Cafferty File."

Jack, it's been a pretty amazing couple hours.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: I have been sitting in my office watching your coverage the last two hours. I have never seen anything like this.

BLITZER: Yes.

CAFFERTY: I can remember 1980 when Jimmy Carter said we weren't going to send the Olympic team to the Games in Moscow because of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and that had repercussions and implications.

But we didn't have the kind of instantaneous communication capability that we have now with the Internet and satellites. And all of a sudden, this thing just grows right up out of the ground and becomes this huge event. And the people in -- in Beijing, I mean, this is a preview of the kind of thing that they're going to have to deal with on some level, when these Games happen later this summer. I mean, memories of Tiananmen Square come to mind when we had the military finally crack down on those pro-democracy demonstrators.

What's the Chinese government going to do when people who are sympathetic to the folks in Darfur or Tibet dare to venture out into Red Square or one of those main thoroughfares with a Tibetan flag or something?

The Chinese government is going to be in a very, very difficult position. And I have never seen anything quite like this. And it's interesting to think what might be lying ahead in the summertime.

BLITZER: You have got to ask yourself, be careful what you wish for. The Chinese really wanted to host these Olympic Games. Maybe it was not necessarily such a great idea years ago when they were awarded the Games.

CAFFERTY: A lot of people at the time argued against giving them the Games for this very reason.

The other consequence of all of this controversy is the sponsorship. I was reading a thing this morning at home, where some of the sponsors are beginning to get concerned about the controversy surrounding just the running of the torch through the various streets.

If the sponsors get cold feet and begin to back away -- and you can't blame them -- they don't want anything controversial to be associated with their products -- then there's a whole other dimension to this that begins to develop.

The network that's going to -- is it NBC carrying the Summer Games?

BLITZER: NBC, yes.

CAFFERTY: I mean, they paid billions of dollars for the rights to carry these Games. If their get sponsors that say, hey, you know what, we're not comfortable, I mean, it's -- this is going to be quite a story. It may pale these political conventions as we move through the summer.

Anyway, I have rattled on long enough. But you guys have done a great job, I thought, watching the coverage. I enjoyed it.

BLITZER: Thank you.



*****PART 2*****

BLITZER: All right, thanks very much.

Susan Roesgen reporting.

We'll talk a little bit more about those airline delays later, as well as the massive and controversial changes to the Olympic torch relay that we just saw in San Francisco.

In fact, I want to talk about that right now, as well as the growing calls on President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies in Beijing.

Let's discuss this and more with our CNN senior analyst, Jeff Toobin. He's in New York along with Jack Cafferty. Gloria Borger is here in Washington.

I'm going to play a little clip of what Hillary Clinton says about boycotting the opening ceremonies and then we'll discuss.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: I think you've got to separate out the Olympic movement, which is an international sporting event that's hosted every two years in the summer and winter by a host nation. And that's why what I've called for is a government to government response. I believe that the president should not attend the opening ceremonies because that is giving a seal of approval by our United States government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: So far, Jack, we haven't heard specifically from the White House whether the president will attend that opening ceremony. He's going to Beijing to watch the Games. Barack Obama hasn't taken a specific statement -- a position on that yet, either.

What do you think about this growing call to boycott the opening ceremonies?

CAFFERTY: Well, I think, you know, that based on China's record in some of these places, like Darfur and Tibet, that you could justify boycotting the opening ceremonies.

But the bigger issue is how do you separate the Games from the politics. And I don't think you can unless you establish a permanent home for the Olympics in some place like Geneva, Switzerland. I mean it's a small global village we're a of now. And whoever is going to host those games, you can bet, you know, your allowance that there's going to be somebody who's coming to the games that doesn't think you've done the right thing about X, Y and Z. And I don't know how you avoid combining the politics with the athletics.

BLITZER: The theory, Gloria, as you know, in awarding China the venue, the host -- to be the host of the Olympic Games was that international responsibility would make them a more cooperative partner globally on many of these issues.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, how has that worked out?

CAFFERTY: Sure.

BORGER: Not particularly well. And, you know, the opening ceremony, Wolf -- and I think Hillary Clinton said this does put that stamp of approval on the host country. And so I think the president is kind of staying back and keeping his options open. That's what John McCain said the president ought to do in a radio interview today.

Hillary Clinton has already come out and said you ought to boycott it. The prime minister in Great Britain has said that he would boycott it. So I think the president's hanging back and perhaps trying to use this as some leverage with the Chinese.

But the question of whether it should have been in China in the first place, it's a little late at this point, you know, to try and revisit that. It's there.

BLITZER: What do you think, Jeff?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I think the hosting of the Olympic Games is a political act. And whether it was the Nazis in 1936 or the Chinese communists in 2008, they are all using it to promote their country. And if we want to take a stand against that kind of repression, not going to the opening ceremony is a very appropriate way of doing it because it doesn't penalize the athletes at all.

The athletes can still compete. But it does say the United States government doesn't approve of the Chinese government. And that seems like a very appropriate message to send right now.

BLITZER: One of the arguments that some of the pro-China elements is making, Jack, is that this is a very different China today than existed 10 years ago, certainly 20 or 30 years ago. This communist regime today is almost like a capitalist regime. They're a huge economic superpower and that we have a lot at stake in maintaining this economic relationship with China.

CAFFERTY: Well, I don't know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different. We're in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They're holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We also are running hundred of billions of dollars worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years.