Citizen Flynt

The first thing in your book that everyone is going to jump on is your claim that young George W. Bush paid for his girlfriend's illegal abortion.

You can't stay with a story this long and not believe in it. In 2000, I got a call from a lawyer in Houston. He told me that his client, "Susan," could prove that George W. Bush arranged for his girlfriend to have an abortion back in the early 1970s. Her boyfriend at the time, "Clyde," was pals with Bush and set up the procedure. We checked up and found that indeed "Clyde" was responsible for keeping Bush out of trouble. Bush had knocked up a girl named "Rayette." We talked to the doctor that performed the abortion. We felt we really had a blockbuster story, but about two months before we were going to break the story, "Susan" disappeared. We finally found her. She was living in a half-million-dollar home in Corpus Christi, Texas. Before that she was living in a small apartment working for $13,000 a year as a cocktail waitress. I'm not saying Bush bought her off, but I'm confident that one or more of his cronies did. The only thing that interested me in this story is -- I'm pro-choice, but to have a guy who is running on a pro-life platform ... and this procedure was committed in 1971, two years before Roe vs. Wade, which would have made it a crime.

I went to two members of the national press (during the 2000 presidential campaign) and said, "Look. I don't have anyone out on the stump. You guys do. At least ask Bush the question." You know what? They refused to. One of them had the nerve to tell me that the election was too close. "We don't want to be the ones to tip it in any direction." I thought, that gives you a really great feeling about the press.

Ann Coulter once told me, "Liberals have turned hypocrisy into the only sin." Maybe Christian Americans have sympathy for hypocrites because everyone but the pope in Rome and Jimmy Carter are guilty of minor, if not major, sins.

I'll put it in a non-biblical context by simply saying anytime you take a public position contrary to the way you live your personal life, that's hypocrisy, and you're fair game.

You ran against Reagan in 1983. How do you feel now that he's dead?

It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

He's been so sanctified in the press -- it's like Ollie North and "ketchup as a vegetable" never happened.

You know all the coverage they gave him [during the funeral] -- they didn't talk about the "arms for hostages," they didn't talk about Nicaragua. They didn't talk about Panama. They didn't talk about Grenada. It was just amazing. Everything that was positive about Reagan they aired on television. Anything that wasn't, they didn't.

Do we still have a free press?

I don't think we have a free press by any means. Maybe the journalists on the beat think they are part of a free press, but we know the guys that sit in the ivory tower that call the shots, go to the White House for dinner, they're doing the bidding of the elite. It's getting worse. If they leave that idiot Michael Powell in charge of the FCC it's going to get worse even faster.

Aren't the people in the "ivory tower" the same people who were up there during Watergate?

It's obvious that the L.A. Times and the Washington Post are trying to keep their ships afloat, and maintain a certain degree of independence and integrity.

But would the Washington Post have the balls to break the White House plumbers story if Watergate happened today?

That's a good question. I don't know. It's frightening to think that they would not. But I can't be sure that they would.

The press release for your new book claims that you are responsible for Clinton surviving the impeachment hearings. I thought that was just hyperbole until I remembered that you brought down Bob Livingston.

That really changed the whole tenor of the trial in the Senate. The guy who came out with "American Rhapsody" [Joe Eszterhas] -- he was the one who said that I saved the presidency. I don't think that's true at all. I think Clinton would have survived just the same, but there were a lot of people asking for censure, wanting his head on a platter. You know, as soon as we started exposing Republicans one right after another, everybody accused us of going after Republicans. We weren't. It's just Republicans are always the ones with something in the closet. Livingston had been doing it with a judge in Louisiana and a lobbyist on Capitol Hill and a girl in his office.

Did you feel like a patriot when Bob Livingston threw in the towel before Congress? Did you yell, "I'm responsible for that!"

Livingston did an interview with the New York Times the following day and referred to me as a "bottom feeder." The Times called me for a comment. I said, "Yeah, that's right. I'm a bottom feeder. But look what I found when I got down there."

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