On negotiations with Iran:

The farce continues. The Obama administration has been in office for eight months. It offered the outstretched hand, and it implied there was a deadline in mid-September for Iran to show its seriousness.
What we got in mid-September was a five-page piece of gibberish on which the Iranians said they want to talk about saving the planet, et cetera, and not a word about the nuclear issue. They have declared the nuclear issue closed.
Then last week, Obama announces the discovery of this facility in Qom, a secret enrichment site, which is obviously illegal and obviously overwhelming evidence of their desire to achieve a nuclear weapon.
He says they will be held accountable.
The Iranians immediately announce we’re not going to discuss this new site. Robert Gibbs says, well, if they don’t bring it up, we will. Well, that will be a really interesting dialogue . . .
What we’re getting is the Iranians stalling. And the reason this is not harmless, even though it is sort of a farcical dance, is because with every week that passes, and now over eight months, Iran is approaching the day in which it goes nuclear.
And time is short. Everyone knows the clock is ticking. And Obama said today unless they show seriousness by the end of the year, we will then impose sanctions, which means nothing will happen into next year, which means it drags on forever.

On the intelligence reports about Iran’s nuclear program:

[The National Intelligence Estimate] report in 2007 said that in 2003 the Iranians had stopped their nuclear weapons program, which is obviously false. Even at the time it was obvious, because it [the NIE report] didn’t even speak about [uranium] enrichment and missile development, which are difficult and the core issues in developing a nuke.
But it’s clear that with the Qom site being discovered, they are hell- bent on getting a nuke. All that is left is the weaponization which, as you say, British intelligence is now saying is already underway. If it was ever stopped [as the NIE claimed], it resumed several years ago.
And that is the easiest and the shortest of the steps. The uranium enrichment is the key step, and that’s happening as we speak.

On the positive achievements of the Obama administration:

To me, that is a lightning round question, but I will dig deep and I will give him credit for continuing the Bush policy of the rendition and detention without trial.
Rendition is handing over a bad guy that you capture abroad over to another country, which was denounced by the left in the Bush years as inhuman. And detention without trial, of course, was attacked by the Democratic left as a rape of the constitution.
So I’m glad Obama is continuing the inhumanity and the constitutional rape of the Bush administration. It shows a certain broadmindedness.
(LAUGHTER)
I will give him credit for one other thing, for having so depleted his political capital on health care that he really doesn’t have the charisma and political resources now to do a lot of mischief.