Imus Welcomes Lou Dobbs to FBN the Only Way He Knows How

Lou Dobbs, now of the Fox Business Network, will “make appearances across a variety of FBN programs to provide analysis and commentary on business news of the day,” according to a press release that went out last week. He will not, as Imus indicated, “scream about Mexicans.” At least not right away.
 
Phoning in from Florida this morning, Dobbs was not, as Imus had presumed “too lazy” to come in studio this morning. “I apologize for all the horrible things I said about you,” he told Dobbs, whose radio show is broadcast on some 200 stations around the country.
Though Dobbs declared his love for the medium, Imus dubiously assumed he got into radio for the money. 
 
“Love is complicated,” Dobbs said.
 
Even though FBN’s Stuart Varney is “a foreigner,” as Imus pointed out, Dobbs likes him anyway. “We go back 30 years,” he said. “We’re great friends and colleagues.” Besides Varney, Dobbs said he is also looking forward to working with Neil Cavuto. But Imus interpreted this statement differently.
 
“You already think you’re a bigger deal than Neil, don’t you?” he asked his guest, who insisted he doesn’t put his ego into his work. “Oh, you’re the one?” Imus said.
 
Because he actually knows something about the economy, Imus asked Dobbs to comment on its current state. “Right now, it’s a fragile recovery, and one made even more difficult because of the negative leadership emanating primarily from Washington, DC,” Dobbs said, though he wasn’t referring only to President Obama and the Democrats.
 
The Republicans, in his view, are trying to be more positive, but they’re not there yet. “It’s going to take a while,” Dobbs said, and noted some recent hopeful signs: retail sales have held up, and housing prices appear to be bottoming in some parts of the country.
 
“And with overall economic growth, which again is positive, we have an opportunity here to build on a nice, solid track to sustainable recovery,” he said. “But we need to have this Congress focus on real issues, and do so in a positive way.”
 
Whether Congress and the President allow the so-called “Bush tax cuts” to expire is, according to Dobbs, “a huge deal,” because if they lapse, “this administration effectively carries out the biggest tax increase in history.”
 
He added, “That is exactly the wrong prescription for recovery, and one doesn’t have to have ever had economics 101 to understand that.”
 
After Imus congratulated him again on his new deal with FBN, where he’ll also develop his own show, Dobbs expressed how honored he was to “make any contribution” to the “great team of folks” at Fox.
 
Appropriately nauseated, Imus replied, “Let’s not start weeping.”
 
-Julie Kanfer