RUSH: So yesterday we were sitting here, and I was watching CNN in the morning and they were breathless all over again. They couldn’t contain themselves. They were so excited because you know what happened? They discovered a new audiotape, yes, surrounding the gentle giant shooting in St. Louis. And you know what it was? Some guy was having a sex video chat with some babe, sitting at his computer, and they had the tape, they got the tape, and they had audiologists on all day long.

They did say, “We are trying to authenticate it.” And after they said, “We are trying to authenticate it and the FBI is trying to authenticate it,” they then spent the rest of the day reporting it as though it was real. They had experts come in, and they had analysts come in, and they wondered what this new development might mean. And it turns out that today CNN is worried that the new audiotape is a hoax.

Now, to refresh your memory, we played the audio ourselves on this program yesterday. We got it off of CNN. It’s some guy who’s chatting with some babe and he’s telling her how beautiful she is and how much he loves her, and then all of a sudden six, what sounds like gunshots, ring out. (bullet sounds) And this guy is unfazed. There’s a two-second gap, and then he keeps telling this babe what he wants to do, either to his computer keyboard or to her.

He keeps salivating and keeps telling the babe whatever, and then four more shots come out after a two-second gap, and this guy is totally unfazed by any of it. He’s close enough for his computer microphone to pick up gunshots, and he’s not fazed. Here it is. We have the audio. This is what CNN played yesterday. They did a very, very low intensity disclaimer, said they just got it. They’re trying to authenticate it, haven’t yet. The FBI is looking at it. We don’t really know, but! And then they ran with it all day long as though it’s real. And this is it.

MAN: You are pretty. (shots) You are so fine. Just going over some of your videos. (shots) How could I forget?

RUSH: I mean, there’s gunshots all around this guy, supposedly. And he doesn’t miss a beat. He doesn’t react to them at all and nobody at CNN seems to make that connection yesterday. Nobody seems to stop and say, “Wait a minute. This guy is in the middle of whatever he’s doing and there’s 10 gunshots and he doesn’t react at all?” So let’s go to the audio sound bite. This is Don Lemon last night on The Situation Room discussing the alleged audio of the Ferguson shooting.

LEMON: The person had seen us out in the field, CNN. He does not want publicity. He was involved in the chat, which many red-blooded American men do with their sweethearts or women, with their sweethearts.

RUSH: Wait a second, stop the tape, stop, stop, cue this back. So now (laughing) this is great, CNN. Here we’ve got a guy involved in a — what do you call it, sexting? Here’s a guy involved in a sex chat, and he happens now to be a CNN source, so of course the first thing we have to do is say, “Hey, hey, nothing strange here. A lot of red-blooded American men do this. Ain’t no big deal, audience. So don’t discredit our new source because you might think he is a reprobate. No, no, no, no, no. We even have some people at CNN that do this.” Well, he didn’t say that, but that’s how — (laughing) and they tape themselves doing it, too. It’s just so common, nothing to see here on that score. Don’t be negatively affected by the fact that the guy is doing whatever he’s doing to his computer. Okay, here it is again from the top.

LEMON: The person had seen us out in the field, CNN. He does not want publicity. He was involved in the chat, which many red-blooded American men do with their sweethearts or women, with their sweethearts, “How are you, honey? Will you send a selfie,” or do whatever, so he’s a little bit embarrassed about that. I don’t see why he was embarrassed because any — everybody, not everybody, but many people do that. He was trying to get in touch with someone who he thought was an authority figure, but most people don’t just know how to pick up the phone and call the FBI.

RUSH: Oh, is that why it took over a week, the guy didn’t know who to call? CNN’s probably walking by the house every day. How many media people were there? This guy is close enough to hear the shots, right? He and his computer are close enough for his computer to pick up the shots, and he can’t find a media person. He doesn’t know who to call. He doesn’t know how to reach them. He apparently can’t look out the window that picked up all these shots and see an army of media people out there. He didn’t know what to do. So somehow the guy finds CNN.

Now, we love Don Lemon here. Don Lemon, I mean, this guy’s a gem. We love him here. I hope nothing ever happens to him. He is the one reason I would never ban audio sound bites from CNN. He’s the guy who asked if a black hole might have swallowed up that missing Malaysian airline flight. I mean, it’s just a gold mine. But the pressure is on me to start banning audio sound bites from CNN because they want the same thing to happen to them that’s happened to MSNBC. We stopped highlighting things there, MSNBC dropped off the radar. Not that they were ever really on it.

So Don Lemon says, “Hey, nothing to see here. Everybody, I mean, not everyone, but a lot of people.” Let me ask you a question. Let’s say it was Mitt Romney who was engaging in a sex thing on his computer and CNN got hold of a tape of it, do you think that they would say, “Hey, hey, hey, don’t judge Mitt Romney, all kinds of red-blooded American men do this kind of thing. It’s nothing, there’s nothing to see here. Don’t judge our source on the basis of that because, hell, everyone, well, not everyone, but a lot of people do it.”

What if it were Karl Rove? Better yet, what if Dr. Krauthammer was sexting on his computer and this happened and CNN got hold of it? Would they treat it as, “Hey, don’t be judgmental here”? (Laughing), folks. Anyway. The news is from Breitbart: “Even if the audio ends up being authentic, the fact that CNN is now concerned over its authenticity and laying the groundwork to claim they were always skeptical, tells you how irresponsible the network is. The prejudicial audio never should have been aired prior to authentication. But this is exactly the kind of incendiary behavior we have come to expect from the news network that disgraced itself more than any other during the George Zimmerman affair.” I don’t know about that.

I don’t know how you outdo what NBC did, doctoring the 911 call in the Zimmerman story. But, anyway, the details of this are that CNN is now worried that that audio is a hoax. When they first broadcast the unverified audio of the shooting of the gentle giant, it was with all the Sturm und Drang of breathless breaking news. The audio led almost every hour, all day.

It was just like when George Bush’s poll numbers hit 36 and Wolf Blitzer could not tell people enough times. CNN could not overdo this yesterday; it did lead almost every hour. It was the biggest story of the day yesterday. They had an endless parade of audiologists, forensic audiologists and other experts come in, listen to it, analyze it, and expert it, and then offer the kind of commentary CNN wanted to hear.

But now it’s today, and it’s a different day, and now CNN hosts (such as Michaela Pereira this morning) are asking, “Do you think it’s authentic?” She asked two different law enforcement people, and both of those law enforcement people at CNN today think it was a hoax. But, you see, I don’t know that CNN is really worried. They got what they wanted out of this yesterday.

There’s so much involved here. This is trying to save the story, trying to tamper with a grand jury. There’s a lot going on with this report of this tape yesterday, and they did this on purpose. They jumped the gun on this on purpose. Is not “unprofessionalism.” It’s not “inexperience.” It’s not “youthful mistakes.” This is agenda-driven decision making on the part of CNN to air this inauthentic or unauthenticated tape. It was an agenda, not news-related decision.

Because it’s not going their way in St. Louis. It’s not going their way in Ferguson. And there’s a couple of other things that are tied up into this, just the zeitgeist/the spirit of the times and trying to keep their audience happy and stay in good vibes with one segment of the audience. But it’s just typical of what’s happening in the Drive-By Media these days. It’s just a glittering, glaring example.

Let’s go back, in fact.

Thursday, August 14th, 13 days ago, almost two weeks ago. This is Don Lemon on CNN’s Newsroom. This is after… Remember this. The chief of police there, Tom Jackson, had a press conference. He named the officer, Darren Wilson. They then released the video of the gentle giant strong-arm robbing the convenience store, and remember how that caused everybody to blow up.

Because the media said (angrily), “What’s this? Why are you releasing this today? Why didn’t you release this earlier in the week? How long have you had this?” All the while, the Department of Justice, Eric Holder, had ordered the local cops to suppress it and not release it. But, anyway, remember this from Don Lemon?

LEMON: Some of us had heard about it earlier, the possibility of a videotape of a robbery, and believed to be Michael Brown. We did not get confirmation from police on that, so it — it was not reported. That was just a rumor. But now we’re finding out from the Ferguson police chief that they do believe that they have video, and they think that in that video that it is Michael Brown, um, stealing cigars, punching the store clerk.

RUSH: Well, wait a minute, now. Wait, wait, wait. Hold it just a second. So Don Lemon, two weeks ago told us, “Oh, yeah, yeah. We in the media, we heard about that tape. We knew that video existed. We’d heard rumors about that. We couldn’t authenticate that, so there’s no way we were gonna report it.”

Really? You heard about that audiotape of the gentle giant holding up the convenience store, but you couldn’t authenticate it so you weren’t gonna run it. But here you have a sex-video chat audio with 10 shots — something no autopsy has even shown — and you don’t wait for it to be authenticated like you did the videotape of the gentle giant robbing the convenience store?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I just got a note from Koko up at RushLimbaugh.com, and he said if CNN really wants to authenticate this sex-chat tape, they need to have Anthony Weiner come in and listen to it, because if there’s anybody who is an expert in that, it’s Anthony Weiner. There’s another thing about this, though. The guy is sex chatting, or video sex chatting, with… Well, we assume it’s a woman. He said, “Baby, you look great,” or whatever.

There are 10 gunshots that the guy’s computer clearly picks up (I mean, if it’s real), and the babe doesn’t once ask, “Hey, honeybunch, what’s going on where you are? What’s happening? Are you okay?” I mean, if you were sex video chatting with a guy and you heard gunshots on his end of the connection, would you would you react and ask, “Hey, hey, hey! Are you okay out there?”

But this guy’s babe and this guy (chuckles) didn’t even pause.

They did not have one shred of a reaction.