Vice President Dick Cheney acknowledged that he indeed cursed out Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on the Senate floor in 2004 — and he said he had no regrets about doing so.
“Did you really tell Senator Leahy, ‘bleep’ yourself?” Fox News’s Chris Wallace asked Cheney on Sunday.
“I did,” the vice president replied.
“Any qualms, or second thoughts, or embarrassment?” Wallace asked.
“No, I thought he merited it at the time,” Cheney joked. “And we’ve since, I think, patched over that wound and we’re civil to one another now.”
Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee four years ago, was a critic of Cheney’s ties to Halliburton, the U.S. company that received no-bid government contracts for work in Iraq. When Leahy tried to talk to Cheney on the Senate floor in June 2004, Cheney told off Leahy, using a four-letter word that begins with “F.”
Cheney’s office never denied that he made the off-color remark. Cheney has been caught cursing before; in 2000, as a vice presidential candidate, he was heard referring to a New York Times reporter as a “big-league a——.”