RUSH: I haven’t seen the media this happy since Grant Park, election night 2008. They’re not reporting. The media is cheering. They wouldn’t have minded if there’d have been a bloody civil war over there outta all of this. And, of course, like Vice President Bite Me says, they have no skin in the game, meaning if they were wrong about all this, they go back to their safe Western homes, they leave the chaos to others, the essence of the definition of Drive-By Media. The president of our country, who is not resigning and not turning over the country to the military, which is what’s happened in Egypt, it’s a military coupe, they’re calling it a soft coup, and our media loves it, our media loves the military running Egypt. Now, President Obama is scheduled to speak at 1:30 today. Our understanding is that that may be delayed just a bit. The White House is racing to build a fake pyramid backdrop.
JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!
RUSH: Pharaoh Obama gonna claim credit for all of this. They were so humiliated and embarrassed yesterday. Folks, all day long during yesterday’s program — and I even alluded to this, we didn’t know what was going on — all day long, ‘Mubarak to speak in moments; Mubarak to step down.’ The press was humiliated yesterday. They were angry, and so was Obama. And Panetta, running, talking about, ‘Yeah, he’s going to leave. I saw it on CNN.’ And we got Clapper, ‘Muslim Brotherhood? No problem. Peace-loving bunch. They’re a totally secular group.’ Obama goes out there, makes that 1:30 in the afternoon speech yesterday trying to make this event in Egypt the first step of his 2012 reelection effort: change, youth, and none of it happened, of course.
So everybody — media, Obama — just ticked off. You don’t mess with our media. You don’t mislead our guys like that. You don’t make our media look like a bunch of schlubs. I haven’t seen them this happy. They always rip into me, saying, ‘Well, Limbaugh, just does what he does for ratings.’ How come nobody ever talks about what they do for ratings? We’re led to believe they don’t care about ratings. They face a higher calling. You talk about anti-Mubarak forces, but they refuse to tell us who these anti-Mubarak forces are. Who are the anti-Mubarak forces? Oh, and, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, an interesting little story here.
This is from the New York Times: ‘Iran’s authorities have increased pressure on the country’s political opposition days before a rally proposed by opposition leaders in support of the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.’ The mullahs and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are telling the opposition in Iran, ‘You shut up. You don’t go out there, you don’t form these protests. You better not do what they did in Tunisia. You better not do what they did in Egypt.’ What will Obama say to that opposition? What will the American regime say to the opposition of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran? They want to hold a rally inspired by Egypt and Tunisia. Will Obama give a speech? Will he urge them on? Will he support them? Will the United States media go from Egypt to Tehran and advocate and agitate for opposition uprising to overthrow the mullahs and Ahmadinejad? Will there be any consistency?
We know one thing. Any uprising in Iran damn well would be democratic. The uprising in Iran is a democratic uprising. The people over there are fed up. That has been going on since 2009, well prior to 2009, but 2009 was the most recent where we didn’t do anything. So we’re gonna selectively choose. We will selectively choose who it is that we support demanding democracy. Will the regime, will Obama at 1:30 chide Ahmadinejad and the mullahs for telling the uprising in Iran to shut up, stand down, you better not do it. If Obama can’t find a way to make what’s bubbling up in Iran useful for his campaign he’ll stop it, thereby proving there’s no consistency, there’s no symmetry to it. This is pure cherry-pick.
Guardian, UK: ‘US and World Wrongfooted by Mubarak as White House Tries to Keep Up.’ Now, this is a story published, of course, before Mubarak turned over the country to the military. And now it’s gonna be interesting to see what will happen. This is the first phase. The second revolution, what will that be? Right now the military, in what the media is approvingly calling a soft coup, will the military engage now in a military dictatorship or will they pave the way for some democratically elected replacement for Mubarak? Before all that happened, the UK Guardian, this is no conservative publication, it’s a big liberal rag: ”US and World Wrongfooted by Mubarak as White House Tries to Keep Up’ — the Egyptian president has exposed Obama’s inability to decisively influence the country,’ and they ask what about the Cairo speech? And of course this is true.
You can say what happened today happened, and there are conflicting stories. Robert Gibbs says we didn’t talk to them before this happened today. By the way, this is Gibbs’ last day as the White House press secretary. He said we didn’t talk to them, but Jake Tapper has a story and says, ‘Oh, yeah, we were talking to ’em last night.’ So we don’t know what the true story is about that. But from the UK Guardian: ‘Mubarak’s response offers further evidence of the US’s slow decline from its status as superpower to a position where it is unable to decisively influence events in Egypt, in spite of that country being one of the biggest recipients of US military aid.’ That’s the UK Guardian, and they love Obama big time.
By the way, Oprah came out and made a statement on television. I don’t know if she realizes how she painted Obama as weak and ineffective. I’ll get to that as the program unfolds. Lots of stuff to do here today, folks, trying to squeeze it all in here in three hours of our Open Line Friday.
But this UK Guardian piece, the only thing Obama has been successful at is pushing ‘the US’s slow decline from its status as superpower,’ which is from the standpoint of the regime a success. Well, don’t look at me. This is the president who’s run around and told the world that the US economy will never again be the leader of the free world’s economy, US consumers will not be any longer. Intelligence agencies look like fools. The president looks like a fool. I’ve been scribbling notes here in chronological order, some of it now irrelevant, just to share with you as the events unfolded. But it’s no wonder the news media is so upset about Mubarak misleading the people. That’s the media’s job and he took over. You know, Mubarak led everybody to believe he’s leaving last night. And all these networks, I don’t care, newspapers, magazines, TV networks, they all were saying, ‘In moments, in moments Mubarak will make a speech and leave.’ He didn’t. And, in fact, he said last night in his speech, ‘We’re not gonna be pushed around here.’ I believe that’s why he hung on. I think if we had just shut up he’d-a gone.
But there’s Obama out there using this as a campaign aid for 2012. Mubarak’s a proud guy. He’s not gonna sit there and make it look like he’s a puppet, so he goes and makes this speech, ‘To hell with it, we’re not gonna be pushed around,’ purposely to humiliate the media and the regime. So the media is ticked off, upset, Mubarak misleading the people. After all, that’s the media’s job and he did a good job of it, almost as good job as they do. Here’s a little audio sound bite. As I say, it’s like they’re back in Grant Park in Chicago. CNN Newsroom is the show. This morning live in Tahrir Square, which is actually a circle, correspondent Arwa Damon reported about Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepping down.
DAMON: I cannot even begin to describe the atmosphere here. The crowd has gone absolutely insane! Hysterical with enjoyment, chanting, ‘God is great,’ chanting, ‘We are all Egyptians.’ Jim, this is the unthinkable that has been accomplished here. Demonstrations that began over Facebook and Twitter taking on a life of their own, brings down one of the best-known dictators in the Middle East. This is such a moment for Egypt, and not just for Egypt, for the entire region.
RUSH: Good Lord, take a breath! That’s just an example of the cheerleading, the excitement, the happiness. She’s happier about this than the Republicans losing the House in 2006. And they were deliriously happy about that. I mean, to give you an indication, they were all-in on this. They had no skin in the game, but the media’s totally invested in the outcome of events here. I’m just gonna say one more thing about this crowd, and all this talk about a democratic uprising popularized by social network sites, Facebook and so forth. I have had time to read all kinds of stuff about this group. I don’t want to call it a mob, the protester bunch. And, folks, they’re all leftists. They’re feminists. They’re avowed socialist, leftist, communists, environmentalists. I don’t believe that this is just spontaneity. I think this is classic. This is rent-a-mob. I don’t doubt that there are genuine grievances felt by some of the people in this group, but this is not a spontaneous, gee, nobody knew this was coming moment. This is the result of organizing. This is just classic community organizing in Egypt. That’s why Obama’s trying to connect himself to it.
It’s Open Line Friday. We get to the phones. The content of the program’s all yours. Whatever you want to talk about’s fine. Telephone number is 800-282-2882. And the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com. I’ll bet you if we looked, I’ll bet you if we scanned every audio and video feed we have, we could find some members of the worldwide media, I might even include some American media people in here shouting ‘Allahu Akbar, God is great!’ I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s embarrassing. It literally is embarrassing. And, of course, you know, all hell is gonna still break loose here. This is a military coup. This is not at the end. There’s something left to come after this, but when that happens the media is gonna be long gone, back to their homes, their big cars and so forth, and moving on to the next story that they can totally disrupt, thereby defining Drive-By Media.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, now, if you’ve been paying any attention, you probably think that these people in Egypt are salt of the earth. I mean, these are the greatest people. They’ve been living under the boots of Mubarak and these thugs, and it’s a great democratic uprising, and it’s about time. Who are they? Well, Investor’s Business Daily has a Pew poll: ‘What Egyptians Really Want,’ and it’s kind of interesting. Here’s some highlights from the Pew poll:
• 49% of Egyptians say Islam plays only a ‘small role’ in public affairs under President Hosni Mubarak, while 95% prefer the religion play a ‘large role in politics.” They’re unhappy. Islam is not a prominent enough factor in their politics.
• 84% favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim faith.
These are the people, the group that you see protesting.
• 82% support stoning adulterers.
• 77% think thieves should have their hands cut off.
• 54% support a law segregating women from men in the workplace.
• 54% believe suicide bombings that kill civilians can be justified.
• Nearly half support the terrorist group Hamas.
• 30% have a favorable opinion of Hezbollah.
• 20% maintain positive views of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.
• 82% of Egyptians dislike the US — the highest unfavorable rating among the 18 Muslim nations Pew surveyed.
Now, all this I gleaned from an editorial at Investors.com, Investor’s Business Daily, they summarize the Pew poll. So that’s who it is that we are talking about with their democratic uprising. Now free with the soft military coup.