RUSH: Now, compare and contrast this. The media’s glee at reporting every detail about this London attack to their reluctance to talk about the terrorist who shot up Steve Scalise and the two Capitol Hill police and others. Have you seen any headlines in the Drive-By Media about how the perp, Hodgkinson, was carrying a list of six conservative Republicans in his pocket when he launched his terror attack?
All of the people on his list are members of the congressional House Freedom Caucus. These are the Tea Party members. And the six other names that he wanted to target are on that list. They are all conservative Tea Party members in the House of Representatives. The AP, Associated Press, did do a tiny story on it but their article omits any mention that the list was of Republicans, let alone conservatives.
Now, on Friday I had something in the Stack here that I didn’t get to, and it was a point that I was gonna make. Since this happened, you know, you have a bunch of different people opining. And there are many people who have sprung up in an attempt to be bipartisan and say, “Bernie Sanders is not responsible for this. Don’t go there. We can’t say that Bernie Sanders is responsible. Bernie Sanders didn’t pull the trigger.” I understand that. But, folks, my point with this is not that Bernie Sanders is responsible in the sense that he pulled the trigger.
But if you read what this guy has posted on Facebook, if you read his letters to the editor, Hodgkinson, if you listen to sound bites, this guy’s rhetoric, the things that he says are amazingly parallel to what Bernie Sanders has said during his campaign and since. My point is that this guy, Hodgkinson and probably countless others, they are not creating this rhetoric themselves. They’re copycats. They’re copying what they’re hearing and seeing in the media and from their elected candidates.
So the argument is out, “We can’t say that the words of others inspire action. We don’t want to go there.” Of course not, ’cause that would then make Hollywood really in a precarious circumstance. But my point is that we pull up short of the guy pulling the trigger. It can’t be denied that Democrat rhetoric is in fact creating mentally unstable people out there on their side. These are true believers, and they’re subject to it, they soak it up. They seek it out wherever they can find it. When they end up speaking publicly, they regurgitate whatever they’ve heard from their favorite comedians or their favorite politicians or their favorite media pundits.
It’s amazing how close it is. It’s almost like plagiarism. So it’s undeniable that there is impact. When the effort to enrage people and make them upset — by the way, I said last week, the New York Times raked me over the coals in the Sunday magazine for this. But you can find tweets from Democrats, elected Democrats, who reference exactly the kind of thing that Hodgkinson did. You can find elected Democrats who have tweeted out, “Republicans should be lined up and shot.” No less than Tim Kaine has said something like that.
I don’t care what they want to try to pin on, for example, Sarah Palin, that never happened. If that happens on the right, if somebody on the right had ever said somebody needs to be stood up and shot, can you imagine what the left would do with this? Can you imagine this? If somebody from some conservative organization were caught running around town with a list of names after having shot a Democrat member of Congress, had a list of names of other Democrats, can you imagine?
That news wouldn’t be buried underneath some terror attack in London. It would be all that we are hearing about. I have to laugh when I listen to these leftists try to blame Newt Gingrich for this. Mark Shields on The NewsHour on Friday afternoon, that session he does with David Brooks, blaming this on Newt Gingrich, blaming this atmosphere on Newt Gingrich, as though the incivility only began when the Republicans took control of the House for the first time in 40 years.
So the bottom line, it is clear that we have a divide, a major divide in America that does not seem surmountable. It does not seem reparable. It does not seem like it is possible or even likely to find any common ground, when many Americans think that their number one enemy is the other political party, which is a fact on the left. Scary times.
And this impeachment talk and all of this investigation of Trump, it’s all part of that mix. I understand the administration’s afraid to use the word. They don’t go to out and start talking impeachment, even blowing it away and nuking it, defending it, because then you get the word out there. But I don’t think they need to be afraid of it. There’s nothing that Trump has done or even dreamed of doing that’s impeachable. All of this is manufactured. And it needs to be beaten back. But the Republicans so far seem to be standing by idly.