RUSH: National Enquirer is submitting John Edwards’ coverage for a Pulitzer Prize. They want to get a Pulitzer Prize for dragging the Drive-By Media kicking and screaming into this story, and I’m all for it. You know, the Pulitzer…. Do you know how Joseph Pulitzer got his start? Yellow journalism! Joseph Pulitzer was the National Enquirer, and he was so upset at the end of his life they he had no integrity and no respect that he established the Pulitzer Prizes as a means of regaining respect for his work, his career, and his family name. Speaking of Edwards, I gotta play you some sound bites here. This is just… We need to take a break here and have a little fun so I’m going to start with myself January 27th, 2004, right here on this show. This is in the midst, of course, of the presidential campaign and this is what I said about Senator Edwards. Once again, this will establish in your mind (if it hasn’t been established already) that I am prescient, that I know these people like every square inch of my gloriously shrinking, naked body, and that I am indeed on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
RUSH ARCHIVE: The threat posed by Edwards as I’m picking up on it is, he comes by this the most naturally, as did Clinton. Clinton was a natural fraud. Clinton didn’t have to stop and think on his feet or in advance strategically about how to fool people. It just is who he is. Clinton is a master at disguising himself. Clinton is walking around with body armor. Clinton’s walking around with all kinds of boundaries that you can’t get through and you can’t see through — and that’s Edwards. In Edwards’ case he may not even know who he really is. I think in Edwards’ case it may be even more pathological; he may not know who he is. He has been so skilled at putting forth who he wants people to see, he may have become what he wishes he were.
RUSH: Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. And I tell you I about flipped when John Edwards stood up there and said (doing impression), ‘If John Kerry becomes president, Christopher Reeve will walk again!’ That was cruel to say that to people who are suffering spinal injuries. So this morning on Good Morning America we have a montage of highlights from an upcoming 20/20 interview with former Edwards campaign staffer Andrew Young. Andrew Young is the guy that, ‘No, no, no! That baby’s mine, that baby is mine,’ and this is about Senator Edwards and being asked to lie about being the father of Rielle Hunter’s baby.
YOUNG: The Senator made the full pitch not just for me… I mean, he didn’t just have to convince me that I was going to take paternity; he also had to convince Rielle that she would publicly claim that I had been the father. It’s been two and a half years. And, uh, you know, for it to come out a week before my book is coming out. I — I — I’ve expected it for a long time, I expected that they were going to do a public relations campaign to promote him, which I’m very skeptical of. All of a sudden he’s a doting, loving father of — of Quinn. I’m skeptical of it.
RUSH: As everybody should be. This guy is as phony a construct as there ever has been. So Stephanopoulos, host of Good Morning America, shocked, outraged that a guy would run for president while hiding an affair. That’s what’s hilarious! Stephanopoulos worked for a guy and helped a guy hide affairs, and here he is outraged at John Edwards. This is Stephanopoulos. I guess he’s just talking to himself.
STEPHANOPOULOS: How did he ever think he was going to get through a presidential campaign sitting on all this? It’s just unbelievable.
RUSH: ‘How did he ever think he was going to get through a presidential campaign sitting on all this? It’s just unbelievable.’ Let’s go back, then. Let’s go back to 1993. This is from the documentary film, The War Room. It’s about Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Governor Clinton, Gennifer Flowers, have this exchange about their affair.
CLINTON: You aren’t missing any kind of papers or anything?
FLOWERS: Like what kind of papers?
CLINTON: Any kind of personal records or checkbooks or anything like that? Phone records?
FLOWERS: Do I have any?
CLINTON: Yeah.
FLOWERS: Unh-uh. Why would I?
CLINTON: I don’t know.
FLOWERS: You usually call me, for that matter.
CLINTON: But I just think that if everybody’s on record denying it, you got no problem.
RUSH: ‘[I]f everybody’s on record denying it you got no problem.’ See, John Edwards did not have a Betsey Wright on the payroll. George, how did John Edwards think he was gonna get away with it? How did you guys think you were going to get Clinton through with all the baggage he had? What John Edwards didn’t have was George Stephanopoulos and James Carville! That’s what he didn’t have. My God, if John Edwards would have had James Carville and George Stephanopoulos and Paul Begala, ‘The Forehead,’ who knows how high he might have flown! July 19th, 1992, This Week with David Brinkley, Sam Donaldson and George Stephanopoulos have this exchange about Governor Clinton.
DONALDSON: Now, Governor Clinton has a character problem, but I take it that your line of —
STEPHANOPOULOS: Governor Clinton has no character problem.
DONALDSON: — your line of counter-attack is that it’s un… Well, I mean, he’s not denied that he has engaged in marital infidelity. He denied a specific one.
STEPHANOPOULOS: He said that he had problems in his marriage.
DONALDSON: That’s right, and he has talked about the draft, and to some people it’s a character problem.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Bill Clinton’s passed his character tests throughout his life and throughout this campaign, and he’s shown it through his commitments to real fights.
RUSH: (laughing) Now the anchor of Good Morning America is George Stephanopoulos! I mean, it’s too good to be true. It’s just hilarious. Here next is finally Stephanopoulos from the film War Room talking somebody out of making an allegation of infidelity against Clinton.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Think of yourself. I guarantee you that if you do this you’ll never work in Democratic politics again, nobody will believe you, and people will think you’re scummy. The alternative is you don’t do it. It may cause you some temporary pain with people who tomorrow aren’t gonna matter, and you have a campaign that understands that in a difficult time, you did something right.
RUSH: So here’s Stephanopoulos counseling a bimbo: ‘You better not! You better not come forward. You better not think of yourself!’ I guarantee if you do this you’ll never work in Democrat politics again, better not do that. See, all that was missing for John Edwards is George Stephanopoulos. But he’s busy. Yeah, he’s now in the mainstream media. He’s now anchoring Good Morning America. He’s gone from being interrogated by Sam Donaldson to now being a colleague.