RUSH: Well, this Las Vegas shooting is absolutely terrifying. This is a cold, calculating, calculated killer. And this is the kind of thing that a lot of people either consciously or subconsciously worry about when out in public because you cannot, no matter what you do, you cannot secure every building, every window, every rooftop. You just can’t do it without really restricting the daily ebb and flow and freedom of the population.
Greetings, my friends. Welcome. Rush Limbaugh and a brand-new week of broadcast excellence here. The telephone number is 800-282-2882, and the email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.
Fifty-eight people are now dead, 500-plus have been taken to hospitals after a shooting across — well, it was from the Mandalay Bay. There was a country concert across the street. Shooter on the 32nd floor and had nothing in his way whatsoever. And, folks, I’m gonna tell you, the left is already, they are salivating trying to politicize this, and before it is all over, it may end up having political motivations behind it. We don’t know.
Now, the left, it’s just unseemly. I mean, it didn’t take ’em a half hour, and they started ranting and rolling about gun control now. Tom Brokaw, Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, don’t you think it’s time that you stopped being a cliche? Don’t you think it’s time to stop being so predictable? Your comments are unworthy. They’re unhelpful. They are just worthless.
“‘Stand Up to the NRA’: Hillary Clinton Calls for Gun Control in Response to Las Vegas Shooting.” This is a classic example of how gun control wouldn’t matter. This guy’s gonna get a gun no matter what. Gun control does not keep guns out of the hands of the criminally intended or the criminally minded. And the gun doesn’t hate anybody. The gun doesn’t hate the national anthem. The gun doesn’t know anything. The gun is an inanimate object until it’s picked up by somebody. And this is the thing the left doesn’t want to deal with. That’d be really, really dangerous to start speculating here, but that doesn’t hold them back, does it? It doesn’t give them pause whatsoever.
Here is a little bit of Tom Brokaw. This was NBC’s live coverage of the incident in Las Vegas before President Trump spoke. The former assistant director of the FBI Shawn Henry, said, “There’s a lot of investigation to do, looking at who this guy was and who was he communicating with, gotta do that. Who do they find with the search warrants that indicates the motivation?”
RUSH: This has become a cliche. We have an incident involving race, and they say we’ve got to start talking about it. That’s all we’ve been doing is talking about it. Now every time there’s a gun incident, “We’ve gotta start talking about this and we’ve gotta get the president on the –” We always talk about this. We talk and talk and talk about the things that the left demands that we talk about. “We’re gonna have to find out where he was able to get that kind of weapon.” That’s gonna be incidental.
If you ever find that out it’s gonna be incidental to explaining this, unless — and here goes the speculation — unless ISIS is responsible for this and they found a way to get him the weapon, but I’m not even comfortable going there. We don’t even know much beyond who the guy is and his brother is out there saying: I’m just totally shocked. I didn’t know my brother was capable –” He’s one of these guys that engages in this active that nobody who knew him ever thought he was ever gonna be capable of anything like this.
Now, we are alive, we are living in a highly charged era. We are living at a time where there is rolling and rocking angst and nervousness. People don’t even have a chance to breathe if they watch news anymore. If you watch the news, you’re gonna be constantly on edge. The odds are that you’re gonna be deeply pessimistic and/or angry. And it’s just impossible to get away from it. You can’t even get away from it now, things that roil our culture, by tuning into college or professional sports. That’s not even a respite anymore.
Clinton asked followers to ‘put politics aside’ in the wake of the attack and ‘stand up to the NRA.'”
That is politics, Hillary, you are injecting politics into this. The NRA doesn’t have anything to do with this. We don’t know that this guy was an NRA member. We don’t know anything yet. But man they’re setting the table. They just can’t wait.
Now, here’s some of the latest news. Reuters is claiming that the Islamic State says the Las Vegas shooting is the result of a recent convert to Islam. The shooter was a recent convert. From the article, and again this is Reuters. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a shooting that killed at least 50 — it’s now 58 people — and wounded over 500 in Las Vegas early today, and said the attacker had converted to Islam a few months ago.
“‘The Las Vegas attack was carried out by a soldier of the Islamic State and he carried it out in response to calls to target states of the coalition,’ Amaq news agency said in reference to the U.S.-led coalition fighting the group in the Middle East.” The Las Vegas attacker converted to Islam a few months ago. Now, that’s from Reuters.
Now, ISIS takes credit for mass shootings. We know that. But have they claimed credit falsely? That is, have they ever claimed something to be a Muslim terror attack that turned out not to be? I don’t know. I’m asking the question honestly. I don’t know if ISIS has made false claims that are on the record. The reason I ask is because everybody would like to know if what they’re claiming here is credible.
There have been so many of these kinds of attacks, it’s hard to keep up, but somebody probably has — well, somebody, homeland security, FBI, somebody knows whether or not ISIS routinely or sporadically makes false claims of responsibility.
Now, get this. You know, I’m half reluctant to even mention this. The Daily Caller has a story, a top legal executive at CBS, Hayley Geftman-Gold, says that she’s not even sympathetic for the victims of the shooting at this festival at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Quote, “If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing.”
This is a top legal executive at CBS, Hayley Geftman-Gold. That’s hyphenated, Geftman-Gold. How do you even think this way? But if this is accurate, if this is a post that she really wrote, it’s a clear illustration of how the left politicizes and corrupts things. This is just outrageous. If she actually wrote this, if it’s not some fake post written by somebody else in her name. She didn’t mention that they might be Trump supporters, but that’s the point.
You know that people on the left are laying in wait hoping, wondering if they’ll have something with which to politicize this. Above and beyond all that, as I say, we live in an era, this is the deadliest mass shooting in American history. There are a lot of angry people in this country, and that suggests a question. Why are so many people angry? What are they doing that’s making them mad? Is their anger of natural origin, is it organic? Did it bubble up inside them without any external influences? Or is the anger being generated? And if it is, by whom and for what reason?
Now, you know where I’m going with this. For the last year, there has been an intense amount of undisguised, full-fledged hatred since the election last November. For almost a year now that hatred has not abated. That hatred has metastasized, and it has intensified. And that hatred is widespread. And that hatred has created other hatred in response to it. So it feeds off of itself and then as I say, metastasizes.
I’m not trying to say that the shooter doesn’t bear responsibility in any way, shape, manner, or form. But I do know that the officials here, law enforcement and so forth are desperately seeking a motive, because the fact that the guy’s just evil and bad and did a horrible thing is not enough. There are people who want to know the specific reason, some legitimately for remedial purposes. Others for selfish political reasons, which can’t be denied.
U.K. Independent just published an article with news that ISIS had taken credit for the attack, basically says ISIS is quite disciplined, seems to be more right than we think. This is the U.K. Independent. Here’s from the article: “A simple tabulation of past claims of responsibility for attacks in the West shows that Isis has been surprisingly disciplined in only claiming attacks that the terror group has either directed, enabled or else inspired,” Rukmini Callimachi, a New York Times correspondent focusing on Isis and al-Qaeda, told The Independent.
In other words, we don’t have much evidence they make things up. When they claim responsibility, it pretty much has been true. They’re surprisingly disciplined. They do not claim credit for something they had nothing to do with. Also from the article. And again, this is the U.K. Independent. “Making false claims would also leave the group open to accusations they claim attacks they have not committed, which while spreading fear and dismay, would undermine trust among supporters.
So ISIS has its own news agency ’cause they don’t trust the American Drive-Bys to get it right. And you know why that is? Why do you think ISIS doesn’t trust the American Drive-Bys? No. Because they know that the American Drive-Bys do not want ISIS being credited with this stuff. The American Drive-Bys want other people to be blamed. The American Drive-Bys and the American left, there’s no such thing as militant Islamic terrorism, right? There is no such thing.
So when there is, the American Drive-Bys do everything they can to avoid crediting militant Islamic terrorism with such acts. I think we’ve even discussed this in the past about how this tends to irritate ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They go out and commit terror acts, and the American Drive-By Media do not credit them when they claim it.
And the reason they don’t credit it is because it’s an operative point in the Washington establishment that there is no such thing as militant Islamic terrorism. That was true in the Obama State Department. It was true at the Obama defense department. It was true at the Obama Department of Homeland Security. There was no such thing as militant Islamic terrorism, remember? Well, when there is and ISIS is responsible for it, they get ticked off when they don’t get credit. So they form their own news agency. We’ll just have to wait. We’ll come back. The president had a brief message for the country this morning. That comes up right after this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s the latest from the FBI. They claim they have found no connection to ISIS whatsoever. Aaron Rouse, press conference, Las Vegas.
ROUSE: As this event unfolds we have determined to this point no connection with an international terrorist group. As this investigation continues, we will continue to work with our partners to ensure that this is factually, thoroughly, and absolutely investigated, to be able to bring comfort and peace back to this community.
RUSH: I’ve also been told that ISIS has falsely claimed credit for a terror attack on a casino in the Philippines when in fact it was just an irate gambler who was down on his luck who engaged in action that killed 42 people. And ISIS tried to claim credit for that, so I’m told. President Trump, just before 11 o’clock today, addressed the nation. We have it in two sound bites. This is the first.
THE PRESIDENT: My fellow Americans, we are joined together today in sadness, shock, and grief. Last night a gunman opened fire at a large crowd at a country music concert in Las Vegas, Nevada. He brutally murdered more than 50 people and wounded hundreds more. It was an act of pure evil.
RUSH: It was. And it may be splitting hairs to say it wasn’t terrorism or not. The people at that event were indeed terrorized. This is mass murder. Terrorism as defined by militant Islamic, we don’t know yet, but this clearly was terroristic in its circumstance. Here’s the next thing the president said.
THE PRESIDENT: Hundreds of our fellow citizens are now mourning the sudden loss of a loved one — a parent, a child, a brother or sister. We cannot fathom their pain. We cannot imagine their loss. To the families of the victims, we are praying for you, and we are here for you, and we ask God to help see you through this very dark period. Melania and I are praying for every American who has been hurt, wounded, or lost the ones they love so dearly in this terrible, terrible attack. We pray for the entire nation to find unity and peace, and we pray for the day when evil is banished and the innocent are safe from hatred and from fear.
RUSH: President Trump from the White House just a little over an hour and a half ago.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to get to phone calls on the incident in Las Vegas right now. I don’t want to move on to other things and then double back to phone calls with so much distance between the discussion of the subject and calls, so we’ll stick with phones now. We have Brent east of Seattle on the phone. You’re first today, sir. What do you want to say about this?
CALLER: Well, I woke up this morning like a lot of Americans and heard that there had been this terrible shooting, and I turned on my local radio station in time for them to say that they had woke up also this morning and were very perplexed as to why this guy would do it, because he was obviously a white guy with privilege. And I found that very interesting that they were using social justice language immediately when they themselves admitted that they knew nothing about what was going on.
RUSH: Well, do you listen to these guys regularly? Did they have a political persuasion readily identifiable?
CALLER: No. That was what was so perplexing to me because I live in central Washington, which is actually a fairly conservative area, you know, filled with traditional values and local folksy radio programs.
RUSH: Yeah. Well, connecting it to white privilege. This is in a way what I was alluding to when the program opened. We are a roiled culture right now, and the more you spend time immersed in it — and that can include nothing more than watching the news — you’re gonna have to really have boundaries and be insulated if you don’t want to be overtaken by it. You can be negatively impacted, made angry, depressed, what have you. If you pay any attention at all, you know on college campuses today there are courses springing up everywhere about white guilt and white privilege. It’s tracking in the wrong direction.
So I’m driving in and I get a text message from Kathryn, and she alludes to this assuming that I knew what it was about. And I didn’t. And so I asked her to explain, and she did a little bit. So when I got here, I knew what had happened. But I didn’t know any details. I didn’t know numbers. I didn’t know where. I just knew Las Vegas. And I can honestly tell you, folks — and this is just me. I didn’t attach any — what’s the word, preconceived — when I first heard about this I didn’t immediately conjure up a reason or a motive.
I waited ’til I got here, ’til I could start gathering information to find out just factually what had happened. And then I slowly learned what was known, that nobody knew why the guy did it, which is the question right now. One thing that the sheriff has said is that there is no way this could have been prevented. No way. What the sheriff means by that, there’s simply no way that we can have lookouts 24/7 any time there’s a public event with telescopes and binoculars on every high-rise hotel room in the city. And we can’t put armed guards in every room or in every hallway.
The guy knocks out a window on the, what was it, 32nd floor, his weapon protruding, nobody saw it because nobody was looking for it. And he was across the street. The guy was some distance away. The concert venue was across the street from the actual hotel, the Mandalay Bay. The Mandalay Bay, if you’ve seen it, all of the windows look like they’re covered in bronze. That’s the tinting. So when one’s broken or knocked out, it stands out like a sore thumb, but still nobody saw a weapon protruding from it. I mean, there were two broken windows that I saw. It’s kind of chilling when the sheriff says there’s no way it could have been prevented.
But people are going to demand that it not happen again. People are gonna demand. So what is law enforcement, what is government gonna do to assure people they’re doing everything they can to make sure it doesn’t happen again? When the sheriff says they can’t prevent it, the demand will be, “Well, you’ve got to. You gotta do something.” What are they gonna do? No, I’m leaving it open, you fill in the blank. We could all conjure up answers to the question. I appreciate call, Brent, very much.
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