By not saying "yes" or "no" or "I don't know" all he ended up doing was supporting her outrageous/nutty/f***ed up claims.

When will people learn that going on Fox News is not going to help anyone but the bad guys?

Can't Obama just tell people to strip the email of the source's email address before forwarding it? Wouldn't that eliminate any of these concerns? Not that it would stop the conspiracy theories.

Steve, I hope you are not going to start posting videos without any description. Some of us can't view videos and come here looking for you to tell us what is in them.

Bill Hemmer's email address: hemmer@foxnews.com (from his FoxNews page)

the white house spokesman should be fired for being an idiot

I watched the interview last night and I thought Bill Burton was brilliant. He seemed to know that Kelly wanted to do and avoided falling into her trap. It was so obvious she wanted him to say that they weren't deleting the emails and start to explain about the legal requirements that make it impossible to delete the emails without risking jail time (unless, of course, if you are working in the Bush WH). At that point she could start to talk over him and cut him off having demonstrated that the WH was indeed saving all these emails and for what purpose other than to compile an enemies list?

Burton wasn't playing that game and just kept on insisting there was no enemies list being made and refusing to answer her question about destroying emails. That Kelly finally broke down and did a better job of explaining the law than Burton probably would have if she had let him was just too precious. And it proved, beyond any doubt that Kelly was trying to conduct a carefully crafted "gotcha" interview. Ah the best laid plans of Foxes and men gang oft agley, eh? Kelly was left looking like the biased fool that she is.

I would like to think that more and more people will realize what trash-talkers Fox News and the other Republicans are, and just start ignoring them.

But maybe I am too optimistic about how much that will happen.

Can't Obama just tell people to strip the email of the source's email address before forwarding it? Wouldn't that eliminate any of these concerns?

No it wont.It may make it worse because then will say that your IP address/header has personal info that will be kept on the record. The best they could have done is simply to ask to submit the questions on a web page.

Fox and its idiots would be still at it. They will find something else to bash Obama in the same time.

I do think none of WH/Dems should appear on Fox and related shows elsewhere as it does nothing but add to their agenda.

Fox blonde bimbo anchor #673 was ignorant and stupid, sure. No surprise there. But the WH guy made two key mistakes:
- He should have mentioned the record retention thing right at the beginning, so it wouldn't seem like he was hiding something. For example, "Of course we're required to keep the e-mails by law, but if you forward someone's email you can always delete their address. All we care about is responding to the questions."
- Towards the end, he should have made clear the difference between those who are offering serious criticisms and debates on the issues (which the WH is eager to engage with etc), and those who are spreading obvious falsehoods. He let her get away with making it seem like the response to the lies and BS (the Pelosi article) is the only way the Dems are responding to all opposition, which of course isn't the case at all. So he conceded the "open debate" point almost without a fight.

It's been a depressing couple of weeks. Dems have made a lot of progress in responding to this garbage over the years, but they're still just not aggressive enough.

I just don't understand why ANY Dem has anything to do with Fox. Fox just simply isn't a news org, and shouldn't be treated as one.

I don't think that the Obama administration is compiling an enemies list. But he should have answered her question directly instead of being evasive. Makes you not trust him. The Obama police department acted uh stupidly.

Here's another way Bill Burton could have responded: "Megan, suppose people were spreading myths about something you cared deeply about and you needed help to get the truth out. How would you propose to do that, other than to ask people to send in the questions they have? You clearly have an idea of what the White House shouldn't be doing; how about being constructive and tell us what we should be doing?"

I'm really surprised at how rare majun's sentiments are here and other places I've seen this video linked.

Both people knew this was a game, the white house spokesperson responded in kind, and the hostess kinda lost her cool, revealing a little too much about her intention. I don't get how a transparently and foolishly rigged game reflects poorly on the white house spokesman here.

I fully agree with Basilisc@10.49a - Burton DID make two mistakes in his air time with Fox.

megyn kelly -- revolutionary!
you, go girl! eat the state!
tear down the establishment!

shit, i didn't know faux news was just a bunch of anarchists!

musta missed them throwin' bush and cheney up against the wall, for, you know, wiretapping everybody in the country... oh, well.

He was given a trick question, asked to answer 'yes' or 'no' to it, and had to give more information.

As she pointed out, it is illegal for them to modify the records of emails they receive (and obviously impossible; emails leave a permanent or at least long-term record always and universally). She was asking him repeatedly if they were doing this to catch him in lie (if he'd said 'yes') or to make him sound like they would not take a simple step to remove the possibility of "gathering" these email addresses (if he'd said 'no').

IMHO, in hind sight, his answer should have been, "No, because it is illegal for us to modify any emails the White House receives. BUT, as I've said, no one is separating out these email addresses to be tracked or recorded separately; we are only interested in the questions being raised and getting the facts out." Of course, the Fox droid would have cut him off and ended the interview after "No" then had a "There you have it. They are collecting email addresses" commentary moment with her viewers before going to commercial break. So, not an obviously better tack for him to have taken there either.

Ah the best laid plans of Foxes and men gang oft agley, eh?

"Schemes." The line is "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men."

(Disclosure: I'm no expert on Burns -- it sticks in my mind because of Roddy McDowell's appearance as the Bookworm on the 60s TV series Batman.)

There's a very simple way to shut up the likes of Megyn Kelly, and I don't see why the White House doesn't do it. Just put the following instructions on the factcheck.org site:

"If you receive an e-mail with a question or allegation about health care, CUT AND PASTE THE TEXT OF THAT MESSAGE INTO A NEW E-MAIL AND SEND IT TO US." No thread of previous forwarders. No name on it except that of the person who requests an answer. Simple enough for even a technodunce like me to do it. Why don't they just add that wording?

Uh, how about when you post a youtube clip, pull it from a user who isn't also posting anti-Obama (anti-reality) Nazi videos! Vile.

Unfortunately, what this shows me is further proof of the White House staff being The Gang That Shoots Itself In The Foot. And it starts with the top, when Obama decides to give away 2/3 of the loaf before negotiating for what's left. All the community organizing workshops I went to - and the experience I had doing the job for more than the 8 months he did it - was that you always ask for the "whole loaf" to begin with.

Obama has yet to make the case to the 80% of Americans who like the health care they have why supporting health care reform will help them, he has done nothing to assuage the seniors who get scared when they read about $500 billion being taken out of Medicare, he keeps aiming at the targets he doesn't need to hit.

And if in the end all we get out of this is some emasculated bare bones "public option" with the private insurance industry still in control with a few regulations, then I will believe we didn't even get The Good Emperor Claudius, let alone a small-r republican President.

That they couldn't send someone with the small bit of brains it would take to swat down an airheaded idiot like Megyn Kelly is not a good sign.

"Change we can believe in" my ass!

I agree that, in general, Dems have been caught flatfooted by the nuts-oids, especially considering the pre-election stories about gun and ammo sales going up based on the completely imaginary idea that Obama would ban guns. We KNEW that the GOP and their nuts-oid base could invent and go ape shit over any damn thing.

On the other hand, it IS real hard to predict what form the nuttiness will take. The White House storing email addresses? What? Haven't these people ever gotten disposable addresses? Is it really going to be a problem if the White House gets a hold of the address 'whackorightwingnutsoidATgmail.com'? And don't they realize that they've already attached their email address to screeds they've sent their Congresscritters in response to some campaign from American Family Association or Family Research Council or something?

And don't they realize that, thanks to their support of George W. Bush, that, if they want it, the White House ALREADY HAS their email address in an NSA data warehouse somewhere?

It's hard for sane people who are familiar with logic and reality to imagine just what the nuts-oids will attack with, and have a response ready.

Mr. Burton is the one who should have made the point about the statutory requirement that White House correspondence must be retained. The requirement applies to hard copy correspondence, too.

That law is in place, partly at least, because the previous administration tried to hide its questionable activities by deleting the electronic record. I have a vague recollection that Faux News supporting the Bush Administration keeping things secret.

I think the basic frustration of these media personalities (I hesitate to use the word journalist) is that they can't seem to make Pres. Obama afraid of them. So they try to make everyone else afraid instead. Part of all the yelling at the town hall meetings is about trying to make our elected officials afraid. The best thing Pres. Obama can do for the country is to keep being unafraid of engagement with citizens.

NO !
It's because Obama IS A WIMP
He DOSEN'T FIGHT BACK

Get aggressive
Fight back
Call out Palin on her LIES
Call out Grassley on his LIES

THREATEN Blue Dogs
And Follow through !!
Start recruiting primary elections opponents for Nelson, Lincoln and Bayh
That'll wake 'em up

The MOST sucessful Democratic President
The one who got things done (other than VietNam)
was LBJ
Medicare, Head Start, War on Poverty

LBJ was an SOB
Senators were afraid of him
He KNEW how to twist arms
Obama is not LBJ but he should be MORE AGGRESSIVE

What Vicki said above. Please please please don't make us watch Fox News clips. Tell us what's in them.

It was interesting in that Megyn knew exactly that they couldn't delete the emails yet kept asking if they did. She really cared nothing about what the meat of the isssue was only that she might nail the guy one way or another on anything.
So what's she saying is that if you correspond with the govt that someday they gonna get you if they want to. Does this total bullshit ever end with these people?
Fox news never went after Bush and Cheney for all the real fascist criminal acts that they perpetrated.

Megan Kelley has nothing do with any of this Steve, she's reading a teleprompter.

Can someone tell me why anonymity is part of the right to free speech?
Is it somehow related to the phenomenon of the right-wing 'Right to have a talk show"?
Or the other right-wing right not to have any objections to their assertions?

LBJ was an SOB
Senators were afraid of him
He KNEW how to twist arms
Obama is not LBJ but he should be MORE AGGRESSIVE

LBJ was the most effective majority leader of his time, before he was president, as President had majorities in both Houses and stratospheric poll ratings, and still settled for less-than-half-a-loaf on health care. Medicare was a sell-out, a compromise, and progressives today would crucify LBJ for settling for it.

This is not as easy as it looks, and the parliamentary power of the presidency is greatly exaggerated

They are not allowed to purge the fucking e-mails.

Isn'the White House supposed to keep the E-mail it receives as a matter of law?

Like any well trained prosecutor, Megyn only asks questions she already knows the answer to. And when he doesn't hear the answer she in looking for, she goes on the attack until she gets it.

This is not journalism, where the goal is to present the truth. Quite the opposite.

Her argument could also apply to town hall meetings. These events are being videotaped and then broadcast on cable news as well as YouTube. Why would those who are spreading lies be so worried about email but not about the fact that they are traipsing all over the country waving accusatory signs about socialism, forced euthanasia, and the like? At the town hall meeting in my community last weekend, our Congressman asked everyone to state their name and town of residence before asking a question. This was after he promised that the entire meeting would be posted on the web. One paranoid questioner identified herself as "Jane Doe" because she didn't want to own her extremist remarks, but the CIA could probably still ID her if they wanted to. It's not like she was hiding under a white hood...

Burton blew this. He should have been better prepared for this question and answered it directly by saying what some of the commenters above suggested: Under the law, we cannot purge e-mails; only lawless administrations like Bush's break the law and purge e-mails. Mostly through Burton's fault, this appearance was a train wreck.

Burton blew this.
No,no,no he didn't. Ms Kelly already knew the answer. The minute he said they kept the e-mails, because they have to, that sound bite would have gone on every Fox show there is.
This wasn't an interview. This was fishing for sound bites and it's shocking that TomHTx and others don't seem to get it.

Notice how Kelly managed to tie the administration to Nazis at the end by mentioning statements by Democrats (Pelosi swastikas, etc.) and then immediately bringing up the "informing on your neighbor" email thing. It's all just a bit too obvious.

FOX has no shame.

Wow, when someone decided to bring Stephen Hawking into the healthcare debate, and slam the UK system, I guess it was the last straw for my country. I am told the British practically bought down the Twitter website yesterday with millions of the people saying how much they love the NHS.

What Tom Dibble said.

Kelly is not being dumb, but very very clever.

Burton's most direct response, I think, would have been something along the lines of "we are required by law keep every email that we receive, whether it's from someone who agrees with us or someone who opposes us, but nobody is using the information from those emails to compile an 'enemies list'." But then Kelly could have just said something along the lines of "but you could do that in the future, right?" At least this way, Burton got to work in a few of the Administration's talking points.

I don't get why this is upsetting. Burton did not answer the questions. Couldn't he have just said something along the lines of an explanation of what they do with those email addresses? Obviously, the White House isn't deleting them, they are going to send out future announcements to those people. So, they either need to cop to that or delete the emails. I think Burton was terrible in that he wouldn't answer the question, and so that makes the nuts go even nuttier. I'm sure they all thought Kelly was great and wouldn't let Burton distract her. Burton should have explained the difference between keeping the email addresses and a silly enemies list.

Fox News and its team of confused ideologues continue to broadcast.

At the risk of channeling Secular Animist, FoxNews breeds and disseminates confusion but they are not themselves confused in the least.

I hate Fox News, but if you guys think the Fox audience is going to believe Burton won this exchange, you're going to be surprised. In fact he was poorly prepared for a guy who must have known he was walking into a trap.

The Republicans are trying every low blow in the book right now, and it's hard to predict what they're going to get worked up about next.

But I'll just point out that if the White House had said "email us" rather than "forward the emails," this wouldn't be a story at all. The simple truth is that the wingnuts are right on this one: critics of the President will have their names and emails become part of the Presidential public record. The WH really needs to stop getting caught flat-footed on this issue.

@MSierra, SF -- Pres. Johnson collected lots of chits from his years in the Senate, chits he could use to get what he wanted. But he did most of that work armtwisting work behind the scenes, not on national television. National television at the time being three broadcast networks. That kind of politics is long gone what with every Senator and Representative having their own base to please, a base that might not even be their constituents.

Pres. Obama is not a wimp. Aggressively pursuing his policy goals does not require him to insult either members of Congress or the voters. We just came through eight years of constant fear mongering from Bush and his minions. Having a President who is confident instead of afraid is good for the country. He is calling out Palin and Grassley on their lies, but without using their names or calling them names.

Burton should have thrown it back at her. "No, as far as I know we're not deleting any email addresses. So what? Look, Megyn, when you get critical emails from viewers who disagree with you, do you delete the email addresses? Do you purge the computer files containing those emails? No? So would you call that keeping an enemies list? You're not keeping an enemies list, are you, Megyn? And the White House isn't either. We're just trying to answer people's questions. Now, if you have one that's actually about health care reform, I'll answer it."

I sent Megyn an email about how much I appreciate her standing up for us when Bush started data mining. I finished off by asking if she would be keeping my email address for FOX's enemies list.

I'm with Basilisc on this and the situation could have been easily fixed. This is one of the few times I've ever disageed with Steve. I think the WH guy looked bad for no reason.

Ajay, you are incorrect about the personal information in the headers. Once the message is forwarded, the header info associated the original message is gone.