Hotline After Dark -- The Friendly Ghost

"World News" led with SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor. "Evening News" led with GM heading for bankruptcy. "Nightly News" led with a new report on foreclosure numbers.

Pres. Obama's WH meeting with Palestinian Pres. Mahmoud Abbas was a big topic of discussion on TV last night.

Int'l Crisis Group's Robert Malley: "If the meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu was tough and the speech that President Obama is going to give in Cairo will be a challenge, this was spring break. This was the presidents getting along and actually agreeing on virtually everything. It's hard to see where they might have disagreed in their private meeting. It certainly wasn't apparent in their public meeting."

More Malley: "And I suspect that President Abbas comes back very comforted by what he heard, which is a president who said basically, 'You're on the right track.' That's what he said to the Palestinians, and saying to the Israelis, 'Now you've got to get your act together'" ("NewsHour," PBS, 5/28).

CNN's Lothian, on Abbas: "Just looking at his body language, he seemed very comfortable. But he was also very confident and then committed to the peace process" ("Situation Room," 5/28).

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer: "We have to start understanding that Abbas is an illusion. He is a fiction. He is a ghost. ... Even the presidency he holds is a dubious legality. ... You got a man who doesn't have anything in his control. ... There are some, however, in the administration who believe you can actually have a real settlement in this administration. I think it's an illusion. There's an old adage in the Middle East, 'He whom the gods would destroy puts it in his head to solve the Arab-Israeli dispute'" ("Special Report," FNC, 5/28).

More after the jump, including Sotomayor's stance on abortion and the future of GM.

(KATHERINE LEHR)

Ex-Abbas adviser Ghaith al-Omari: "This was never a meeting about concrete results. This was a meeting about atmospherics. President Abbas and President Obama wanted to get a measure of one another. I think in that regard the meeting was very successful. Politically, the Palestinians heard everything they needed to hear: settlement freeze, two-state solution, and really no demands from the Palestinians at this particular juncture" ("NewsHour," PBS, 5/28).

SONIA'S CHOICE

Meanwhile, Sotomayor's views on abortion are still unknown.

CNN's Yellin: "She has never ruled on whether the Constitution protects the right to abortion, but she has written opinions on related cases. And some of those have abortion rights advocates jittery. In 2002, for example, she sided with the Bush administration, finding the government can withhold foreign aid to groups that provide access to abortion overseas."

More Yellin: "Then, in 2007, in a case regarding asylum seekers who were fleeing China's forced-abortion policy, she wrote -- quote -- 'The termination of a wanted pregnancy under a coercive population-control program can only be devastating to any couple, akin, no doubt, to the killing of a child.' Now, we should emphasize that none of this means that Judge Sotomayor would necessarily vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade. It reveals nothing about her true opinions about that decision. But presidents have been fooled before when they assumed they knew a nominee's view on abortions and were wrong, for example, that guy named David Souter."

Yellin, on Souter: "When he was picked by the first President Bush, remember, he had made no rulings on abortion either. In fact, because of that, he was known as the stealth nominee, and then two years later he voted in favor of abortion rights, to the surprise of the White House that picked him" ("No Bias, No Bull," 5/28).

Ex-Bush speechwriter David Frum, on whether Obama could be surprised by Sotomayor: "George Herbert Walker Bush was surprised. They didn't do due diligence there. But that was a case of not having done your homework very carefully. This team looks like it does do its homework. ... Souter was a small surprise. You have to go back to the '50s for big surprises. And, in any case, there were already five votes to sustain Roe v. Wade. I think that you'll find there's still five, maybe even more" ("Situation Room," CNN, 5/28).

NPR's Williams: "She is Roman Catholic. She is Hispanic. There certainly are a larger percentage of Hispanics who would say they are pro-life in this country than if you would look at other communities. So everybody says maybe it is the case that this woman is, contrary to anyone thinks, opposed to abortion rights in the country. I think all of this is fantasy. I think all of this is people just spiraling out of control. ... She is not going to change anything on abortion rights. It's pretty much settled law. ... I think people are stretching so much here to try to find anything to get a grip of Sonia Sotomayor" ("Special Report," FNC, 5/28).

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER

And UAW pres. Ron Gettelfinger was asked about GM heading for bankruptcy in an interview that aired on "NewsHour."

Gettelfinger, on the GM deal as of now: "We're in the process of ratification. It's a concessionary agreement. And we basically mirrored what it was that we did at Chrysler. And, you know, it's an agreement that changes a lot of work rules within the plants, but it also takes away holidays. It takes away performance bonuses and et cetera. Cost of living is now gone. So it's pretty dramatic from a standpoint of our membership; there's no question about that."

PBS' Solman: "But GM is going to be making more cars in China and sending them back here, as I understand it, while you're losing jobs and plants here?"

Gettelfinger: "Well, we hopefully got that stopped in this agreement. ... We, quite frankly, put pressure on the White House, the task force, the corporation. We had other constituent groups out here with us trying to make the point that we've got to go back to an industrial base in this country."

Gettelfinger, asked why the deal is good for the American taxpayer: "Is the deal good for the American taxpayer? I don't even want to speculate that it is or it isn't, but I am going to tell you this: It's good for the economy. The auto industry is a major economic driver in our country, and to see the companies fail would be economic disaster" (PBS, 5/28).

Gettelfinger also appeared on the "Ed Show."

Gettelfinger, on whether a possible agreement will have a ripple effect that will help save the economy: "There's a number of people that are really going to be dramatically hurt. But the goal here is to salvage as much as possibly could be saved. And for every job on the assembly line, you're talking eight to ten other jobs out in the country somewhere. And so this is an enormous economic driver to our economy, the auto industry is" (MSNBC, 5/28).

Ex-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA): "We blew it last October. President Bush blew it. You know, he went out and convinced the Congress to give him a bunch of money to save the financial sector and then decided to take a little piece of that and give it to General Motors and Chrysler. Why? He punted. He basically said, I don't want this failure to be on my watch. I want to let Obama deal with it."

More Santorum: "And we all knew at the time that letting Obama deal with it means the government's going to come in and run the show, and that's exactly what's happened. ... So I point the finger squarely at George Bush on this one" ("On the Record," FNC, 5/28).