RUSH: I want to go to this business last night of Obama saying the cops in Cambridge, Massachusetts ‘acted stupidly.’ Because I think what we learned last night, ladies and gentlemen, is that President 
Obama did, after all, listen to Reverend Wright all those 20 years. He says, ‘Yeah, I was a member of the church 20 years. I sat there and I didn’t hear any of that.’ I think he heard it all. That question he got from Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, that’s when he came alive. The rest of the press conference, he didn’t even want to be there. He knew that they were in trouble, so he goes out there and tries to dazzle everybody with his professorial insight and capabilities and elegance and all that.
But when that question about Henry Louis Gates and the arrest in his home came up, why, it was passion, excitement, animation, fire! He came alive. That question was, ‘Mr. President, recently professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his home in Cambridge. What does that incident say to you, and what does it say about race relations in America?’ A loaded question if I have heard one. This is a liberal idyllic panacea, Cambridge, Harvard. It’s liberal everything. So now we’ve got racist cops profiling a distinguished Harvard professor — who to my eye, every time I see this guy on TV I see somebody enraged. I see somebody angry. He’s a liberal, they all are. Here’s Obama’s answer.
OBAMA (sped up): Well, I should say at the outset that, uh, ‘Skip’ Gates is a friend, uh, so I may be a little biased here. I don’t know all the facts. What’s been reported, though, is that the guy forgot his keys, uh, jimmied his way to get into the house, uh, there was, uh, a report called into the police station that there might be a burglary taking place — so far, so good, right? I mean, if I was trying to jigger into… Well, I guess this is my house now so —
PRESS: (laughter)
OBAMA (sped up): — it probably wouldn’t happen. (laughter) But let’s say my old house in Chicago.
PRESS: (laughter)
OBAMA (sped up): Um, here I’d get shot.
PRESS: (laughter)
RUSH: Okay. Now, I have a specific thought about this. (interruption) Well, what do you think my specific thought is, Snerdley? Why do you think Obama’s…? Nobody gets shot when they find ’em when they shouldn’t be on the White House grounds. Nobody gets shot there. I mean, it’s the last, last resort. They got Secret Service. They capture. He says he would get shot! ‘That’s right. I’m a black guy!’ In fact, grab sound bite three. I didn’t want to use this but I’m now going to use it. ‘I’m a black guy. I’d get shot.’ Don’t doubt me on this, folks. Don’t doubt me. ‘I’d get shot.’ He’s laughing and they’re all laughing. If I tell a joke about somebody getting shot on this show and I laugh about it, I will not hear the end of it for I don’t know how long. Let’s go back to February 11th, 2007, 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft interviewing Obama and Michelle (My Belle) Obama. Kroft said, ‘Michelle, it’s a tough question to ask, but a number of years ago Colin Powell was thinking of running for president. His wife Alma really didn’t want him to run, she was worried about some crazy person with a gun. Is that something you think about?
MICHELLE 2007: I don’t lose sleep over it because, ummm, the realities are, you know, as a black man Barack can get shot, you know, going to the gas station. You know (laughs) so you know, you can’t —
RUSH: You know. Get shot going to the gas station. So last night he said if he tries to break in the White House, he’d get shot, and the cops up there ‘acted stupidly’ in Cambridge. ‘I know, ‘Skip’ Gates. I don’t know the facts.’ I don’t know all the facts, but I know the cops ‘acted stupidly.’ In the next bite, he continues, saying again he’s ignorant of the facts.
OBAMA (sped up): Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge Police, uh, acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that, uh, there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos, uh, being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That — that’s just a fact.
RUSH: Okay. So I’ve long thought that there’s a chip on the shoulder here, and that there’s a little anger out there at the country based on who his mentors, associates, all that were. Gates was not ‘stopped.’ This was not a profiling case. Let’s review what happened. To the best of my knowledge, a neighbor sees Gates. (interruption) Okay. Okay. Oh, okay. A friend and driver of the car, in addition to Gates, tried to get in the house. Gates and one other person. And some neighbor said, ‘Whoa, what was that? That doesn’t look right.’ They called the police. My first reaction would be to thank the neighbor for looking out for me. But I guarantee you the neighbor is also going to be, before this is all over, a racist. In Cambridge now. We’re talking Harvard, Cambridge!
We’re talking idyllic liberal setting. It may as well be Duke. May as well be the lacrosse team here. May as well be that dancer. Gates and a friend break in, and the cops show up, and apparently all hell breaks loose inside the house, handcuffs and so forth. Obama doesn’t know what all happened — and we don’t, either. There are five or six different versions of what went on in there. We still really don’t know. Bill Cosby has come out today in Boston, and he can’t believe the president would say what he said about this admitting he doesn’t know all the facts. So Obama wasn’t quite through. After taking this incident — where Gates was not stopped. He was not pulled over. The cops were called there by somebody in the neighborhood. This was not a profiling incident. Here’s more from President Obama.
OBAMA: When I was in the state legislature in Illinois, we worked on a racial profiling, uh, bill because there was indisputable evidence that blacks and Hispanics were being stopped disproportionately. Uh, and that is a sign, an example of how, you know, race remains a factor in the society. That doesn’t lessen the incredible progress that has been made. I am standing here as testimony to the progress that’s been made, and yet the fact of the matter is that, you know, this still haunts us.
RUSH: Okay, wasn’t supposed to. We’re supposed to be beyond all this now, right? Postpartisan, postracial. So last week we dump on the white firefighters; this week from the Oval Office… Obama’s buddies at ACORN dumping on the white firefighters in New Haven. This week from actually the East Room we now start dumping on cops. The cop in question, Sergeant James Crowley, had this exchange with an unidentified reporter.
REPORTER: Mr. Gates has asked you for an apology. What is your reaction to that?
CROWLEY: There will be no apology.
REPORTER: Does it…? Is this now and ever no apology?
CROWLEY: Yes.
RUSH: No apology. He didn’t do anything wrong. We’ve heard now this guy gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Reggie Lewis of the Boston Celtics who’d had a heart attack. He’s black. The cop was even citing this. ‘I didn’t see race. I saw a human being in distress,’ and the neighbor in Cambridge, a neighbor of Professor Gates. This is quick. It’s five seconds long.
NEIGHBOR: I would have to say, you know, it was — as the police report said — ‘belligerent.’
RUSH: He was belligerent, talking about Gates. Now, here’s Charlie Ogletree, Harvard professor, Gates’ lawyer, on ABC’s Good Morning America. The question: ‘What was your client’s reaction to the president’s comments tonight?’
OGLETREE: He was simply pleased that Barack acknowledged that he was a friend and that what he had read and heard and — and understood to have been reported, that Professor Gates did not violate the law by being in his own house with identification saying that he was there lawfully.
RUSH: Was he charged with that? He wasn’t charged with being there. He wasn’t stopped and he wasn’t charged with legally being in his house. He was charged with disorderly conduct. Something went on in there. I mean, they dropped the charges, but something went on. Now, Gates is not through. Last night Black in America on CNN, host Soledad O’Brien asked a question: ‘Originally they put the handcuffs behind your back.’
GATES: They put the handcuffs behind my back and I told them that I was handicapped, I used a cane. They had a debate. There was a black officer there and he was very sensitive. He persuaded them to move the handcuffs from around the back to the front, and took me to the Cambridge police station and booked me, fingerprints, mug shot which has now been (chuckling) all over the universe.
O’BRIEN: We’ve seen it a lot.
GATES: It made me realize was how vulnerable all black men, how vulnerable all people of color are — and all poor people — to capricious forces like a rogue policeman. And this man clearly was a rogue policeman.
RUSH: This is how it starts, folks. This is how it starts. I don’t know how many poor people live in Cambridge. I don’t know. They make it sound like this happens in Cambridge all the time. Make it sound like all this profiling going in Cambridge all the time. But this is how this stuff starts. That stuff… It’s no accident that he’s saying this and characterizing it as this, and now making this a national cause, a national issue. Same show, Soledad O’Brien, Black in America on CNN, Gates wrapped it up with this.
GATES: My lawyers and I are considering what further action because —
O’BRIEN: What does that mean?
GATES: — this is —
O’BRIEN: Does that mean lawsuit?
GATES: Um, perhaps, because this is not about me. This is about the vulnerability of black men in America.
RUSH: We’ve got a new mantra here! Nothing’s about these guys. Gates, ‘it’s not about me.’ He’s going to sue for’all black men in America. It’s not about me. This is a change of subject. This is suspect, to me. It isn’t about me; it’s about all black men in America?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, folks, I have been gingerly dancing around the Gates business, but I’ve decided here that I’m going to tell you what I really think about it. In the first place, what we now know is that Gates was not arrested sipping tea sitting on his sofa legally in his house. He followed the police out of the house screaming at them. How else would neighbors know he was belligerent? That’s when he was arrested. He wasn’t sitting in a couch sipping tea daintily. He was screaming at the cop there to help protect his property. I’ve also learned that Gates’ house had a history of having been broken into. This is why the neighbor called. There are a lot of break-ins in this neighborhood recently. In fact, there was damage done to Gates’ door.
Now, here’s what I think. The cops come, they find out it’s your house, you’re legally there, there’s no reason to arrest you. Something happened. I think Skip Gates wanted to be arrested and provoked the cop. The only person who should really come under any scrutiny about the cops being there is Gates almost certainly liberal neighbor. I mean, we’re talking Cambridge here. These houses are kind of close together. The neighbor didn’t recognize her own neighbor, didn’t recognize Gates, called the cops. When you live in a neighborhood with houses right next to each other, normal people recognize their neighbors. But the neighbor, no doubt being a liberal, probably racist, saw what she saw.
Once the cops show up, Gates instantly saw opportunity for capital ‘P’ publicity, chance to get out from the shadow of his former colleague, Cornel West, there’s a rivalry between those two guys. You have to go out of your way to be disorderly to get arrested, especially after it’s been established that you are the owner of the house. And, by the way, Snerdley, let me check. We all know who Henry Louis Gates is. Do you know what department he teaches in at Harvard? What’s his department? African-American Studies. What is African-American studies? It’s an entire department devoted to creating racial friction. All of his academic writings are about racial issues. Something about this — and then Obama jumping on that question last night, ‘Cops acted stupidly.’ This is how unfortunate things start and grow and snowball, and I’m not comfortable with it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Yeah, you had an obnoxious citizen challenging the cops to arrest him, and, in essence, they did and there’s a picture of a black cop standing right there. One thing here, Obama, what he did last night, this is not a force for positive race relations in this country. He’s dealing in stereotypes and I am deeply troubled by that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Well, I said I was through discussing the Henry Louis Gates situation, but I have more to say. Robert Gibbs, the press secretary at the White House, said that Obama was not calling the police officer stupid. The only problem is we heard him. The president said that the police acted stupidly in arresting Gates for disorderly conduct. But Obama wasn’t calling the police officer stupid. Gibbs is saying he was not calling the officer stupid, the situation got out of hand. He used the word stupidly, but he didn’t call him stupid. What we got last night, the president’s reaction to this was not presidential. The presidential reaction is, ‘I don’t know everything that happened. I know Gates, he’s a friend of mine. I don’t know what happened. I’m going to leave this up to the local authorities. When all the details are known,’ blah, blah, blah. Stay out of it.
But, what we got was the reaction of a community organizer. We saw the community organizer that is Barack Obama. We got the ACORN reaction last night. We got the militant black reaction, the Cornel West angry reaction. Basically we saw a community organizer in action last night, and he sends a message to young people all over the country that cops are stupid. The president of the United States says the police act stupidly. All it does is cement in certain people’s minds that there’s a constant adversarial relationship with the cops, the cops are bad. My president even says the cops are stupid. President says the cops are racist, the cops profiling and so forth. This is agitation last night, folks. That’s why I’m very uncomfortable with this. Obama is not a force for positive race relations in this country. He is not a uniter. He played into stereotypes with this, and he repeats them. He shoulda kept his mouth shut. He’s not capable of that. He shoulda kept his mouth shut.
He doesn’t know the facts, he wasn’t there, he pops off, just exactly as he would back in Chicago in the community organizing days. He goes off about racial profiling, all the rest. Based on what? A limited amount of information about a single incident where he’s quick to condemn the cop, the whole police department, and white America. Mr. President, you are not a victim. You are, in fact, the president of the United States. You went to private school. You went to Ivy League schools. You are a millionaire. You have a charmed life. Congratulations. You’re living the American dream. Stop pretending otherwise. If anybody behaved stupidly yesterday it was the president, in even taking the question.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Obama just hit the stage in Cleveland for a telepromptered town meeting, and he got a rock star welcome. Of course it’s a Democrat town and a Democrat region of the state. Something just hit 
me. All these presidents that do this when they go out and meet the local yokels, but he’s mentioning all of the state and local officials who are there. ‘Your secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner is here!’ and the place erupts. ‘And the great mayor of Cleveland, Frank Jackson!’ The place erupts. I don’t know, folks. It just… I get a little crazy when we start cheering government officials like they’re rock stars.
Let’s hear it for the comptroller, and here is the director of sanitation services, who’s also with us!
Yay!
And here is the local cop!
Booooooooooooo!
By the way, the cop in Cambridge has spoken out on the radio in Boston. His name is James Crowley.
CROWLEY: He’s the president of the United States and I support the president to a point, but I guess it’s disappointing that he waded into what should be a local issue and something that really plays out here. As he himself said at the beginning of that press conference, he didn’t know all the facts. He certainly doesn’t based on those comments. I just think it was very disappointing. The reason I asked the professor to come outside was not as some would suggest because I knew I couldn’t arrest him in his house. I didn’t know who he was, I was by myself, I was the only police officer standing there, and I got a report that there was people breaking into a house. That was for my safety, first and foremost. I have to go home at night. I have three beautiful children and a wife who depend on me. So I had no other motive other than to ensure my safety.
RUSH: He’s probably engaging in procedure, textbook manual procedure. If he’s the only — and there are two guys that were breaking into the house with a crowbar! Gates and his driver were breaking into their house with a crowbar.