RUSH: Now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to get to the sound bites I was gonna open the program with. And that, my friends, is the essence of show prep. Here I’m finally getting to what I intended to start with, but other things came up requiring my attention and focus, in addition to my fertile mind firing on all cylinders, therefore reacting to myself. We’re gonna start — this is about Benghazi, the Benghazi timeline and, you know, why what didn’t happen did happen and verse vice-a.
Last night on Piers Morgan Tonight, Jacob Tapper, he’s got a new book out and that’s why he’s appearing on other networks. He was asked about the mainstream media reporting on Benghazi, why they didn’t talk about it during the campaign and all that, and Piers Morgan says, “McCain would have us believe that it may well just have been the narrative for the White House running for election, we’re defeating Al-Qaeda, and you guys in the media, we in the media, we didn’t want to upset the narrative. Why didn’t you talk about that story?”
TAPPER: As somebody who was covering the Benghazi story in the months leading up to the election, it was so politicized with the White House and the administration and the defensive crouch because they thought every word they said would be twisted and unfairly attacked and they didn’t obviously want to interfere with a positive narrative about Al-Qaeda, and Republicans putting out conspiracy theories, some of them not rooted in any facts or evidence, that it was tough to report on this.
RUSH: So Jake Tapper at ABC is saying it was tough for us to report because the Republicans were lying about it, and the Democrats, the White House didn’t want their narrative upset, and he admits it here. They didn’t want to interfere with the positive narrative about Al-Qaeda. Jake, look, I’m sorry. I’m gathering myself here. If I were doing your job and I know that Al-Qaeda’s not on the run, that Al-Qaeda launched the attack, that Al-Qaeda is growing in northern Africa, and the White House has a narrative that Al-Qaeda’s on the run, I kind of report that the White House is wrong.
But you seem to be saying here that the White House wasn’t commenting because they were afraid everything would be twisted and unfairly used against them, and they didn’t want to interfere with a positive narrative about Al-Qaeda. You let them dictate the narrative to you? Or am I misunderstanding what he’s saying here? It sounds like he’s saying the Republicans couldn’t be trusted with what they’re saying, so we’re not gonna talk about that, and the White House didn’t want their narrative that Al-Qaeda is on the run upset, so we left it alone. Am I interpreting that right? That’s why we put it in the roster. Now, here is F. Chuck Todd, NBC on the Today Show today very upset, very upset.
TODD: President Obama thought he was gonna be using his first post-election press conference to make his case on the fiscal cliff, and also to show a new reaching out to Republicans. Instead he found himself on the receiving end of criticism from not one, but two former presidential rivals.
RUSH: You see, it was supposed to be such a great press conference. Obama was gonna go out, he’s gonna do his first post-election presser, and he was gonna reach out to the Republicans, and we were gonna talk about the cliff and McCain and Graham blew it, they ruined it for him by attacking Susan Rice and the whole Benghazi thing. And that takes us to Gloria Borger on CNN’s Anderson Cooper last night.
BORGER: One thing that struck me is that the president talked about going after her because she’s, quote, an easy target. Well, what does that mean? Is it because she’s a woman? Is it because she was the only one out there using the information that she had? It’s interesting to me. I’m not quite sure what the president was talking about.
RUSH: By the way, here you have a great illustration of how our education system is just off the tracks. In everything going on in this story involving Susan Rice, who is our UN ambassador, here is major news correspondent getting all in a tizzy because she thinks that the ambassador being a woman is the reason she’s being insulted. Nothing to do with the substance of anything that happened here. “Why would he call her a target? Is it because she’s a woman? I don’t understand what he’s talking about. Why is she a target, because she’s a woman?” Who thinks this way? Well, I’ll tell you who thinks this way. People that have been publicly educated or who are doing the educating for the last 50 years think this way.
Everything is identity politics. That’s all that matters. Not the substance of any story. I can tell you exactly why the president called her an easy target. He sent her out to lie. Every liar is an easy target, Gloria. She goes on five Sunday morning shows and tells lies. That makes her an easy target. The real thing that you shoulda caught, Gloria, was that Obama was undercutting himself. He was admitting with that comment and a couple of others that he sent her out to lie. That’s the story. (imitating Obama) “I don’t want people jumping on her. She simply went out at the behest of the White House with the best intelligence that we had at the time.” “I sent her out to tell a story,” pure and simple. It’s not complicated. Dana Bash, CNN, Anderson Cooper last night, same show.
BASH: I talked to a good Democratic source here asking, “Do you think if she is nominated you could overcome a filibuster?” The answer was yes, and I’d have to tell you this, that this source said, “If anybody wants to watch two old white guys,” speaking of course of Graham and McCain, “beat up on a black woman, I’ll sell tickets to that.” So there is politics all around here.
RUSH: There you go. So you got Lindsey Graham and McCain, and these are two pro-immigration allies of Obama. And they want a select committee to look into what happened, four dead Americans, and what’s the focus of the story with Dana Bash? Two old, rich Republican white guys beating up on a black woman. Folks, I know this is happening within our political arena, but this is another example of what I mean about our culture off the trail. And guess who it is that’s noticing race? Guess who it is that’s creating myths and predicting all kinds of hell because of race? It’s the leftists. It’s the Democrats.
McCain and Graham aren’t going after her because she’s black. They’re going after her because she was sent up there to lie. There are four dead Americans. The substance of the story, Jake Tapper, not interested. Dana Bash, CNN, not interested. Gloria Borger, uninterested. No, instead, let’s find the ways in which we can skewer Republicans on this. “I talked to really big Democrat source who said, ‘I could sell tickets to two old white guys beating up on a black woman.'” It’s not what this was. We watched a whole lot of old white guys beat up on Janice Rogers Brown. We’ve watched a whole lot of white guys beat up on any number of African-Americans, Condoleezza Rice, Mia Love. Mia Love in Utah, beat up by a bunch of white old guys that happen to be Democrats.
Anyway, that’s not the way to argue this. I mean, to point out that these people are hypocrites, we’ve been doing it for 25 years. We’re not gaining any ground. I don’t know how yet, but we’re gonna have to find a new way of countering this stuff because I’ve been pointing out the hypocrisy, the phoniness of these people for 25 years, and it wins converts, but what, you know, a thousand a week, 500, whatever. We’re not having mass conversions take place here. But this is outrageous. To see McCain and Graham wanting a select committee to look into why four Americans are dead and nothing was done about it, and what do they say? Two white guys want to attack a black woman.
This, of course, will freeze any Republican activity, just the allegation of this kind of racism. I don’t think it will with Graham. I think Graham’s loaded for bear here for some reason. I haven’t seen him this way since the Clinton impeachment. He is loaded for bear. McCain seemed kind of ticked off, too. And Kelly Ayotte, who is a white woman, by the way, in the mix that they don’t mention. Sound bite 13. Here’s McCain and he’s talking about the attack on the consulate in Benghazi and Obama’s response.
MCCAIN: The president of the United States did not tell the American people the truth about the attacks that took four brave Americans’ lives that went on for seven hours for which we were totally unprepared. Mr. President, four brave Americans died. It has now been eight weeks. The American people have received nothing but contradictory statements from all levels of our government.
RUSH: So what is this? This is an old white guy going after a young black guy. This is McCain going after our young black president. More racism, you see. I’ll sell tickets to that, too. And one more before we go to the break. This morning on the Today Show, Matt Lauer interviewing McCain. He said, “You come out here, you said, ‘I’ll do everything in my power to block Ambassador Rice from being confirmed as secretary of state.’ Might you not learn something over the next day or so that might open your eyes and change your opinion?” How can you be so bigoted and rigid and racist? He didn’t say that, but that’s implied.
MCCAIN: I learned something the day that it happened. I know that people don’t come to spontaneous demonstrations with rockets and mortars and rocket-propelled grenades and mortars and heavy weapons. I knew that at the time. In fact, I was on Face the Nation and said that at the time. And for the president of the United States for two weeks afterwards to deny that that was the case is either a cover-up or it is incompetence, either one of the two.
RUSH: Wow. This angry white guy doubling down, attacking our poor black president. Wow. You see the template emerging here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This template, this narrative, forget that Kelly Ayotte, a white woman, is also skeptical of Susan Rice, but Obama sends her up there, she’s an easy target because she’s lying. And James Clyburn, congressman from South Carolina, Congressional Black Caucasians, told Chris Matthews on Hardball that it’s very sad that senators are scapegoating this African-American woman. My question is should African-American women be judged by a lower standard when it comes to telling the truth? Should they be?
So I think, sadly, yes, we will relax standards for every minority because of the absolute excrement life in this country has been for them. That’s the way they think, that’s the way the left thinks. This country’s been so demonstrably unfair to minorities that, yeah, we’ll lower the standards. We’ll lower our expectations, which is called soft bigotry, by the way, soft bigotry of low expectations, we’re not gonna expect of many of ’em. And don’t forget, it was that sexist McCain that nominated a woman to be his VP, Sarah Palin.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Jake Tapper is tweeting the following: “Folks, Mr. Limbaugh is not accurately representing what I said on CNN last night.” I’m not trying to get wrong what he said. I never want to be wrong. I’m not purposefully mischaracterizing what he said. I’m simply interpreting what I thought he said last night.