RUSH: What’s happening now there are hearings this morning in Washington on the Secret Service. This was an amazing thing, too. We’re learning now that this intruder actually got in the White House and got pretty deeply into the White House. And so people are wondering, “How can this happen? What is going on there?” It’s not just this incident, Secret Service down in Venezuela they had some fun times. Their advance team got down before Obama arrived.
They found the brothels, they found the bars with adult beverages, and they frequented both. Numerous examples. And people are testifying on Capitol Hill today, and just like when the IRS was up there being grilled about what they had done to the Tea Party, the answer seems to be, “Well, you know, it’s the culture. We have a culture problem.” Any time you hear the culture used as an excuse it ought to be thrown out. It’s oftentimes used for some people as a justification for why they break the law.
“Well, you know, it’s the culture! That’s just the way they were raised.”
Well, is that an excuse?
But what kind of culture could there be in the Secret Service that permits this? What is going on in there? It’s a serious question, a serious security question. How in the world can it happen? How can a guy jump the fence and get inside the White House? The real question is: Why did they want to throw him out? When people jump the fence, i.e., cross the border, we welcome them and we give them a health check and then we send them to a state to live with the family.
But this guy crosses the fence and everybody wants to throw him back. It’s not consistent, folks.
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RUSH: Get this. At the hearing in Washington today with the Secret Service director, the Secret Service director praised the agents that allowed the intruder to get all the way into the Green Room for restraint — restraint in dealing with the intruder. Meaning: They didn’t beat the guy up, and for that they deserve praise.
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RUSH: I want to take you back, folks. I want to take you back to the deep, dark crevices of your own memory. Do you remember early on in the Afghanistan war, shortly after Obama was elected? I’m pretty sure this in the first two years of the first term. We were talking about the really odd rules of engagement that had been imposed upon our forces. One of the things that Obama and his people were talking about was “courageous restraint.”
You remember that?
This was when American soldiers exercised great restraint in not firing on suspected terror targets if there was the slightest suspicion that they might have been civilians — and, of course, they all were. Terrorists hide in private homes. (Well, huts in Afghanistan.) They hide in mosques and any number of others places, and they do not wear uniforms. I remember that they were seriously talking about the restraint, and we were making jokes about how, “Well, maybe we need a medal for this.
“Maybe we need a medal for courageous restraint, where we honor American Armed Forces for not firing on the enemy.” I’ll never forget this, because it was so convoluted. Well, here we have the director of the Secret Service — who, by the way, has admitted that there have been six fence jumpers this year, right? Six fence jumpers at the White House this year. Today in testimony, she was praising the restraint of the agents in the White House for not beating up these people that had jumped the fence.
One of them got all the way into the Green Room in the White House. It does raise serious questions. I mean, how in the world can that happen? What’s going on there? Now, last night… I have a makeshift operation here when I’m on the road. When I’m at home I have everything I need in my library. I’ve got literally everything I need to be able to have a television on and be at the computer on the sofa using whatever devices I need. I’m not able to travel with that exact kind of setup.
So last night I’m outside. It’s gorgeous out here at night. I’m outside, plus I’m smoking a cigar. You can’t smoke inside here. I don’t think you can smoke inside in this country anywhere except in my house. So I’m outside, which is fine. Not complaining. I’m out on the deck and I’m smoking a cigar and I’m doing show prep, and I get some chats with some friends started, and we’re keeping track of the football game and Tom Brady being pulled and all that was going on there.
I happened to mention to one of the people I’m chatting with, “What in the world is going on at the Secret Service? How do you have people literally jump the fence unseen and then get in the White House?” I think it is a serious question. One of the people I was chatting with wrote back — and it was just an idle thought, nobody that is inside with inside information. They said, “You know, what if it’s like the military and the Clintons?”
Meaning: There wasn’t a whole lot of respect there, either way. I mean, the Clintons, particularly Hillary, the stories were that she, as an Alinskyite, had a noticeable disdain for uniformed military personally in the White House. She didn’t want ’em around. She didn’t want to see them. “What if the Secret Service…?” This friend of mine was, asking, “What Secret Service is the same way, what if there just isn’t whole lot of respect for Obama?”
I wrote back, “That doesn’t matter. That’s not that that shouldn’t be a factor at all. The job is security. Whether you like the president or not, he’s the president, for crying out loud!” There’s no explanation for this that even makes any kind of sense. Therefore, that’s why these hearings are going on. This is a serious, serious thing. And to have it explained, “Well, it’s just a culture. You have a cultural problem at the Secret Service.” This is a tradition!
This is an institution that’s supposed to be immune from whatever vagaries and changes there are in the culture. A religion is supposed to the same way. A religion has its beliefs and it doesn’t bend and shape to comport itself to whatever the popular conventions of the day are. It stands for what it is. The Secret Service stands for one thing, and that’s the security of the president and other charges that they have. It makes you wonder what’s going on in there.
It makes you wonder what’s really taking place inside the White House. It does me, anyway. It makes me really curious what’s going on. I’m not just talking about Secret Service. I mean, are things going on in there that nobody is permitted to see and therefore there isn’t any protection nearby? I’m at a loss to explain it — and when you’re at a loss to explain something that seems practically simple and cut-and-dried — Secret Service protects the life of the president — and six people get in there, you wonder: Were are they?
Why aren’t they around to catch those people? Why doesn’t they see them? Where are people monitoring TV cameras and all that? What is going on in there? And, by the way, this medal for courageous restraint? It was May of 2010 and Obama actually did want to issue such a medal. I’m not making it up. That’s what we were joking about; it’s a joke that came true. AP had it, May 2010: “New Medal Considered For Military: The “Courageous Restraint” Award.”
I know. You have probably forgotten all this, but I, ladies and gentlemen, do not forget. I’m fortunate that I have a pretty good recall in my memory, and I’ll never forget that one, either. Courageous restraint? Now, let me read to you from that article. Again, this is back in May of 2010. Forward Operating Base Ramrod, Afghanistan. “NATO commanders are weighing a new way to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan: Recognizing soldiers for ‘courageous restraint’ if they avoid using force that could endanger innocent lives. …
“Those who back the idea hope it will provide soldiers with another incentive to think twice before calling in an airstrike or firing at an approaching vehicle if civilians could be at risk.” There’s even more: “Most military awards in the past have been given for things like soldiers taking out a machine gun nest or saving their buddies in a firefight, said Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall, the senior NATO enlisted man in Afghanistan. ‘We are now considering how we look at awards differently,’ he said.”
No kidding.
May of 2010 was just Obama’s second year when this was going on.