Texas Gov. Rick Perry did his best to deflect attention away from his actions and to make his indictments this week all about Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg and her DWI on this week's Fox News Sunday: Perry On Indictment: 'I Would Make Exactly The Same Decision' Again:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), who was indicted on Friday for abusing the powers of his office, said Sunday that he would make the same move again.
Perry was charged for threatening to veto funding for the Texas public integrity unit in order to force Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg to resign.
The governor, however, doesn't regret the veto threat.
“I stood up for the rule of law in the state of Texas," he said on "Fox News Sunday" according to Politico. "And if I had to do it again, I would make exactly the same decision.”
He insisted that the public had "lost confidence" in Lehmberg.
“I very clearly, I very publicly, said as long as that individual was running that agency, I had lost confidence in her, the public had lost confidence in her,” he said.
Perry doubles down on defense:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) took his defense of actions that resulted in an indictment to the morning talk shows on Sunday, and cited former Obama adviser David Axelrod’s support.
Perry was indicted Friday for allegedly abusing his power in threatening to veto money for a public corruption unit unless its overseer, Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, resigned following a drunk driving arrest. She refused and Perry vetoed the money.“I had lost confidence in her, the public had lost confidence in her and I did what every governor has done for decades, which is make a decision on whether or not it was the proper use of state money to go to that agency and I vetoed it,” Perry said on "Fox News Sunday." “I stood up for the rule of law in the state of Texas. If I had to do it again I would make exactly the same decision.”
On Saturday, Axelrod, a former White House senior adviser to President Obama, tweeted that the indictment “seems pretty sketchy." [...]
Perry quoted that tweet and added, “I think across the board you hear people… reflecting that this is way outside of the norm, this is not the way that we settle differences, political differences in this country.”
