Cheney Admits to Drinking Before Accident

Posted on Feb 15, 2006

From Fox News via Think Progress

Brit Hume interviewed the vice president on Feb. 15 about his hunting accident.

Think Progress: In his interview with Fox News this afteroon, Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed to reporter Brit Hume that he consumed alcohol prior to the shooting incident. Hume reported that Cheney admitted to having at least “a beer at lunch.”

Transcript:

QUESTION: You asked him about alcohol being consumed on premises.

HUME: I did.

QUESTION: And what did he say about that?

HUME: He said he had a beer at lunch and that had been many hours earlier. And it was dusk, around 5:00 p.m., when this incident happened. And he said that, you know, they had lunch out in the field, a barbecue, and he had a beer. But you said you don’t hunt with people who have been drinking. He said no one was drinking. He said they went back to the ranch afterwards, took a break after that, and went out about 3:00 and so you’re four or five hours distanced from the last alcohol that he consumed. And he said no one was drinking, not he nor anyone else.

This morning, ThinkProgress posed some questions the media should ask about the role of alcohol in the accident.

UPDATE: Mr. Whittington’s doctors “had no comment on whether Whittington’s blood alcohol level had been tested after the accident.”

(Hat tip for above: Think Progress.)

Truthdig says:

In his Fox News interview, Cheney admitted to drinking a beer at lunch before the hunt, which took place a few hours later. (Hat tip: Think Progress.)

If this is true, it’s probably not a big deal. It takes only an hour to get a beer out of your system—less time if you’re Cheney’s size. (But if Cheney was low-balling the amount he drank, it wouldn’t be the first time he misled the public.)

UPDATE: AMERICAblog reports that MSNBC’s website “scrubbed” a reference to Cheney’s drinking.

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