RUSH: This happened on CNN. They have an anchor there in the afternoon by the name of Brooke Baldwin. She’s a typical CNN infobabe and anchorette. And she’s got this Syrian refugee that she’s interviewing and she just expects this guy to dump all over Trump for bombing his country and creating chaos and instability. It’s amazing how this guy got on the air, because he did nothing but thank Trump. He did nothing but praise Trump. He went out of his way to thank Trump, and he begged Trump to do it again. And the CNN infobabe is trying to get out of it and end it prematurely. She’s totally, totally flummoxed by this.

Now, I don’t have any audio of the CNN infobabe, but we do have sound bites of the guy. Grab sound bites number five and six. His name is Kassem E-i-d, how would you pronounce that? Kassem Eid, Kassem Eid, Kassem Eid? How would you pronounce it? You’d go with Eid? All right. So we’ll call him Kassem Eid in acknowledgment that we don’t know how to pronounce it. We’re choosing the best and preferable and so — wait, we don’t have him on CNN. We’ve got him on Fox. Let me see here. Yeah, it serves the same purpose. He’s talking to Steve Doocy. He says, “After having seen the images last Tuesday of the young Syrians struck dead at home from the sarin gas, how did you feel knowing that Trump and the U.S. had finally taken action?”

EID: The most painful memory about that attack is seeing President Obama breaking his red line promise —

RUSH: Stop the tape. Rewind it. I want you to imagine hearing this on CNN, because this is where I heard about it, and the infobabe is clearly waiting for this guy to dump all over Trump. Why else have him on? They clearly don’t want anybody that’s gonna sing Trump’s praises. So either they got fooled by this guy or a producer somewhere screwed up. So imagine the infobabe, not Steve Doocy here, but Brooke Baldwin, she’s asking the question, and it’s essentially, “Tell us how terrorized and traumatized people in Syria are today after President Trump’s attack?” Imagine a question like that, I don’t know that was the question, but imagine it’s something like that, and then here’s the guy’s answer.

EID: The most painful memory about that attack is seeing President Obama breaking his red line promise, how he let Assad walk away unpunished, and how he lied about saying that he’d get rid of all Assad chemical weapons. And I saw President Trump and the United States taking action for the very first time after six years of calling for help, we felt happy, we felt grateful. President Obama inaction, the broken red line, it created the vacuum for ISIS.

RUSH: This guy lives in Germany now. This is a Syrian refugee named Kassem Eid, it’s pronounced Eid, by the way, Mr. Snerdley, so your instincts failed us in this. Ir did you say Eid? Oh, I thought you said “I’d.” Take it back. You’re right. Chalk it up to my hearing. He’s in Germany. Imagine hearing that on CNN with the infobabe thinking the guy is gonna dump all over Trump. But he wasn’t through. Then he thanked Trump.

EID: Thank you so much, Mr. President, for taking action. Thank you for showing the entire world that you have a big heart and that the United States actually care about human rights and about other people’s suffering. Mr. President, we want to go back home. We want to stay in Syria safe. Please, help us come back home.

RUSH: Oh, yeah, that’s another thing, when he was on CNN, the point that he made about not wanting to be refugees in America. He kept hammering that. He kept telling the infobabe: We want to go home. We don’t want to leave our home. We want to be able to return home. Thank you, Mr. President, for making it possible. Please continue these actions so we can go home. We do not want to come to the United States. We do not want to be refugees. We want to live in our homes.

And she was backtracking and trying to get out of this interview as fast as anybody I’ve ever seen. Now, about his comment here, Obama lied saying that he’d get rid of all of Assad chemical weapons. It turns out the New York Times has a story — so much CYA going on today. It turns out the New York Times reporting that the Obama administration knew that Assad did not get rid of all the chemical weapons, didn’t get rid of them. They just lied to us, because that was the easiest route, the least controversial route, the least problematic route.

Obama issues a demand that Assad cut it out and get rid of the weapons, and supposedly Assad quaking in his boots over Obama’s drawing of the red line, did so. And we’ve got Obama administration people quoted in this, “Oh, yeah, we knew there was some still there. Yes, yes.” There’s even a story — get this. Apparently some Obama administration people are telling the New York Times and the Washington Post they’re happy that Trump did this. That they hoped it would be Obama who did it. That they were disappointed Obama didn’t do it. At least, that’s what’s in the news.

What’s in the news is that ex-Obama people in the deep state were very disappointed. John Kerry lied. What’s new? Susan Rice lied. What’s new? And Obama lied. They all knew that Assad had not gotten rid of these weapons. They just told us that we could rest assured that Assad had backed down to the very manly threats made by Barack Hussein O.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have a transcript here of what Kassem Eid said on CNN. Brooke Baldwin interviewing him via Skype, and obviously not what she was expecting. Because her first question obviously is a lead-in to bash Trump in some way. And this guy came back at her and said (paraphrasing), “With all due respect, I didn’t see each and every person demonstrating after the travel ban. I didn’t see you three days ago when people were gassed to death, where civilized were gassed to death. I didn’t see you in 2013 when 1,400 people were gassed to death. I didn’t see you raising your voice against Obama’s inaction in Syria that made us refugees and get kicked out of Syria. If you really care about refugees, if you really care about helping us, please help us stay in our country. We don’t want to come to the United States. We want to stay in Syria. With all due respect, this is hypocrisy.”

He just went right after her. Now, normally hypocrisy doesn’t stick to the left, as we have discussed. But the people watching this I guarantee you had to be stunned and shocked because of the way this had been prepped. It’s just another one of these incidents where they’re gonna end up cursing Trump left and right, ’cause every time they think they’ve got him, Trump turns the tables on them. And it’s primarily because of their arrogance and their condescending, snooty attitude, and it comes back to bite them frequently.

So I checked the email during the break, and couple people said, “Why do you think CNN got fooled that way?” Folks, I think there’s a very easy answer. They end up believing their own BS. They create these narratives that are oftentimes just created based on prejudice and bias. And in this case, what’s the prejudice and bias? The bias is that everybody in Syria wants out and wants to come to the United States, but Trump is a bigot and is doing everything he can to keep decent, hardworking people who are being denied civil rights and human rights from entering the country. And that’s why they’re mad.

They’re not mad at Assad per se. I mean, they are, but their real anger, their real desire is to come to the United States. And Trump’s mean, and Trump himself is a bigot and a pig, and he won’t let ’em in, and these people’s lives are threatened. They don’t even bother to talk to these Syrian refugees. They just tell themselves that that’s what they all must believe, and not just the Syrian refugees. Any other refugee from any other part of the Middle East, they want to come here just like illegal immigrants do. They’re gonna be future Democrats, that’s all part of the thought process here and so that makes ’em wonderful and fine.

And they never even think to ask them when they get ’em for interviews, precheck ’em, because their arrogance is such they already know what these refugees want because they, the smarter-than-anybody-else liberals and the biggest hearted, compassionate people in the world, these same liberals, they think they know what the oppressed want. They think they know what every victim wants, and everybody’s oppressed because of Trump and Republicans and conservatives, and they’re victims because of the same thing.

The Democrats are their saviors. The Democrats are their protectors. The Democrats shield them. And so they just assume, “Oh, we’ve got a Syrian refugee from Germany. The guy’s gonna be great!” They put him on the air and they find out the guy loves Trump, could not be happier over what Trump did. They were totally blindsided. And then the coup de grace, the guy says they want to go home. They don’t want to come to the United States. They don’t want to be refugees.

And then he starts ripping into CNN for all the hypocrisy. You know, when Trump did this, when the protesters were doing that, where were you then? Where were you when Syrians were being killed by Assad for the last seven-years? Where were you then? Now all of a sudden you act like you’re our great protectors.

I think it’s that simple. I think Drive-By journalists — and remember, now, I have a new theorem that I’m working on, that is the media is driving this car and the Democrats are an arm, the Democrats are simply an extension, but the real impetus, the movement, the — well, euphemistically, the intellectual firepower of modern-era progressivism is all over the media. And they’re the ones driving it with their daily, 24/7 so-called media coverage. It isn’t media and it isn’t coverage. It’s the advancement of an agenda disguised as journalism, and the Democrats, the elected Democrats are the war horses that go out and win elections, that get elected to seats where the agenda can be implemented.

Look, you’re gonna have some of the movement’s leaders in the Democrat Party, but I’m just saying in general it’s not the media taking talking points and instruction from elected Democrats. It may have been that at one point. But I think now the leadership of the progressive movement, many of them you don’t even know. They’re producers, they’re editors, assignment editors, other executives who are driving this. And they are not curious people. They are arrogant and they are full of themselves, and they don’t even ponder the possibility they could be wrong.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Tom in Mansfield, Ohio. Tom, great to have you. How you doing, sir?

CALLER: Rush, it’s great to talk to you. Mega dittos from Mansfield, Ohio. My wife and I have been listening for years. We appreciate everything you do especially the books for the kids. We got sets of those for all of our grandchildren this past Christmas and they love ’em.

RUSH: Well, thank you very much. You know, what I’d like to send your kids, grandkids, some packages of stuff from the Revere factory. We got some Liberty stuffed dolls here and stuff, so if you could hang on after the call —

CALLER: That’s awesome.

RUSH: They’ll love the stuff. I guarantee you. We have a whole little package of things we put together that is educational, too, and so in you hang on after we finish here, give your address to the program observer, then we can move on. Now, what is it that you called about?

CALLER: Well, in your opening monologue and throughout the first hour today you have wonderfully explained CNN and their take on how they are in disbelief that the Syrian refugees are not upset with President Trump. And it reminded me clearly of the Arab Spring in Egypt when I believe it was a CNN reporter there also who was doing everything they could to get a positive response for President Obama and getting him involved and the great things that he did, and this refugee — or this Egyptian had nothing good to say about him whatsoever.

RUSH: Yeah, I’m so glad you remembered that. I’m gonna see if we can get our crack production crew to get those out of the archives. I imagine — ahem, ahem — that they’re trying to find the CNN bites even now. Ahem. Ahem. Pretty sure they’re trying to find the CNN bites from this weekend. But let me tell, for those of you new to the program — and there are millions of you who are, because the program’s growth is exponential. What he’s talking about, back during the Arab Spring, that’s gotta be five years ago now, long time ago, CNN sent a reporter to Cairo by the name of Nic Robertson.

These two bites may be — it’s tough to choose — they may be in my top five all-time favorite audio sound bites. The Arab Spring was an uprising in Egypt in this particular story, a popular uprising the people against the current Egyptian government. And the Obama administration shamelessly, working with CNN, tried to make it look like the Egyptian uprising was inspired by Obama and Obama’s community organizing and Obama’s election in the United States and how the people’d thrown out a bunch of people and gotten this new, young, first African-American president.

And the Obama administration was doing everything that it could to say that this Arab Spring uprising was inspired by Obama. So CNN, without having to be told to play this up, sends their reporter over there, and he finds a couple of Egyptians in the crowd and without knowing what they’re gonna say, starts asking them questions about how proud they are of President Obama and how excited they are about President Obama and what they would like to say to President Obama. Would they like to thank President Obama for the new jobs programs that would result in Egypt from this Arab Spring uprising.

And each one of these guys (paraphrasing), “Obama? He’s not even here. This has nothing to do with Obama. What do you mean? We are rebelling and we are taking back our country. What do you mean, Obama?” So he would say, “You hear clearly how ecstatic they are that President Obama supports their efforts to create jobs.” And he would move on, he found the next guy. And he asked the same leading questions, begging for these two Egyptians to praise Obama as the reason they’re rising up against oppression in Cairo, in Egypt.

And both of these guys just smacked it down, and what was funny about it — well, that’s funny in and of itself, but listening to Nic Robertson try to tell the audience that these two Egyptian guys had not said what they said. (imitating reporter) “And there you hear it, both Mustapha, Abdul, whatever, very happy that President Obama is excited about the prospects for new jobs.” He just practically made it up. These guys had just finished saying that Obama meant nothing to this, that Obama had nothing to do with it, but Nic Robertson had to tell the viewers what they had actually heard was these people being ecstatic that Obama was supportive of their efforts. That’s a great observation.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It was at Tahrir Square where Nic Robertson ran into these two guys that didn’t see Obama as having any responsibility in their uprising. Tahrir Square is a circle, by the way. Arab Spring was 2011. Six years ago this happened.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To the phones we go to Jose in Miami. Jose, great to have you. How you doing, sir?

CALLER: Pretty good, Rush. How are you? I’ve never spoken with a lovable, little fuzzball, but it’s an honor to do so now.

RUSH: (laughing) Well, thank you much. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Thanks. The reason I called is I listened to your description of the CNN interview with the person from Syria. And I was jumping up and down as you were recounting the story, ’cause that’s exactly how I feel. I’m an immigrant. I am the youngest of five. I came to this country legally, I might say, at the age of four. But what struck me about the interview is that if all immigrants felt the way he did, that he would prefer to stay in his country and fight, we wouldn’t have immigration problems. I’m grateful that my dad and my mom brought us to the United States when they did. The oldest of my siblings was active in the counterrevolution in Cuba. And he had to leave in a hurry because they were about to be killed, so I’m grateful to be here, but had he been forced to stay and fight and the five of us siblings had been forced to stay and fight, we —

RUSH: I know it’s conflicting. This guy thinks in Syria that he has a chance to save his country. Cuba, that circumstance, you know, they’re all different. One thing about immigration. Now, this is a fascinating little sidebar to this. But immigration in the southern border, Texas, is practically negligible. Illegal immigration is way, way down. Now, why do you think that might be? We haven’t had any policy changes, not real, maybe a couple. Why do you think that might be?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We’ve got some audio here, and we’ve also got Gorsuch, the audio of Gorsuch being sworn in. But we’ve got the CNN audio of the Syrian refugee that I hyped.
Now, one thing that I have to say here. I spent a lot of time talking about how this guy really took it to CNN, and sometimes when you do that you build expectations up in people so that when they hear it, “Well, that’s no big deal, what were you talking about Rush?”

I’ll tell you how it happened to me. I didn’t see The Exorcist for like three months after it came out, but I talked to everybody that did, and they told me, “It’s the goriest, oh, my God, I’ve never been more scared by a movie. I almost did a walkout twice.” I’m walking in there to watch this thing thinking I may need to sit in the back row to be able to get out, and I watched it, and not one time did I get scared, think anything was gory ’cause my expectations had been so built up that they could not possibly have met. So I hope I haven’t done that with you and what happened here on CNN.

This is Kassem — it might even be Kassem, but it’s Kassem Eid. And this is the version of him on CNN that happened Friday afternoon, after this program ended. And the infobabe is Brooke Baldwin. She said, “You are supportive of President Trump, and so many people are, but there are also people over here in America saying clearly that President Trump is motivated as we all have compassion for these just horrible images of these babies that were killed, but at the same time, this is a man who doesn’t want Syrians to come into this country with this refugee ban.
Hillary Clinton said, ‘We cannot in one breath speak of protecting Syrian babies and in the next close America’s door to them.'”

So she’s ragging on Trump. Trump doesn’t care. Yeah, he may have bombed Syria, but he doesn’t care about you Syrians. He doesn’t want you to be able to come to America like Hillary does. He’s still a reprobate, and Hillary should have won. That’s the question. And then she says, “So, Kassem, how do you see it?”

EID: With all due respect, I didn’t see each and every person who was demonstrating after the travel ban. I didn’t see you three days ago when people were gassed to death, when civilians were gassed to death. I didn’t see you in 2013 when 1,400 people were gassed to death. I didn’t see you raising your voice against President Obama’s inaction in Syria that let us refugees, that made us refugees get kicked out of Syria. If you really care about refugees, if you really care about helping us, please help us stay in our country. We don’t want to come to the United States. We want to stay in our country. We want to stay in our country, with all due respect. This is hypocrisy.

RUSH: She said, “Okay, okay.” What she wanted was somebody who’s gonna join her in piling on Trump. What this really comes down to is — and I don’t want to speak for Brooke Baldwin on this. I’m just telling you that this kind of question, it indicates they don’t really care about the Syrians refugees. They just want to bash Trump for not having a heart. That’s all this story was. And that’s his point in the answer.

Well, if you care so much about us, where have you been? If you care so much about us, why didn’t Obama do anything to help us? Why did Obama draw these phony red lines and then didn’t do anything every time the Syrians crossed them? If you care so much about us, why do we have to go to Germany? If you care so much about us, why did we get kicked out of Syria?

What she’s trying to do here is get him to dump on Trump as not really caring about them ’cause he doesn’t want to let them in the country. So they’ve got a narrative here, and that is Trump’s travel ban, Trump’s a racist, Trump’s a pig, Trump doesn’t want anybody to come into America, and whatever they can do to further that narrative they’ll do, even if it means finding a refugee from Syria after Trump launches the attack.

This is exactly how they do it. The narrative here, bash Trump, Trump’s heartless, Trump’s travel ban, Trump doesn’t care, and this guy just rammed it right back down their throats. Oh, and you do? You do? Where have you been all these years? Thank Mr. President. He cares for us. We don’t want to come to your stinking country. We want to stay in ours. Now, he wasn’t finished. And she had to end this ’cause it wasn’t going well.

EID: If you really care, if you really care, help us stay in our country. We don’t want to become refugees. We want to stay in our country. Help us establish safe zones. Help us —

BALDWIN: I understand.

MAN: — stay safe in our country.

BALDWIN: I understand.

EID: And if you just give me two seconds just to tell President Trump once again, please, sir, what you did was amazing. What you did was a powerful message of hope for a lot of people inside and outside of Syria. Please, don’t stop on this. Please, help Syrians stay in their country. Please establish safe zones. Please take out Assad’s air forces so they won’t be able to commit more atrocities using traditional weapons, 500,000 people were killed with traditional weapons, just so people can know what we have suffered in the past six years.

RUSH: Yeah, this didn’t go anywhere near as planned. See, this guy was supposed to dump on Trump for bombing Syria with cruise missiles, the Tomahawks. And, you know, he doesn’t really care because if he really cared, he’d be accepting of the refugees and the illegal immigrants. And this is how these people get caught.

Folks, I’ll guarantee you this. This guy’s answer is the last thing any of these reporters could ever guess one of these people would say, because since they hate Trump and since they think Trump is all these mean things, then obviously everybody else does too. So they made the mistake of not vetting this guy. They figured, oh, Syrian refugee? Gotta hate Trump. Trump won’t let ’em into America. And they got caught.

Now, a caller said this reminded him of Nic Robertson. We’re gonna go back to the Grooveyard of forgotten sound bites and pick these up. This is February 11th, 2011. Folks, these are hilarious, and it’s along the same lines. This is during the Arab Spring. It’s Tahrir Square, which is a circle, and what Nic Robertson of CNN’s trying to do here, CNN and the media are trying to say that the Arab Spring was inspired by Obama’s election. That Obama inspired people all over the world to stand up for themselves and fight back and take back their countries and blah, blah, blah.

So they send CNN’s reporter over there, Nic Robertson, to interview these guys that are protesting in Tahrir Square, thinking that all they’re gonna get is just overwhelming adoration and praise for Barack Obama.

ROBERTSON: Achmed, you’ve been here, down here on the Square for many days. The United States and the international community. You’ve just listened to President Obama saying that America will support Egypt if it wants help and assistance, and hopes that there will be a good transition for jobs for the young people. What would be your message for President Obama?

ACHMED: We don’t know, actually, who he supports. He serves for his own purposes, and the Egyptian people serve for our freedom and democracy. Any democratic country should see for the people, not for its own purposes.

RUSH: Were you able to hear all that? Well, the question, the key part of the question, so he’s talking to this guy Achmed, and said, “Achmed, what would your message be for President Obama?” So these people are rising up against their own tyranny, and the CNN reporter wants to know what they say to Obama. And Obama’s not on their minds. But because Obama is their god, Obama is their savior, they think everybody looks at Obama that way, including these guys ’cause they think it’s just a bunch of fellow community organizers here doing what Obama did.

“So Achmed, what would your message be for President Obama?”

“We don’t actually know who he supports. He serves his own purposes. Egyptian people search for our freedom and democracy and he ought to be interested in that, not his own purposes.”

So Nic Robertson, every the intrepid, trench coat clad reporter in great Peter Jennings tradition refused to give up. He continued to search Tahrir Square to find the one protester who wanted to owe it all to Obama. And he found the next one.

ROBERTSON: Mustafa is joining me now. We just heard President Obama say that he wants to extend, eh, support and assistance to Egypt and Egyptians if they want any, and he hopes that there are more jobs for the young people in the future. What’s your message for President Obama?

MUSTAFA: Well, my message to President Obama is just, “We started this revolution without any outside help, and we are going to finish it also without any outside help.”

RUSH: So this Nic Robertson is trying to get these guys to credit Obama because he supports jobs for young people. “Mustafa joining me now, you just heard President Obama say he wants to extend support to Egypt.” They probably didn’t hear Obama, but Nic Robertson at CNN thinks that that’s all they’re doing in Egypt is watching and listening to Obama. “You just heard Obama say he wants to extend support and assistance to Egypt, and he hopes that there are more jobs for the young people in the future. What is your message for President Obama?” \

“Well, my message is we started this without any help and we’re gonna finish it that way.” So Nic Robertson found two marks that failed to come through and credit Obama for whatever else was happening there at Tahrir Square, which is a circle, during the Arab uprising. But Nic Robertson, in great media form, then sought to tell viewers what they had just seen.

ROBERTSON: Are you pleased that President Obama has come out, however, now and said he supports this change and supports the people and supports the young people and — and what they’ve done?

MUSTAFA: Well, actually President Obama’s views were kind of conflicting during the last week, but now he’s saying that he’s supporting the change.

RUSH: I forgot, there was one question to Mustafa. Nic gave it one more go. “Are you pleased that President Obama has –” So here these guys are, they’re literally rising up against tyranny, and all CNN can ask them about is Obama. You know, we’re sitting here puking when we first heard this six years ago. What the hell is this? We’re laughing ourselves silly too. So now it’s time for Nic. This only takes five seconds. You got listen fast here. So here it is, Nic Robertson just concludes by telling CNN’s viewers what they just heard.

ROBERTSON: The view from here is one of very happy to now hear that President Obama has swung behind the people.

RUSH: That’s not at all what anybody said! The view from here, Brooke, the view from here is one of very happy to now hear that President Obama has swung behind the people. So every news story, how does it help Obama? Does it help? How does it hurt, doesn’t hurt? How can we make it help Obama? How can we make it all about Obama? It’s just hilarious. And nothing’s changed. Now it’s how can we hurt Trump? How can we damage Trump? How can we do whatever we can do to present stories that make it hopeless for Trump to ever be seen in a positive light.