RUSH: Now to the audio sound bites. About these e-mails that you may get or have already received from David Axelrod in the White House. Yesterday on the Fox News Channel, Megyn Kelly interviewed Deputy White House Press Secretary Bill Burton, and she said to him, ‘Bill Hemmer complains about health care and he has a message and I forward you Bill Hemmer’s e-mail to me, saying, ‘You know, Bill is saying there are death panels.’ So I forward Bill’s e-mail to you, and you get my e-mail,’ Megyn Kelly’s e-mail, ‘you get Bill Hemmer’s e-mail. You’re deleting Hemmer’s e-mail address, right? Do you purge and delete the name of the complainant?’
BURTON: I understand your question, but do not confuse your viewers into thinking that we are keeping a list of the opponents of reform.
KELLY: You’ve already said that three times, Bill.
BURTON: We’re not. We’re just trying to go out and answer the —
KELLY: Please just answer my question.
BURTON: I know, but it — but —
KELLY: Are you purging and deleting those e-mails or aren’t you?
BURTON: Apparently it is not clear to you.
KELLY: It’s not, because you’re not answering.
BURTON: If it’s not clear to you, it’s because you keep (sputtering). Megyn, you’re flabbergasting, I gotta say. We’re not keeping an enemies list. We’re answering people’s questions, and the fact that you guys keep talking about this so much is confusing people, I think, because we’re not keeping any list.
RUSH: And the discussion continues.
KELLY: You’re not keeping an enemies list, you said.
BURTON: About what’s going on.
KELLY: I hear you. You’ve made that point three times. Now if you will just please answer my question. Are you purging —
BURTON: I think it was four times.
KELLY: — or deleting —
BURTON: I think it was four times.
KELLY: — the actual… Are you purging or deleting the e-mails of the citizens who have raised complaints?
BURTON: Right. I appreciate that question. We’re not altering their e-mails in any way. We’re just answering the person who e-mails us with the facts.
KELLY: I’m saying, do you delete —
BURTON: Megyn, I really want you to stop confusing your viewers —
KELLY: This is an important question, sir.
BURTON: — because you’re not doing a service to the American people you’re not doing a service to the American people by confusing them about whether or not there’s an enemies list.
KELLY: Bill, you’re being unfair, because you and I both know —
BURTON: I’m not being unfair.
RUSH: He will not answer this question: Are you purging the e-mails? It’s a very simple question. Are you purging the emails? He won’t answer it. Now, Megyn Kelly finally says, ‘Listen, Bill, you’re being unfair you and I both know there’s a federal law and it’s called the Presidential Records Act and it prohibits you from deleting the e-mails in the records that are received by the White House. So in the example I just gave you you’re not deleting Bill Hemmer’s e-mail because you will have it and you will maintain it for years and then at some point it will become publicly available and this is why some people say you requesting the people forward their neighbors’ or other people’s complaints, which will include e-mails in many instances, will have a chilling effect on free speech.’
BURTON: I think the reason why people are confused is because journalists, not unlike you, are saying things like our knowing that the Presidential Records Act suggests that, uh, we keep records here. But none of that — none of that information is made public for a very long time and we are not keeping a list because that is ludicrous. We are just answering questions that people have about, uh, legitimate concerns that they have and answering is some of the real myths that are out there that get, uh, propagated by leaders of anti-reform movement and are sometimes, uh, often talked about on cable news networks.
RUSH: And so finally Megyn Kelly says, ‘Look, you have the Speaker of the House referring to these people at swastika-wearing. You have another Democrat calling them Nazis. You have the president calling complaints about health care smears saying he’s going to fight them. Then the White House comes out and says send us the e-mails those of us behind the e-mails may feel a little reluctant to engage in such speech in the future, and that’s the complaint not just cable news has about it, Bill Burton, but the ACLU as come out and said: We have a serious problem with what you’re doing.’
BURTON: Well, for starters, I don’t think Speaker Pelosi was just claiming that people were wearing swastikas. People are showing up at events with swastikas, dressed up as Hitler, with signs invoking Nazi Germany. So that’s not something that’s being made up.
RUSH: There’s no photographic evidence, so here again the White House is out there they can’t delete the e-mails. They have your e-mail address! The whole point of the snitch website was to get your e-mail address. The whole point was to have citizens snitching and ratting each other out. Like I just sent a note, ‘Snerdley told me a lie about health care and I want you to know that this is what needs to be corrected.’ Snerdley is going to get an e-mail from David Axelrod, and that’s what’s happening. They can’t delete because of the Presidential Records Act, they cannot eliminate any of these e-mails or the addresses.
They have to keep ’em. And at some point they’re going to be part of this guy’s library, and everybody’s e-mail address is going to be available to anybody who wants to see it. And if you get an e-mail from David Axelrod at the White House, and you’re just an average, ordinary American, you say, ‘What is this? I didn’t e-mail them! How the hell did they get this?’ That’s scary. And now you’ve got this assistant press secretary running around, ‘Oh, yeah, there are people with swastikas out there!’ So they’re doubling down on this. There are people ‘showing up dressed as Hitler’ and they’re bringing pictures and so forth. There’s no photographic evidence to support this, folks. I found one picture with somebody carrying a sign that had a swastika.
It had a line drawn through it! But this gets to the point that I raised the other day — and Andy McCarthy has got a brilliant piece. I don’t know if it’s posted yet, but he’s got a brilliant piece coming at National Review Online dealing with this whole notion that we can’t somehow compare National Socialism in Germany to the Obama health care plan simply because at the end of the National Socialism we had a monstrous genocide? Nobody’s calling Obama Hitler. Nobody’s calling Pelosi Joseph Goebbels. We’re just saying, ‘Socialism is socialism wherever you find it, and there are some damn close similarities between National Socialism health care in Germany and what this bunch is trying here.’ You can’t mention that? Well, some people might be intimidated into not mentioning it, but not here. EIB remains a place where there is no fear of standing up for the United States of America.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Earlier, Megyn Kelly talking to Bill Burton, the White House press spokesman, on these e-mails, the snitch website e-mails that are happening. People are getting e-mails from David Axelrod and they never sent a note to the White House. So yesterday afternoon at the White House press briefing, Major Garrett of Fox News said to the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, ‘I’ve received e-mails from people who have never signed up for anything related to this White House. Senator Obama’s a candidate, and they’re getting e-mails from David Axelrod. How can that be?’
GIBBS: I’d be interested to see who you got that e-mail from and whether or not they’re on the list.
GARRETT: What you’re telling me is, I need to give you these people’s e-mails —
GIBBS: What — what —
GARRETT: — so you can check them on a list? I’m just asking.
GIBBS: Well, you’re asking if they’re on a list.
GARRETT: They’re telling me their names can’t be —
There — It — It’s — Apparently they’re on a list.
GARRETT: — on a list because they never asked for an e-mail from the White House.
GIBBS: Right, but w-what I’m saying is, I — I — I — I’d have to look and see.
GARRETT: So you don’t have an explanation for how someone who’d never signed up, never asked for anything from the White House, would get an e-mail from David Axelrod?
GIBBS: Well… (nervous laugh) I hesitate to give an answer because y-y-you might impugn the modus of the answer.
GARRETT: Why would you say that?
GIBBS: I — I — I — Because of the way you phrased your follow-up! I appreciate the fact that I have omnipotent clarity, uhh, as to what you’ve received in your e-mail box, uh, today. I have —
GARRETT: You don’t have to have omnipotent clarity. You don’t have to ‘impugn’ anything about it. I’m telling you what I’ve got.
GIBBS: Let me go someplace else that might be constructive.
RUSH: ‘Someplace else that might be constructive.’ I saw this morning Major Garrett interviewed on Fox, ‘Major, do you still have an answer to your question yet?’ He said, ‘No. I still don’t know how it is that people who never contacted the White House or Obama are getting e-mails from David Axelrod.’ It’s the snitch website! We all know this. This was the express purpose of the snitch website.