RUSH: Now, there’s one other thing about this, folks, that the media in the United States is trying to say, trying to report. They’re trying to say that there is recorded evidence of the interrogation and the murder, because Jamal Khashoggi was wearing an Apple Watch. His fiancee was outside in the family sedan. She had his iPhone in the family sedan. She had instructions to call a man…

I’ve got his name here. I’m not gonna bother looking it up. She had instructions to call somebody if he didn’t come back out. He was going in to get, you know, a divorce officially recognized so he could marry the fiancee that’s waiting outside in the family sedan. And she had instructions to identify a mutual friend if he didn’t emerge, meaning he thought… He was lured in there. He thought something could happen. They’re reporting that his Apple Watch was recording everything that happened.

Folks, it’s not possible. In the first place, an Apple Watch is a slave to the phone, and even if Khashoggi had a new watch, the Series 4 — which he didn’t, ’cause it hasn’t been out long enough. But even if he did, if he bought it in the United States and had it, it’s still not capable of LTE operation in Turkey. Apple has not yet brought LTE service to the iWatch, the Apple Watch, in Turkey, which means that there’s no way his watch could have worked independently of his phone.

Now, there is an app. There are a number of apps. One of the best ones is called Just Press Record, and on your watch it’s just a giant red button, and you press it, and it starts voice recording. And it ends up saving the recording on your paired iPhone. But the phone has to be within range. And I’m here to tell you, with the fiancee and the iPhone in the car outside the consulate, there was no way. It’s maximum 20 yards. It’s Bluetooth that connects watches to phones.

Twenty yards, 25 yards? I’m trying to think on the golf course when I lose the range and the phone stops talking to the watch. It’s maybe 20 yard, 25 yards at most which would be 75 feet tops on the outside and 60 feet more like it. There’s no way his watch was recording anything and transmitting it anywhere. So there can’t be a recording of what happened to him. Besides that, the Saudis would have seen the watch and probably taken it off.

And they would have needed the fiancee’s iPhone to find out what was on it. The watch is still not an independent piece of tech. Even watches that can operate under LTE, they still need to be paired to the phone. There’s not enough storage capacity on the watch to store the data of a recording. It doesn’t store… Yeah, it can store, I think, up to hundred songs, maybe more now. But for the most part, it has to stream them. It’s not an independent device.

So there probably is no evidence on the guy’s watch or even on the phone. (interruption) Well… (Sigh) “Except for his heartbeat stopping.” Not even that. The phone will still have to be at some point put back in range and connected to the phone. The watch would need to be back into close proximity of the phone for his heart rate data to show up on the phone. It’s simply not possible what they’re saying. The way they’re saying it, it’s not possible.

The watch is not independently capable of doing what they’re reporting. It needs an iPhone, and to remain paired to the iPhone, you can’t be more than… I wish I knew this exactly. I know when I lose my connection when I’m on the golf course, and it’s (sigh) 30 yards, 90 feet, at the tops — tops — and this guy had walls to deal with inside the consulate. He couldn’t have been that close to the phone, which is in the car, family sedan with the fiancee.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Somebody asked me a good question about the watch, the Apple Watch born by Jamal Khashoggi. “Rush, what about Wi-Fi?” Good question. The way Wi-Fi on the Apple Watch works is this, and it’s not as simple as you think. I’ve learned all this by user experience. The watch is always a slave to the phone. So the way it works, your phone is with you and you’re wearing a watch. Your watch connectivity is determined by your phone.

So if your phone is using Wi-Fi to connect or even LTE or cellular to connect, your watch is connected to it by Bluetooth. If the two get separated… Let’s say your phone is on a Wi-Fi network. The watch is capable of Wi-Fi, but only if the iPhone that it’s paired to knows that Wi-Fi network. For example, when I’m at home, I leave my phone in the library when I go walk the dogs. The estate has a massive yard; so I’m out of range.

So my phone is not with me, but my watch connects via Wi-Fi, because my phone is connected to Wi-Fi, and the watch learns it. But I still had to manually enter the Wi-Fi password on my watch for it to work. It did not automatically transmit the password from the phone to the watch. It took me awhile to figure that out. I’m out there walking the dogs, and the watch is connecting on LTE, and I said, “I’ve got Wi-Fi all over this estate. What the hell’s going on?”

So I checked and I found out that I had not entered the password for my Wi-Fi network on my watch. Well, I doubt that Jamal Khashoggi’s phone had Wi-Fi connection to the Saudi consulate. If it’s password-required and his wife is sitting outside with the phone, she might be able to see the Wi-Fi network in there. But if she doesn’t know the password, the phone’s not gonna connect to the Saudi Wi-Fi network — and if the phone doesn’t connect to it, the watch will not.

Now, if he had a history of going into that consulate with his phone, and if on a previous visit he had logged into their Wi-Fi network with the password, then his watch would connect via Wi-Fi — if he had also entered the Wi-Fi network password on his watch! That’s if the phone is not nearby. I just don’t think any of that happened. I don’t know how proficient this guy was with tech. It is possible that his watch could have recorded everything on Wi-Fi if he had actually entered the consulate’s Wi-Fi network password independently on his watch.

Just because the phone has been logged on with the password does not mean that the watch has. Every device connecting to a Wi-Fi network has to go through the password. Nothing is automatic. Now, Apple’s got it really simplified here. Do you know…? You people may not know this. It may have happened to you and you didn’t know it. Let’s say you are going over to Uncle Zeke’s house and Uncle Zeke has a Wi-Fi network. When you get over there — when you get to Uncle Zeke’s house — you ask Uncle Zeke for the password to his Wi-Fi.

You don’t have to do that anymore. All you have to do is make sure Uncle Zeke is in the room with you in whatever room you are in the house, and then on your phone, you go and turn on the Wi-Fi network. Find the Wi-Fi network. The minute you do that, Uncle Zeke’s phone will get an alert saying, “Do you want to share your Wi-Fi network with others in your house?” and Uncle Zeke will click “yes.”

That sends the password for his Wi-Fi network to your phone. You are the guest in his house. It will do this automatically. That way hosts do not have to remember their passwords and do not have to give them to guests. It happens automatically as of iOS 11. You should try this if you don’t know this. It’s fascinating. It’s amazing how Apple has continued to idiot-proof and simplify all this.

But I’m just telling you that Khashoggi would had to have entered the Wi-Fi network password to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on his watch even if it was already done on his phone, he would have needed to do it on his watch in order to activate the Wi-Fi network or access it. If he’d done that, if his watch worked on Wi-Fi in that consulate, then he would have been able to record everything that happened on the watch. If he had done it on an app.

(interruption)

What, the car had Wi-Fi? No, because he’s probably be out of range for it. But it would still need the password. Still need the password. (interruption) Well, I don’t know if they would say “no” or not. He’s a journalist. Up until this visit, he was probably, know, fine, dandy, okay. Who knows? But I doubt that his car had a Wi-Fi. That would require you to have a hot spot from whatever cell carrier over there offers them. But even if that were the case…

Look, I’ll give you another example to try to explain this. You go to a city, and you get in a car that picks you up at the airport or whatever, and the car service as Wi-Fi in it. It’s just a hot spot. The driver gives you the password if it’s necessary, you log in to it. Your watch is not logging onto the network. Your watch is connecting to the phone! The phone controls your watch. As long as the two are in range, the phone determines everything that watch does.

When they are separated — when the watch is out of range of the phone — that’s when you have to know how the watch can independently connect to networks. And I just got through telling you how difficult it is when there’s no LTE — and Apple has not activated LTE services for watches in Turkey yet. So it would have had to have been Wi-Fi, would have had to have been the Wi-Fi network in the consulate and it would have to have been a password entered on that watch.

I’m saying the odds of this… I don’t think most people with a watch know where to go to enter the password, nor how to do it! You can’t dictate it. You have to use the Scribble app and use your finger to draw individually every character that’s in the password, and if you try to make a T and it comes out as a plus sign, you have to know to back it up, that you did it wrong. It’s not an easy thing to do. And I just… I don’t…

It’s a long way of saying I would be really, really shocked if Jamal Khashoggi’s watch recorded with an audio app, Just Press Record, or the voice memos app that comes with the watch. I’d be shocked if it was recorded! And then, furthermore, I’d be shocked if the Saudis didn’t stomp on that watch and destroy it if they saw that he was wearing it. So I don’t think there’s gonna be audio of whatever happened to Jamal Khashoggi.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, this is an excellent question. It’s from Brian in Sacramento. I’m not gonna take the call ’cause I’m out of time here, but Brian in Sacramento wants to know what if the phone re-pairs with the watch afterwards like when Khashoggi’s body parts were being removed from the embassy? Even in that case there wouldn’t be any re-pairing because Khashoggi is dead. The watch can only be logged into on a living person’s wrist or finger.

You cannot log into a dead body on a watch! You have to… There’s a code. You can either have a four or six digital code to unlock your watch just like your phone. And that watch would have died, the battery would have gone, nobody would have bothered to recharge it. But I would imagine it would not have survived the dismembering. I don’t think the Saudis would have reattached the watch to the dead wrist after the fact, but even if they had, no.

The battery would have gone long, long, long ago before that would have happened, and it would not have been usable. But I’m here to tell you, the Saudis are not idiots. They would have seen that watch. They’re not dumb. And they wouldn’t have taken a chance. They would have taken a hammer to it or something. That watch became a bunch of parts before anybody had ever seen it.

They would have taken a hammer, smashed it… (interruption) What are you muttering about in there? (interruption) If they’re so smart, how did they get busted? Because they misunderstood. They misunderstood, I think, the amount of attention that Khashoggi was gonna get going in. I don’t think they thought anybody would know who the guy is or care. But he set it up. He knew what he was being lured into there for.