Ann Coulter
The “Never Trust a Liberal over 3” Interview

 

If You Like Ann Coulter, You Can Keep Ann Coulter, Period!

Ann Coulter is the author of nine New York Times bestsellers — Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America (June 2011); Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America (January 2009); If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans (October, 2007); Godless: The Church of Liberalism (June 2006); How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) (October, 2004); Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (June 2003); Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (June 2002); and High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton (August 1998).

She is also the legal affairs correspondent for Human Events and writes a popular syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate. She has both been a frequent guest on such TV programs as The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Hannity, The O’Reilly Factor, The Glenn Beck Show and HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, and been profiled in publications like TV Guide, the Guardian (UK), the New York Observer, National Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, and Elle magazine.

She was the April 25, 2005 cover story of Time magazine and in 2001 was named one of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals by federal judge Richard Posner. A Connecticut native, Coulter graduated with honors from Cornell University School of Arts & Sciences and received her J.D. from University of Michigan Law School, where she was an editor of the Michigan Law Review.

Ms. Coulter clerked for the Honorable Pasco Bowman II of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and was an attorney in the Department of Justice Honors Program for outstanding law school graduates. After practicing law in private practice in New York City, she worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she handled crime and immigration issues for Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan. From there, she became a litigator with the Center for Individual Rights in Washington, D.C., a public interest law firm dedicated to the defense of individual rights with particular emphasis on freedom of speech, civil rights, and the free exercise of religion.

Here, she talks about her new book, Never Trust a Liberal over 3.

 

Kam Williams: Hi Ann, thanks for another opportunity to interview with you. Guess I made that short list of reporters you’re willing to give a second shot.

Ann Coulter: Thanks for having me, Kam!

 

KW: What inspired you to write Never Trust a Liberal over 3?

AC: Two things: First, I wanted to write a fun book, not exclusively about politics, to lure conservatives back into the arena. Second, you win an argument with liberals, they wait a week and then go right back to saying the same thing. Instead of writing the same columns over and over again, I thought I’d just include a bunch of my favorites over the last decade, proving, for example:

The August 6 PDB [Presidential Daily Briefing], titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack!” was as informative as a memo titled “Waitress Determined to Succeed in Hollywood!” If Bush had followed every lead in that memo, there would have been bomb-sniffing dogs outside the federal courthouse on 9/11.

Valerie Plame was not an undercover agent and her husband, Joe Wilson, was a boob.

Waterboarding as practiced in Guantanamo was never considered a “war crime.” MSNBC commentators who said so were apparently reading “Little Women” rather than military histories as children.

 Amanda Knox was guilty.

 Troy Davis was guilty.

 Liberals tell amazing lies about guns and everything else.

 

KW: Besides liberals, whom you refer to as “porn surfers,” “liars” and “welfare suppliers,” you make incendiary remarks about everything from Muslims to illegal aliens to gays to African-Americans. You really know how to burn a bridge.

 

AC: That was just to rhyme!  (But thank you!) I don’t think I have an unkind word for any of them. Oh wait, except Muslims. I’ve been cross with them since 9/11 2001. I can't remember why but it was something bad.

 

KW: What do you think about the Obamacare roll-out?

AC:  The roll-out has gone much better than I ever dreamed it would. Six people in America signed up on day one? Beat that, free market capitalism!

 

KW: What do you think of program itself? Have you read the whole law?

AC: I’ve read more of it than Nancy Pelosi has. It’s a disaster. Harvard graduates just cannot shake the idea that they know better than everyone else what’s best for us and that they’re capable of running a mammoth, unwieldy government program providing each one of us with the precise health insurance we need, at a good price, with no waste or fraud. Trust them, they worked it all out on paper their junior year.

 

KW: Do you think it’s important that the President promised, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep your insurance,” or is it no different from President Bush saying, “Read my lips: no new taxes,” and then reneging on that guarantee after getting elected. 

 

AC:  Big difference! Bush was making a promise about future behavior, Obama knew what he was saying was a lie when he said it, but he had to say it or the law wouldn’t have passed, even on a strict party-line vote, without both houses of Congress ever voting on the same bill. The Obamacare bill was written. The mandates for all insurance to cover whatever HHS Secretary/gender-feminist Kathleen Sebelius considered important was in that bill. Other insurance plans were made illegal in the bill Obama was touting at the very moment he was claiming it would allow you to keep insurance you liked. But he had to lie in order to get the bill passed. By contrast, Bush made a promise about his future behavior and then broke it. For that to be the same as what Obama did, Bush would have had to campaigned for a specific bill that raised taxes by assuring Americans the bill would not raise taxes.

 

KW: I told my readers I’d be interviewing again, and a lot of them sent in questions.

AC:  Excellent!

 

KW: Documentary filmmaker Kevin Williams asks: Why do you think so many liberals, even outside of New York City and Los Angeles are so unaware of their own bias, if not prejudice, against conservatives and in particular female and black conservatives?

AC:  They’re in the liberal cocoon. Liberals could live their whole lives never having to hear an actual conservative opinion other than the idiotic arguments written for conservative characters on Aaron Sorkin’s little teleplays. As I wrote in my book, Slander, conservatives couldn’t block out liberal opinion if they wanted to, short of going into a coma, in which case they’re not going to be much help fighting Democrats. We’re bombarded with liberal propaganda 24/7, from the early morning shows, Hollywood movies, documentaries and sitcoms, all major newspapers, fashion magazines, the sports pages, public schools, college professors and administrators, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  Unless liberals specifically seek out Ann Coulter books and columns, which I highly recommend, or tune into Fox News or conservative talk radio, they have no idea what conservatives are thinking. As the saying goes, a fish doesn’t know what water is. Speaking of the sports pages, I have a solution to the furor over the “Washington Redskins” name!  They should rename themselves the “Maryland Redskins.” I’m a problem-solver, and you’re welcome.

 

KW: Yale grad Tommy Russell asks: Do you think liberals and conservatives fit so neatly into the prescribed categories you and other conservative pundits assign to them?

AC: What do you mean by “liberals” and “conservatives”?  I believe you are assigning them to precise categories! I’ll explain why you do that.  It’s impossible to talk without labels. “Dog” is a label, but that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless, nor does it mean there’s no difference in a Shih Tzu and a Doberman.

 

KW: Tommy also asks: Do you think the Republican Party is in the midst of a meltdown and permanent recession of significance in national politics now that Tea Party candidates are as energized as ever to push their radical agenda forward after the failed budget standoff and to push out the remaining moderately conservative members of Congress; and core libertarian values of freedom of choice, that could apply to such issues as the legalization of pot, clash with party identity politics and therefore are not supported at large and are visible contradictions for voters who might support a more harmonious party platform?

AC:  I discuss this in my new book – it’s not exactly the “Tea Party” per se, but again that is a useful label and I get your point. I speak at a lot of Tea Parties, know a lot of them, and I think I am one. The vast majority of Tea Partiers want to win. We didn’t ask our candidates to mull about rape and abortion on the campaign trail. We want them talking about repealing Obamacare, protecting our second amendment rights and locking up the rapists, not giving them the vote, as Democrats would like to do. But there is an element on the right often mistaken for Tea Partiers, whom I would describe more as dilettantes for whom politics is a matter of acquiring a sense of belonging -- usually a liberal trait. They choose candidates not based on who is the best candidate for the race, but to, say, announce to the world something about themselves: “I am pure! I will not compromise my principles and vote for a pale pastel Republican!” That’s great, a Democrat won because you wouldn’t vote unless Christine O’Donnell was on the ballot. Of course, they’re not the only ones causing problems for the GOP. As I also describe in the book, we have the greedy consultants and ego-driven candidates who run for office just to get a TV show or increase their speaking fees. And we have the “establishment Republicans”-- again, an imperfect label -- pushing widely unpopular ideas on our candidates, such as amnesty.

 

KW: Harriet Pakula-Teweles asks: How does naming, blaming and shaming clear the air for a dialogue that leads to reconciliation, so government can work again as the people who elected their representatives can rightly expect?

AC:  I love that Harriet Pakula-Teweles has asked me a question about naming. Naturally, I do none of these things. I cut through the nonsense with the blinding light of truth. But you do make an important point that I think a lot of people don’t understand. What I and other commentators do is attempt to move the public opinion. We try to change minds. That is absolutely NOT what a candidate is supposed to do.  Leave the jaw-dropping statements to us. Take gun laws. I suspect it would have been madness for a Republican candidate to have supported concealed carry permits in, say, 1990. The public hadn’t been persuaded yet. After John Lott’s important book, More Guns, Less Crime, came out, public opinion changed dramatically. Now a majority of people support concealed carry laws. Public intellectuals move opinion, public officials try to reflect it.

 

KW: Larry Greenberg asks: Should women have suffrage in Presidential elections?

AC: Would that they did not!  Sadly, Larry, that ship has sailed. The most we can hope for is strong marriages. Married women vote Republican; single women vote Democratic. That’s why liberals promote policies to break up families. Every social malady is a victory for the left. A couple gets divorced and liberals say, “Yay! Another Democratic voter!” A child is born out of wedlock and liberals say, “Yay! Another Democratic voter!” A person gets addicted to drugs and liberals say, “Yay! Another Democratic voter!”

 

KW: Kate Newell says: I wonder what created your initial distrust of liberals? I think we are mostly quite nice, intelligent people!

AC:  I’m sure you are Kate, but in kindergarten a liberal told me I was “greedy” for wanting to keep my own lunch, stole it from me and then promised I could keep my lunch box if I liked it -- period! -- but stole that too, and then she enlisted half the class to steal money from the other half, by assuring them lifetime jobs and cushy pensions. By the way, most people in the Tea Party are nice, but that hasn’t stopped liberals from hating them.

 

KW: Jeff Cohen asks: Is it really necessary to capitalize on the over the top villainizing of liberals? Doesn't that kind of behavior harm constructive dialogue

AC: Au contraire! It is the very essence of constructive dialogue!

 

KW: Keith Kremer says: With the government fractured among Democrats, moderate Republicans and the Tea Party, it appears that compromise is a foreign concept and there is little hope that anything will get done. With that said, aren’t you part of the problem with your hard line stances and abhorrence of the other side?

AC: No.  I am the solution.

 

KW: Keith’s also wondering: Who’s the last Democrat for which you’ve cast your vote?

AC: In a high school mock election, I voted for Joe Lieberman for Senate from Connecticut.

 

KW: Gil Cretney asks: Do you really believe the hate message you make your living delivering?

AC: Be honest, do you really believe that question?

 

KW: Attorney Bernadette Beekman says: I see you've maintained your license to practice law in New York and that your registration is due to be renewed this year. Do you ever find yourself scrambling to maintain the number of required CLE credits due to your heavy book tour, speaking engagements and the like?  

AC: No.

 

KW: Bernadette has a follow-up: Would you recommend that young women go to law school today, given the economy and the practice of law in general and the current lack of advancement opportunities for women?

AC: Noooooooooooooo! We have way too many lawyers, the price for them has plummeted and you will have a miserable and unsatisfying life. Unless you get into Harvard Law. You could be in a yurt on the Mongolian Plateau and they’ll say, “Oh you must be smart. You went to Harvard Law.”

 

KW: The Columbus Short question: Are you happy?

AC: Not at the moment -- this interview is taking way too long. [Chuckles]

 

KW: The Teri Emerson question: When was the last time you had a good laugh?

AC: After hearing Gil’s question about “Do you really believe it?”

 

KW: What is your guiltiest pleasure?

AC: Watching Rachel Maddow smirkingly launch one of her soon-to-be-disproved-conspiracy theories, for example, the census worker in Kentucky who was killed by an anti-government nut -- it was suicide; the Minnesota bridge collapsed because of Republican budget cuts -- it was structural problems having nothing to do with maintenance; gun rights supporters were holding a rally to celebrate Timothy McVeigh -- which also happened to be the anniversary of the Battle of Concord and Lexington; and so forth.

 

KW: The bookworm Troy Johnson question: What was the last book you read?

AC: Last week: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Charles Dickens’s The Boardinghouse, a real snooze. This week, in anticipation of the de Blasio mayoralty, I just started re-reading Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities.  Before the book tour began, I was half-way through Fuller Torrey’s new book, American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System, which is fantastic. For decades now, Torrey has been warning America what would happen if the dangerously mentally ill were deinstitutionalized, and it’s all come true.  Today, the only place we can put mental patients is on MSNBC.

 

KW: The music maven Heather Covington question: What was the last song you listened to? 

AC: I can't remember the name of the song but it was from Michelle Obama's rap CD about getting in shape and eating right. [Chuckles] 

 

KW: What is your favorite dish to cook?

AC: Mango colada. No, vodka tonic. Wait, make that a Martini.

 

KW: The Sanaa Lathan question: What excites you?

AC:  The prospect of finishing this interview. [Laughs]

 

KW: The Uduak Oduok question: Who is your favorite clothes designer?

AC: Herve Leger.

 

KW: The Mike Pittman question: What was your best career decision?

AC: Agreeing to this interview. It’s been a life-changing experience. [Chuckles]

 

KW: The Jamie Foxx question: If you only had 24 hours to live, how would you spend the time? 

AC: Waiting in line for my Obamacare doctor. [Laughs]

 

KW: The Kerry Washington question: If you were an animal, what animal would you be?

AC:  A beagle because then I could live in a classic six on Park Ave just for being cute.

 

KW: The Ling-Ju Yen question: What is your earliest childhood memory?

AC:  Nixon’s wage and price controls. I exclaimed to my entire kindergarten class: HE DID WHAT? 

 

KW: The Anthony Mackie question: Isthere anything that you promised yourself you’d do if you became famous, that you still haven’t done yet?

AC: I never wanted to be famous and the only part I like is that it means people are reading my books and listening to me on TV and radio.  Also, I’ve met some nice people I otherwise might not have.  Other than that, I’d rather not be.

 

KW: The Melissa Harris-Perry question:How did your first big heartbreak impact who you are as a person?

AC: I’ll let you know.

 

KW: The Anthony Anderson question: If you could have a superpower, which one would you choose?

AC:  The USA.

 

KW: The Judyth Piazza question: What key quality do you believe all successful people share? 

AC: A servant problem.  [LOL]  My real answer is hard work.

 

KW: The Gabby Douglas question: If you had to choose another profession, what would that be?

AC:  Professional baseball player.  

 

KW: What advice do you have for anyone who wants to follow in your footsteps?

AC:  Don’t try to imitate anyone. The next William F. Buckley wasn’t a bow-tied Yalie from Greenwich, Connecticut, it was Rush Limbaugh. The next Rush Limbaugh wasn’t a pioneering talk radio host from the heartland, it was Matt Drudge. The next Matt Drudge won’t be a brilliant Internet scourge, it will be… who knows?  

 

KW: The Tavis Smiley question: How do you want to be remembered?

AC: For my books.

 

KW: Thanks again for the time, Ann, and best of luck with the book.

AC: Thank you, Kam.

 

To purchase a copy of Never Trust a Liberal Over 3, visit