RUSH: Now, folks, I want to say just a little bit more about the ‘unfairness,’ the ‘inaccuracy,’ whatever you want to call it from the Drive-By Media of the Harry Reid smear letter auction with my matching donation now generating $4.2 million for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. In anybody’s judgment, that’s huge news, especially since it involved a skirmish between me and the Senate majority leader. The amount of coverage that this has received, especially accurate coverage, is such that you could put it in a thimble. Well, maybe a syringe, but certainly nothing larger than that. But the point is: Why do you expect anything different, after all these years, especially with stories in which I’m involved? I’m not portraying myself as a victim by any stretch. Don’t misunderstand. It is always this way and has always been this way for conservatives. Reagan does not get credit for ending the Cold War; Gorbachev does. Do you want decent press, or do you want to smash communist Russia? Tax cuts do not get the credit for creating mountains and mountains of unexpected revenue pouring into the Treasury. Do you want buzz and credit for tax cuts, or do you want a roaring economy with flush federal coffers and lower tax rates? Now, in that one I understand the importance of getting it out to educate people as to what happened, but people are living this.
The press is never going to give this to you. The press is never going to acknowledge that any aspect of conservatism works. They’re just not. They look at conservatism as an aberration. It’s a bunch of kook weirdos, NASCAR types, southerners who are conservatives. You know, dunces like Ronald Reagan. To have these expectations, wanting to be satisfied by the buzz as opposed to the results is misplaced priority. This program, its efforts, are either ignored or misrepresented by the Drive-By Media, constantly. Now, do you want accolades or do you want the largest radio talk show in the history of modern radio and $4.2 million going to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation? I’ve evolved, ladies and gentlemen. It’s an old adage, but I apply it to myself constantly, and that is: ‘Success is always the best revenge.’ Triumphing over these people is always the best revenge. Make no mistake: They know it. They know full-well what’s happening. The fact that they don’t report it is quite indicative of just who they are. You can sit here and say, ‘But, Rush! But, Rush! It’s not fair.’ There is no such thing as ‘fairness,’ folks. It’s an elusive concept. I defy you to define it in a universal sense.
The dictionary can try, but somebody tell me a universal definition of fairness that’s applied across the board today in American politics, the culture, or society. It’s elusive. It’s like Potter Stewart, the late Supreme Court justice. He said, ‘Well, I know pornography when I see it, but I can’t define it.’ It’s the same thing with Drive-By Media coverage. You know journalistic malpractice when you see it. Well, we can describe it, by the way, and we do — and that bugs them at the same time. Now, let me give you an illusion. Last Friday the Los Angeles Times ran a huge, huge story on some of the suspicious fundraising that’s going on for Mrs. Clinton in, of all places, Chinatown in Manhattan. ‘Something remarkable happened at 44 Henry St., a grimy Chinatown tenement with peeling walls. It also happened nearby at a dimly lighted apartment building with trash bins clustered by the front door. And again not too far away, at 88 E. Broadway beneath the Manhattan [B]ridge, where vendors chatter in Mandarin and Fujianese as they hawk rubber sandals and bargain-basement clothes. All three locations, along with scores of others scattered throughout some of the poorest Chinese neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been swept by an extraordinary impulse to shower money on one particular presidential candidate — Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
‘Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton’s campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown.’ Mrs. Clinton already has $380,000. ‘At this point in the presidential campaign cycle, Clinton has raised more money than any candidate in history. Those dishwashers, waiters and street stall hawkers are part of the reason. And Clinton’s success in gathering money from Chinatown’s least-affluent residents stems from a two-pronged strategy: mutually beneficial alliances with powerful groups, and appeals to the hopes and dreams of people now consigned to the margins.’ Now, this is a long story, and there are countless personal examples of people that make $500 a month giving Mrs. Clinton $1,000 and $2,000 donations, just adding up, and adding up, and adding up. When I read the Los Angeles Times piece, I said, ‘This is going no further.’ The LA Times also wrote a scathing multipart series on questionable land deals involving Dingy Harry back in the nineties. It went nowhere beyond the Los Angeles Times.
Maybe some Las Vegas papers touched on it, but it went nowhere else in the Drive-By Media. ‘Many of Clinton’s Chinatown donors said they had contributed because leaders in neighborhood associations told them to. In some cases, donors said they felt pressure to give.’ What does this sound like? This sounds like the same kind of people that were associated with Norman Hsu, like the Paw family out there (no money, lots of pets) giving all of this money. It’s obviously bundled and so forth, and look at the connection. The Chinese! You go back to the nineties. These things just keep repeating themselves, the fundraising scandals with the Riadys and their Lippo Group. You had Pauline Kanchanalak. You had Charlie Trie. You had Johnny Chung. You had a guy with ties to the Peoples Liberation Army of China. This other guy, some ChiCom, had ties to the People’s Liberation Army and he was gunrunning into the United States, and he was funneling money to the Clintons. Charlie Trie, who owned a Chinese restaurant or a barbecue place in Little Rock while the Clintons were down there as co-governors, walked in one day to the Clinton legal defense fund with money orders totaling, what, $250,000. They had to give those back. This is obviously a Chinese connection. Now, my point with all this is, it went no further other than today in the Washington Post.
‘Dishwashers for Clinton — Once again, a zeal for campaign cash trumps common sense.’ That is as scathing as it gets. You and I together just finished raising $4.2 million for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation based on a letter filled with lies and smears from the Senate majority leader. That story barely — other than on CNN, which got it right, by far — causes a ripple in the Drive-By Media, nor does this Hillary story, other than this Washington Post editorial. ‘Donors whose addresses turn out to be tenements. Dishwashers and waiters who write $1,000 checks.’ It goes on the list of details that I just shared with you, and then they said, ‘This appears to be another instance in which a Clinton campaign zeal for campaign cash overwhelms its judgment.’ What a benefit of the doubt! Overwhelms its judgment? How, when you know you’re not going to be held accountable, can it be an error in judgment? This is a pretty crafty and smart move on the part of Mrs. Clinton and her team because they know nobody’s going to hold her accountable for this — and the Post editorial is a glittering example of it. ‘Zeal for cash overwhelms judgment’? This is not about judgment. I said once, folks, ‘We need to put yellow crime scene tape around Clinton campaign headquarters.’ You tell me that this is legit!
They review here Clinton’s ’96 ‘reelection campaign, the dangers of vacuuming cash from a politically inexperienced immigrant community should have been obvious. But Ms. Clinton’s money machine seized on a new source of cash in Chinatown and environs.’ They mention that she’s raised 380 grand; by contrast John Kerry raised $24,000 ‘in the course of his entire campaign.’ Then they say, ‘The alternative, the campaign says, would be to prevent those with foreign-sounding names from participating in the political process. But there’s another alternative: to strengthen a vetting process that seems geared more toward justifying the acceptance of checks than toward uncovering problems.’ Again, whoever wrote this editorial for the Washington Post, I have to tell you: Why in the world should the Clintons change what they’re doing if there’s no political price to pay for this? Why in the world? See, this is the thing. You talk about I know full-well that we are not going to be treated fairly and accurately by the Drive-By Media? The Clintons know full-well that people are going to look the other way — and even if a story like this does emerge, everybody else is going to ignore it.
So these two stories: the Dingy Harry fundraising letter, $4.2 million, is ignored; this story also ignored, and then when the Washington Post does touch on it, ‘Zeal for cash overwhelms its judgment.’ I mean, you talk about looking the other way and ignoring the obvious? Now, I have another question. Why didn’t McCain-Feingold fix this problem? Do you remember what in the early days of McCain-Feingold what the primary impetus was in selling it to the American people? That too much money had led to corruption, that these were good people in Washington, the salt of the earth, your neighbors — and they go to Washington for the express purpose of doing their civic duty and serving their country, and they get there, and in the process of being there, why, all this money corrupts them and turns them into bad people! So McCain-Feingold comes. ‘We’re going to get the money out of politics.’ Right. All kinds of loopholes remain, and now people who can’t afford it and don’t have it are donating money they don’t have, and no eyebrows are raised about this other than in the LA Times and the Washington Post, ‘Ahhhh, no. It’s just a zeal for cash is overwhelming their judgment.’ Come on, folks! You and I know, that somebody is walking around Chinatown handing out money to these people and then sending it back in their names. It’s not their money. They don’t have it to begin with, not in these amounts. It’s the same kind of thing that was happening with Norman Hsu — and it’s of no interest whatsoever, because this could be bad for Mrs. Clinton.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, let’s see if I understand this. In Chinatown and other Chinese neighborhoods in the Bronx and in Queens, dishwashers, people who live in tenements, can afford, ladies and gentlemen, to donate $1,000 and $2,000 campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton, but they can’t afford health care. No, you and I are going to have to pay for that. But they can somehow come up with a thousand or two grand for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. Is that not just cute? Isn’t it just a beautiful thing?