Jake Tapper, who’s pretty much a one-man Robert Gibbs wrecking crew, put up this transcript from a White House press conference two weeks ago. That was when the last $30 billion infusion to AIG was announced, and AIG’s hundreds of millions in bonuses were already in the works:
TAPPER: AIG, is the administration confident that it, that it knows what happened to the tens of billions of dollars previously given to AIG?
GIBBS: Is it confident — I’m sorry?
TAPPER: That they know — that you guys know what happened to the previous billions before you hand over this next $30 billion.
GIBBS: Yes — yes, the — I mean, I don’t think it’s a — well, obviously, you’ve got a huge insurance company that is losing money, not the least of which because of its sheer size and sheer size and decrease in the growth in our economy. It experiences a far bigger drop, largely because of its size. But, again, the steps that — that Treasury and — and others took were to ensure a larger systemic problem wasn’t one that we had to deal with here today in letting something just die.
TAPPER: But in terms of specifically the — I guess it’s like $150 billion before, you guys are confident…
GIBBS: Yes.