Brit Hume, a conservative news anchor on the right-wing Fox News Channel, continued his staunch support for the Republican Party when he told critics of President Bush--including families of American soldiers killed in his Iraq war--to "just get over it", on the 28 March 2004 edition of Fox News Sunday.
When asked on-air about the criticism Bush had received, from Democrats and families of American soldiers killed in Iraq, concerning jokes about non-existent WMD during a White House event, Mr. Hume unsurprisingly defended Bush, calling his harshly-criticized jokes a "good-natured performance".
Mr. Hume then said of those critical of Bush's WMD jokes, including families of American soldiers killed on the premise that such weapons existed, that "you have to feel like saying to people, 'Just get over it'."
Mr. Hume has long been apologetic to Republican interests, at one point playing tennis on White House courts as a guest of both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush while an 'impartial' Washington reporter for ABC News.
As a man whose son's life was lost to suicide, Mr. Hume would be expected to show more sensitivity to the lives of those Americans who have themselves lost children.
Chris Wallace and Juan Williams, two other Fox pundits appearing in the segment with Mr. Hume, attempted to talk over Mr. Hume during the last part of his monologue ("just get over it") at the realization of the possible damaging effect of his words.
The transcript is provided below:
WALLACE: And one that got a big laugh in the room that day -- and I must say, I still think it's funny -- the day after, some Democrats and the families of some American soldiers in Iraq, some who died in Iraq, said they were offended by this kidding about the missing weapons of mass destruction. Brit?
HUME: Well, we have a society in which one of the greatest things you can do is a platform to see victim status, and one of the qualifications for that is that you have these exquisitely tender feelings about things and sensibilities which are easily offended.
And in America today, if your sensibilities are offended by something that has happened, you get an enormous amount of credibility and are taken very seriously.
My own view of this is, the president's there poking fun at himself over what goes down, I think, as one of his failures. And I thought it was a good-natured performance, and it made him look good only in the sense that it showed he could poke fun at himself. But he certainly doesn't disguise the record on weapons of mass destruction.
And you have to feel like saying to people, "Just get over it."