I would have loved to have been a fly on that wall. From Playboy:
Playboy Interview: Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney likes lattes. Seated in his favorite brown-leather chair in the sunlit study of his home in McLean, Virginia, the former vice president of the United States can toss back two of the warm java blasts in an hour. They come from a stainless-steel machine in the kitchen and a slender, mustachioed housekeeper named Gus, who serves them in custom-ordered white Starbucks cups outfitted with cardboard Starbucks sleeves.
Rosen is the Fox News chief Washington correspondent. James sets the scene and goes into some biographical material and then starts asking questions - here are a few:
At different points, President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have suggested that racism is a factor in criticism of them. Is there any truth in that?
I think they’re playing the race card, in my view. Certainly we haven’t given up—nor should we give up—the right to criticize an administration and public officials. To say that we criticize, or that I criticize, Barack Obama or Eric Holder because of race, I just think it’s obviously not true. My view of it is the criticism is merited because of performance—or lack of performance, because of incompetence. It hasn’t got anything to do with race.
And:
What was your reaction when President Obama backed off from launching air strikes in Syria, in August 2013, in response to Bashar al-Assad’s having crossed the president’s “red line” and using chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war?
That’s a classic example, where Obama got everybody ready to do something about Syria and then at the last minute pulled the plug. I had a prominent Mideast leader talk to me when I was there last spring. First time I’d ever heard him say this; he’s always been very self-confident and very much in command. He said, “You assume there is no political price to be paid for those of us over here who support the United States—wrong assumption. It is sometimes a real question of leadership these days whether or not it’s smart, politically, for us, with our people, to be friendly to the United States.” General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the new president of Egypt, has been to Moscow; he hasn’t been to the United States. It’s not because he loves Russians; it’s because the political price he would have to pay domestically, inside Egypt, to come to the United States and be seen with Barack Obama would be very damaging for him. Our friends no longer trust us, and our adversaries no longer fear us. We’ve created a huge vacuum in that part of the world, and ISIS has moved in big-time. Now we have a caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
And this excerpt:
I look at Barack Obama and I see the worst president in my lifetime, without question—and that’s saying something. I used to have significant criticism of Jimmy Carter, but compared to Barack Obama and the damage he is doing to the nation—it’s a tragedy, a real tragedy, and we are going to pay a hell of a price just trying to dig out from under his presidency.
Some great stuff - hope Rosen writes a book with the rest of the material.
