Fox’s Neil Cavuto confronted Democratic strategist Julian Epstein with mounting evidence of the Obama administration’s wholesale disregard of the Fourth Amendment. He suggested that the near-daily disclosures of the White House’s surveillance of US citizens amounted to a pattern:

“You see one incident after another that comes up. It all comes back to the same basic issue: privacy invaded or potentially invaded. Institutions of all sorts doing the same thing. There is a pattern.”

Epstein insisted on playing politics with the issue, suggesting that the surveillance had no direct connections to White House: “If you want to conflate and combine the issues and make the general statements you can do that. I don’t think it’s a thoughtful way to approach it.”

Cavuto retorted: “Think about what I said. Julian, don’t play the politics thing. I’m telling you, drop the liberal thing and focus on the reality thing. You have one entity after another going after American people. You have one system of government, one agency, one department after another essentially doing the same thing. You can call that conflating. I am telling you there is a pattern.”

Epstein reiterated, “You can’t conflate all these issues, you have to speak about them differently. In the case of the IRS, I agree the targeting is wrong, but there was never any connection to the White House. Nobody has proven that.”

Right before cutting off his microphone, Cavuto responded, “I’m not going to get anywhere arguing this point You are saying nothing and it’s offensive. It’s annoying how obnoxious you can be on reality.”