RUSH: So I got an e-mail from a friend, says, “I can hear it in your voice. You’re having trouble going all in on Brian Williams,” and that’s true, folks. I’m telling you. I’ve always liked Brian. Brian Williams has always been fair to me. Do you know how odd — or not odd — rare that is? I can count on one hand in 27 years the number of people that we would call mainstream journalists who have been consistently fair with me. He’s one of them. But (sigh) I don’t mean to be holding back. It’s just hard to pile on.

I don’t understand it. I mean, I understand it. It’s clear as a bell what happened here. But I don’t understand doing it. But the point is, it is — it is — what happened in the news today. It is! What else are they making up, wherever you look? This wasn’t even about advancing an agenda. This was about personal aggrandizement, saying that you were aboard a helicopter shot down. I mean, this wasn’t even part of the news stories denigrating the war effort.

So you can imagine! We know that NBC makes things up. We know that NBC doctors 9/11 tapes and blows up trucks to make it look like it’s happening without any assistance from NBC. We know what goes on in the Drive-By Media. This is just a classic, bold-faced example of it. There’s no question. I mean, you look at the people that MSNBC has fired for things that are much, much less than this. They’ve fired Olbermann. They fired some guy named Cenk Uygur.

They fired Martin Bashir because he told a total lie about slaveholders making slaves eat excrement or something when that movie came out, 12 Years a Slave or what it was. He just totally made up some absolutely horrendous, reprehensible story about… (interruption) Oh, that’s right! He suggested Sarah Palin should have to eat the whatever. Yeah, that’s what it was. That’s what it was. I mean, these people are just, they’re filled with it. It’s overflowing, their hatred and their rage and their anger and they clearly will make it up if it advances the agenda.

That’s why I don’t even call what they’re doing anymore “journalism,” and that’s why they’re not “news readers;” they’re “narrative readers.” Anyway, Dan Rather… I told you they’re gonna try to circle the wagons to protect the news. Dan Rather. The Politico has the story: “Dan Rather Backs Brian Williams.” If I’m Brian Williams, the last guy I want speaking up for me is Dan Rather. Dan Rather of fake documents and George W. Bush and National Guard fame? That’s the last guy I want throwing a party for me.

But, anyway, from the article. Dan Rather: “I don’t know the particulars about that day in Iraq. I do know Brian. He’s a longtime friend and we have been in a number of war zones and on the same battlefields, competing but together. Brian is an honest decent man, an excellent reporter and anchor — and a brave one.” Well, what do you do with that? Because that (chuckles) sad to say, is not commensurate with any element of this story. (impression) “He’s a longtime friend and we have been in a number of war zones and on the same battlefields, competing but together.

“Brian is an honest decent man, an excellent reporter and anchor — and a brave one.” (sigh) Anyway, it’s just the first one I think of what are gonna be many. They circle the wagons, folks. They protect themselves. In this case, they’re gonna be protecting the news. They’re gonna be protecting liberalism. They’re gonna be protecting the image of liberalism and the Drive-By Media and all of that, just like Jennings and Brokaw threw Rather his own awards banquet after he made up that story about George W. Bush.