Krauthammer: The Mainstream Media Can No Longer Ignore Fast And Furious

"It has several immediate effects," syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said about President Barack Obama using executive privilege to protect Attorney General Eric Holder from the Fast & Furious investigation today. "The first is, as you mentioned in the grapevine, there's no way that the mainstream media, which have studiously tried to ignore this can do that anymore. In fact, as you pointed out, NBC, which has shown exactly ten seconds of coverage of this on its Evening News in the last year-and-a-half, is now going to have to explain the whole thing since the viewership has no idea what it's about. So, number one, it becomes huge national issue," Krauthammer said on a special edition of the panel on FOX News' "Special Report" broadcast this evening. "Secondly, it involves the president. Not that he was involved in the actual communications but he is the one that has to issue the, as to authorize the claim of executive privilege. Once he does that, clearly he is connected even though it's not -- it wasn't claimed on grounds of presidential communications, which is the first way to do it," Krauthammer analyzed. "Nobody is saying it was the president, it was communications with the president which are now being protected. It's being claimed on a second level of executive deliberation, meaning something happened inside the Justice Department," he said. Krauthammer also said this could come back to hurt the Republicans. "But the final effect could be the one that hurts Republicans. As you have heard, from the talking point of Democrats in Congress, this will be characterized of another case of overreaching, obstructionism, opposition, blind opposition to the administration and distraction of real economic legislation or activities. And that is the line that the Democrats will take. it could, in fact, hurt Republicans among some of the electorate," Krauthammer explained.