anderson. first of all, as you know, you visited there recently. the muslim brotherhood is engaged in conventional politics in egypt for a long time now. secondly, there s no chance of them getting to run egypt, because the level of support they have is not enough to take the country over. we saw that this revolution, they basically kind of got on the revolution late in the game. so they will be a player but they won t be the player in egypt going forward. do you have any doubt that the muslim brotherhood would like an islamic state, no? sure, and as you well know, anderson, and as ms. ali also knows, you ask most muslims do you want sharia law, they would say yes because it means a lot of different things to a lot of people. it doesn t mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. growing up, me and all the muslims were taught two main
so when i went to tahrir square myself, i didn t find any foreign agents. it was these were the egyptians and it was an all-inclusive revolution. it has everyone onboard, women, entire families, and their primary demand, they want president mubarak to step down and that was never mentioned on egyptian television. never mentioned on egyptian television. i ve seen some e-mails suggesting that the reason we on this program are calling out the mubarak regime for their lies, trying every night to point out these lies is that it is somehow personal, because i and my team was attacked by thugs on two occasions, that somehow i lost objectivity. i can understand why people may believe that. but let me just tell you, i don t believe that that is the case. this is not personal. this is not to insult egypt. this is about the truth, and all the reporters on the ground, and frankly all the people in that square and most of the people around the world have seen the
mobilize for the first protests on january 25th? muslim brotherhood was not involved at all in the organization of this. muslim brotherhood announced they re not going to participate officially and they said if the young guys want to join, if the young guys join, they won t tell them no. if you want to free society, give them internet access. the young crowds are going to all go out and see and hear the unbiassed media, see the truth about, you know, other nations and their own nation and they re going to be able to communicate and collaborate together. reporter: was this an internet revolution? definitely. this is the internet revolution. i ll call it revolution 2.0. reporter: the egyptian government right now is talking about change, it is talking about committees, constitutional reform, investigating the last parliamentary elections, respecting the demands of the youth, stopping arrests, liberating the media.
other nations and their own nation, and they re going to be able to communicate and collaborate together. was this an internet revolution? definitely, this is the internet revolution. i will call it revolution 2.0. the egyptian government right now is talking about change, talking about committees, constitutional reform, investigating the last parliamentary elections, respecting the demands of the youth, stopping arrests, liberating the media. what do you think about these messages? this is no longer the time to negotiate, unfortunately. we went on the street on the 25th, and we wanted to negotiate. we wanted to talk to our government. we were knocking on the door. they decided to negotiate with us at night with rubber bullets, with police sticks, with, you know, water hoses, with tear gas.
egypt and who should have known, i am really not interested in it. i wrote a lot about egypt trying to underline the troubles of the mubarak regime. it s really not about this debate in washington. it s really about this revolution in egypt and whether we go and embrace it and proclaim it and accept it as a legitimate revolution that a free people are entitled to. david, it s a difficult situation for the obama administration. given the history with egypt, the american support of the mubarak regime for 30 years, how in your opinion have they been playing this, mixed messages or have they been consistent? they ve had lots of mixed messages. they were very wobbly in the beginning, anderson, i must say they did not see it coming, nor did any other major government that i m aware of. certainly in international forum ten days ago, there was widespread belief that nobody saw this coming. so the americans couldn t be blamed for that.