November 9, 2007
PLEADING THE FIFTH?
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That's not Thompson, but Jennings' mug with Huckabee shows she's not afraid of Republicans |
Presidential candidate Fred Thompson apparently expected that after his speech to veterans outside the Capitol building in Columbia, South Carolina, on Tuesday all he would have to do was sign autographs and shake a few hands. But Campaign to End AIDS-South Carolina member Duke wanted more than a handshake. He wanted an answer. Duke said, “Senator Thompson, I am a person living with AIDS who was on the waiting list for medication in South Carolina. There were 500 people on the list and some of them died. Does you health plan provide life saving medication for AIDS, diabetes and other life threatening conditions?"
“We need to do what we can,” was the former senator’s vague response, Duke said. Thompson then continued shaking the hands of less inquisitive people.
“I wasn’t satisfied with Thompson’s response,” said Duke, who just recently got off the ADAP waiting list and has gone without AIDS medications three times in the last two years. “It was a textbook answer and I don’t think he was ready for it. It didn’t look like he had made a commitment.”
Thompson hasn’t made a commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS domestically or globally. He has no HIV/AIDS platform on his official campaign website. His two paragraph, five-point health care plan begins “Americans have the best health care in the world” and doesn’t give details on how to provide universal health care. Instead Thompson suggests streamlining and improving the system through “free-market solutions.”
No wonder the senator-turned-Law & Order star also dissed medical students Mary Carol Jennings and Kirsten Austad at Beacon Drive-In's Panther Room the same day. Thompson had no Q&A, but when the veteran bird-doggers shook Thompson’s hand and asked how he would deal with HIV/AIDS, he flat-out ignored the questions. The snubs were noticed by a reporter for the Spartanburg Herald who interviewed Jennings and Austad for an article “Tough-talking Thompson takes no questions.”
“He just totally blew me off. I have not felt so insulted in a long time," Jennings told the Herald.
This television D.A. needs to realize that while running for president, he is going to be cross-examined.