RUSH: How many years ago was it that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to United Nations and was invited to speak at Columbia? I know Bush was president because it was the year after Hugo Chavez came and claimed he could smell the sulfur in the United Nations General Assembly. Bush had just spoken earlier that day and Chavez said he could still smell the sulfur, and the devil was therefore there, and the place erupted in applause. It was the same year that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invited to speak at Columbia. He went over there, and there was such outrage that he had been invited that I don’t know if it was the university president or some high-ranking official, in introducing Ahmadinejad, raked him over the coals.
And after hearing it, you say, “Well, why did you invite this guy if he’s such a reprobate?” It was in 2007, five years ago, seems like it was yesterday, September of 2007. Ahmadinejad’s introduced by this guy. He was accurately described as a tyrant and a reprobate, a ne’er-do-well, human debris and all that. It was clear that the university president did this to try to salvage some of his reputation ’cause everybody, even the left, was dumping on him. Ahmadinejad was echoing everything Democrats were saying about Bush. They hated Bush, Ahmadinejad hated Bush, and there was no difference between what Ahmadinejad was saying about Bush and what the Democrats were saying about Bush.
Okay, so it was Hugo Chavez in 2006 and Ahmadinejad in 2007. So Ahmadinejad comes out, and he makes some remarks and goes to questions. And somehow the question of homosexuality came up, and Ahmadinejad said, (paraphrasing) “We don’t have that in Iran.” And the students started laughing when Ahmadinejad said, “We don’t have homosexuality in Iran.” The students start laughing, and Ahmadinejad said, “Do you know one? Do you know where he lives? Tell us where he is.” I’m not kidding. Ahmadinejad, (imitating Ahmadinejad) “We don’t have gay people. If you know one, you tell me right now where he is and we’re gonna snuff the guy out.”
Okay. Well, let’s move forward to last night over at CNN. These people wonder why they can’t find viewers. There’s a story, maybe it’s the New York Post, about the potential new presidents, people they might hire to run CNN when Jim Walton retires the end of the year, and the names are everyday names that have already done this. Jeff Zucker, NBC, Howard Stringer, CBS, all these same guys that have presided over news division plummets. You know, failure is the biggest resume enhancement you can have as a liberal. Every failure you launch to the top in liberalism. They circle the wagons around their failures because they will not allow liberalism to take any hits. That’s why Dan Rather and that hoax of the Bush National Guard story, they circled the wagons and gave him all kinds of awards. They would not let journalism take a hit. They wouldn’t let liberalism take a hit.
So here’s CNN, bottoming out, and what do they do? They’re gonna go hire people that have already demonstrated they know how to fail. Because the last thing that will happen, they will not let failures be acknowledged as such. Failures get promoted in order to save the ideology. Anyway, a little interesting side. Piers Morgan is interviewing Ahmadinejad on CNN last night, and this has to be heard to be believed. Piers Morgan is speaking with the anchor Brooke Baldwin, CNN’s Newsroom. And she says, “Is he saying that education could make someone not gay?”
MORGAN: That’s exactly what he’s saying and I think he believes it, and, you know, that’s where you have an example of really quite extreme bigotry. But it’s not something necessarily new. Some of the language he used was new and it was pretty shocking, but he’s contradictory in this sense. When I asked him a question soon afterwards again about his children, I said, “How would you feel, given your relentless anti-Israeli statements,” how would he feel if he was to find out that one of his children was dating a Jew, and to my astonishment, he said he would be perfectly okay with that.
RUSH: Yeah, for how long? But what happened before this was Ahmadinejad said that he could convert gays to straight. And the anchor is beside herself and is saying to Piers, “Is he saying education could make someone not gay?” And Piers Morgan said, “That’s exactly what he’s saying.” Okay? Now, who is this guy? He’s the terrorist leader of Iran. Next sound bite. Piers Morgan has to tell people exactly who Ahmadinejad is.
MORGAN: He’s a surprising character. He’s unpredictable. I don’t think he’s mad in the way that many in the West perhaps prefer to see him. He’s certainly a caricature figure when he comes to America. I didn’t get a sense of a crazy madman. He is at times charming and sinister and contradictory and unpredictable, and occasionally he says stuff you find yourself nodding in agreement.
RUSH: What is it about media people that they kinda go groupie around dictators? What is it? It’s gotta be the respect and the awe of the power the dictator has. Ahmadinejad is reprehensible. Here’s a guy who just got through saying, “I can turn a gay guy straight.” Charming. Let me say that and see what they say about me. But Ahmadinejad, charming, not crazy, not at all, a bit of a caricature in America, but a nice guy, actually. These guys go all groupie around dictators. But Norah O’Donnell on CBS was offended that Ahmadinejad would not call her by her name. He referred to her as the lady, and that offended her. So CBS This Morning, after playing a portion of the interview that she did with Charlie Rose and Ahmadinejad, Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King talked about it.
O’DONNELL: You can see the rest of our interview with Iran’s president tomorrow on CBS This Morning, including what he called me during the interview.
KING: “Ms. O’Donnell”?
O’DONNELL: He did not.
KING: “Norah”?
O’DONNELL: He would not call me by my name. He just called me “the lady” —
KING: “The lady”?
O’DONNELL: — repeatedly throughout the interview.
RUSH: Well, my God. How dare he. How insulting. He called her a lady. What does she want to be called? The tramp? Ah, this is great. Piers Morgan: He’s a charming, wonderful guy. After hearing that Ahmadinejad thinks he can make gay people straight, charming. A bit of a sinister guy at times, but admirable. (imitating O’Donnell) “He wouldn’t even pronounce my name.” They would never call me charming. That’s all I know.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I know how Ahmadinejad turns gay people straight. He takes ’em down the dungeon, he points a gun at ’em and says, “Okay, look, you either stay the way you are and I shoot you and you go meet the 73 virgins, which not gonna do you any good, or you go straight. Which is it?” And what do you think they choose? That’s probably how he does it, at the point of a gun.