Michael Schiavo on Larry King - his pants are on fire

CNN has posted the transcript of Michael Schiavo and George Felos on Larry King last night.

Lance Salyers at Ragged Edge watched the interview and coherently describes why he doesn't believe Michael.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

KING: In all this time, you have -- you're involved with someone else, you have children. Do you have any emotional tie left to Terri? In other words, this is just keeping a promise? Did you tell her when she said, I want to be removed, you will see that it would be? Did you make a promise to her?

SCHIAVO: Yes. I made a promise to her, like she did with me. I loved my wife. She will always be a part of my life. She will always be in my heart. Terri and I weren't against each other when this happened. We were very much in love, and she will always be a part of my heart, Larry. She will never leave it.

KING: How does it affect your feelings for your new family?

SCHIAVO: I can love more than one person. Everybody can do that.

and

KING: Michael, why didn't you get divorced, marry the new woman in your life and let the decisions regarding Terri be up to the parents? I mean, there's no reason to stay married.

SCHIAVO: Larry, we've discussed this. I made a promise to Terri. I'm going to stick by her side, and I'm going to do this for her. Terri is not a piece of property you pass back and forth. She didn't say, when I become sick, give me back to my parents. I will stick by Terri.

Michael really avoids the topic of his family (fiancee and two kids) as much as he can, doesn't he? I can love more than one person too but I usually love people in different ways. My wife would probably try to dissolve our marriage if I was engaged to another woman and had 2 children with her.

I also find it ironic that he attempts to act like Terri's parents view her as a piece of property because they want to take care of her. Anyone who has heard or seen how the Schindlers interact with their daughter knows that they don't think she's a piece of property.

Michael's attorney George Felos allows moral relativism to rear its ugly head.

I think the problem comes when you have one side of this debate say, well, the other side's wrong. Our beliefs are right, our beliefs are superior. It's that type of intolerance and confrontation, I think, which was stirred up in this case and evident in the Congress, that's wrong and it's counterproductive.

Huh? Isn't it funny that a lawyer who is constantly arguing that the other side is wrong is now saying that the problem comes when one side of the debate says the other side is wrong? That's what a debate is. Both sides try to prove the other side wrong.

KING: By the way, we should stress that the video that they show a lot is not current video. These are edited home videos from August of 2001. The other videos date from 2002.

Why, Michael, are there no current videos?

SCHIAVO: There are six and a half hours of video in the court's record.

KING: Current?

SCHIAVO: Judge has signed it. They're from the 2003 evidentiary trial. Was it 2003?

FELOS: 2002. SCHIAVO: 2002 evidentiary trial. The judge also signed an order there are to be no videos or audio taken of Terri without the consent of the court.

Why? Why aren't video or audio recordings allowed without the consent of the court? What's wrong with showing the public images or sounds from Terri? Why can't the Schindlers tape their daughter? Is it because these videos are false or because you don't want people to know what you're doing?

KING: I see. So that feeding tube isn't in, she is dying by what, starvation?

SCHIAVO: Larry, she's not dying by starvation. This is a natural, painless death. What happens is when you stop eating, your electrolytes will slowly diminish. You'll slowly go into a nice, deep sleep and then pass away. This happens to people all the time. People with cancer in their last two to three weeks of living, they stop eating. This is how they die.

Who buys this? How can there be someone out there that actually thinks that if Terri isn't being fed that she isn't starving? I guess all those starving children in Africa are just going into nice, deep sleeps after their electrolytes diminish. They aren't starving - they're dying naturally.

CALLER: Quick comment. I'm not understanding why a blood relative wouldn't make this decision and not a non-blood relative. My question is, if this happened 15 years ago, and this gentleman and his wife decided between them that they would pull the tube and let each other die if they were in this kind of a situation, what took him eight years to make that decision and why didn't he make it in those first eight years and has now had another seven years tacked on?

KING: Michael doesn't want to respond (UNINTELLIGIBLE). George, you want to respond?

FELOS: Sure. For those years, Michael was trying desperately to -- as, I guess, he had a desperate hope that Terri would get better, despite the doctors telling him that, you know, Mike, there's nothing there, there is no hope. He refused to believe it. It took many, many years for Michael to finally, I guess, come to reality and believe that Terri was not coming back.

So then his reason for removing Terri's feeding tube is not that he wanted to keep a promise because if he wanted to keep a promise he would have tried to have Terri's tube removed right after her collapse not after he was in another relationship and won a court settlement. His real reason for removing her feeding tube is that he's given up.

If he was so desperate in trying to get Terri to recover, why did he deny recommended rehabiliative treatment 3 years after her collapse? Why was Terri placed in a nursing home 18 months after the collapse? What happened in the 5 years after you denied rehabiliative treatment and 6+ years after you placed Terri in a nursing home that made you give up? Because it seems you gave up a lot earlier than that.