RUSH: I don’t think these events are going to have anything to do with the midterms. A lot of people do. A lot of people think it’s gonna dampen turnout. (interruption) You think I’m wrong or you…? (interruption) Yeah, I don’t think it’s gonna have a thing to do with the midterms.
Now, after Caesar Sayoc… Dare I say this? Dare I put my hands together and look to the Lord and do I say this? Caesar Sayoc and his pipe bombs — none of which exploded. What do you think the odds are that the Drive-Bys and the Democrats are thinking…? Well, I don’t have to ask this. We know it! We had people talking about how that whole thing last week was suppressing turnout, remember?
And even Trump alluded to the fact that that story was maybe going to dampen some people’s enthusiasm. Remember that? Okay. Well, there were some people, I’m sure, not too unhappy about that. And then the second event happened on Saturday in Pittsburgh. To the people that politicize everything — and that’s the people I’m talking about, and that would be the media and the American left, the people that politicize everything. Of course, you’ve got extremists out there in the fringes everywhere who irrationally try to explain things away.
But the people that politicize everything, who look at both events through a political lens had to be thinking, “All right! Now, this is gonna really help us in the midterms. This is gonna dampen turnout. It’s gonna dampen enthusiasm for Trump.” I have an entirely different feeling. It’s why I did the show open today that I did. I don’t think it’s going to have that impact on people. In fact, I think the media, in their natural state, drives more people to Trump each and every day.
I think they’ve been doing it since the Sunday shows yesterday with this. The attempt to politicize this, the attempt to blame Trump for this… They can’t help themselves. They have spent the past 2-1/2 years trying to get rid of Donald Trump. They have thrown everything they know into the public domain hoping to influence people to abandon Trump, and it hasn’t happened. So these two events come along and they think, “Ah, this is it!
“This has to be what it is,” they’re thinking, and they just can’t help themselves. They start blaming Trump for the synagogue shooting. They start asking the president what he’s gonna do about guns; does he have a different view on it, as though he’s somehow responsible. And what it does, it portrays — it gives away — the fact that as far as the American left is concerned, everything centers around Washington, that Washington is the solution for everything.
And how is Washington the solution? Washington is the solution because Washington is where the enemies of the left are gonna be punished, is where the enemies of the left are going to be dealt with. That’s the role of government, as far as the left is concerned. The government as an agent of power to enforce punitive, punishing policies on the enemies of the American left. That’s its purpose. So a shooting anywhere takes place; the left says, “What’s the president gonna do about it?”
The president had nothing to do with it in the first place! The president has nothing to do with gun control laws except as a supporter or opponent. Congress writes the laws! But the idea that Washington should be able to command anything at any time is what the left wants with the White House. That’s how they want to use it. That’s what its purpose is. They’ve done everything they can to overturn the 2016 elections.
Cookie thinks that I need to replay a bit of my monologue from Friday when I explain (my “final summation,” she titled it here on the sound bite roster) why we are suspicious. And I’ve been going back and forth whether I should actually replay it or just read it and do it again. I’m still thinking about that, plus your phone calls as well. Before we go to the break, just a couple more things here to illustrate the point.
NBC News… “NBC: If Americans Are ‘Fed Up’ and ‘Mean It,’ They’ll Vote Against Trump/GOP — The day after an anti-Semite killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a week of political violence, NBC’s Sunday Today exploited the opportunity by trying to tie it all to President Trump. On top of that, [NBC] suggested that the only hope to stop the violence was to send Trump a message at the ballot box by voting against him and the GOP.
“After reporting on the anti-Semitic hate crime in Pittsburgh, NBC shifted over to complaining about Trump for not bowing to the man’s hatred. ‘On Saturday, he continued with his midterm campaign commitments despite that tragedy,’ chided anchor Willie Geist, while White House correspondent Kelly O’Donnell huffed about how the ‘President’s response to this tragedy has been to speak extensively about all aspects of it while not giving up his midterm fight.'”
And that you’ve been fed up since Trump was elected, ’cause you really didn’t mean to vote for him and you’ve regretted it ever since. From the first Trump travel ban, you’ve wished you could have your vote back. So here they are. “If Americans Are ‘Fed Up’ and ‘Mean It,’ They’ll Vote Against Trump…” Trump should cease this campaigning. He should stop it! This is unseemly. “ABC: Trump ‘At the Center’ of All the Political Violence Right Now.”
That was George Stephanopoulos on This Week yesterday. “After giving a rundown of the violence of the week, he declared it all occurred ‘against the backdrop of the ugliest political climate in modern times,'” and, of course, “at the center” of it is Donald Trump. No. (chuckles) No! At the center of it is the media, the media and their reporting on Trump.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. Here we go, sound bites 8, 8A, and 9, just to illustrate what happened on ABC yesterday. Here is Stephanopoulos…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Across social media, hate speech and anti-Semitism are rampant and on the rise, all against the backdrop of the ugliest political climate in modern times. At the center, an unapologetically incendiary president untrammeled by traditional norms of civility.
RUSH: “Traditional norms of civility”? They do not understand. Trump is a reactionary. He’s reacting to the way they treat him. Now, there may be blame to go around on both sides here, but for the media to totally claim they’ve got nothing to do with this is absurd. Now, here’s Matthew Dowd. This guy was formally a George W. Bush Republican. Now he’s gone off to the dark side on ABC.
DOWD: (whispering) I would put specific responsibility on the president that he has an obligation to try to rid us of much of this tribalism. And I think what he’s done, um, over the course of the last few years is helped foment this.
RUSH: Oh, yes. He says it’s all Trump’s fault. All of this is Trump’s fault, and the media wants to be exempt from any impact. They damn well want to think they influence opinion and shape the outcome of elections, but they don’t want to be held any kind of responsible for what people do at the same time? That seem incongruous to me. When they get called out on this, they deny it. This is a montage. Tom Bossert (former national security adviser) and Stephanopoulos and Mary Jordan of the Washington Post.
BOSSERT: I want the rhetoric to be calm. But I don’t think that the American viewers are looking at the President Trump as a murderer.
STEPHANOPOULOS: (slams desk) No one at this said that!
(shouting crosstalk)
DOWD: No one —
STEPHANOPOULOS: Not one person!
JORDAN: I think we all agree —
BOSSERT: But he is responsible —
(shouting crosstalk)
DOWD: But he is responsible for his own —
BOSSERT: — for the rhetoric that led to the murder.
DOWD: No. Here’s what I said, Tom, and —
(shouting crosstalk)
BRAZILE: That’s apparent.
DOWD: — I’ll repeat it again. He is responsible for fomenting and using rhetoric that causes people to feel like that is normalized.
RUSH: So when Bossert calls ’em out, “Oh, yeah, I don’t think Trump’s responsible for (muttering) looking at him as a murderer.” “Oh, we didn’t say that. No, we didn’t say that.” Matthew Dowd: “But he is responsible for his own… for the rhetoric that led to the murder!” (Snort!) No, they all… When they’re confronted with what they’re actually saying then they pull back and deny it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So here we go, just to recap. “NBC: If Americans Are ‘Fed Up’ and ‘Mean It,’ They’ll Vote Against Trump/GOP.” See, when I say the left politicizes everything, we have a horrible thing that happened here at that synagogue in Pittsburgh. To the left, all it is — and I am not exaggerating. All that is, is another little thing (or big thing) that they can say leads to the elimination and the extinction and removal of Donald Trump, the voting against Donald Trump and Republicans. That’s what they first see.
Now, they’ll tell you they see the human suffering, consequences, and so forth. But I’m telling you, when events like this happen… Like when the pipe bomb thing started being delivered, I guarantee you there were some people on the left and in the media rubbing their hands. “Oh, man! If this works out, this is gonna be a real benefit to us.” They see politics in everything. Go back and look during the eight years of Obama.
Every, every news story, every event — wherever it was, domestic, international — was reported on with the premise of how it helps or can help Obama or how it could hurt Obama. But mostly, it was all about, “What does this mean for Obama?” Remember when the Egyptians were in the throes much rid of Hosni Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood was in there, the Arab Spring?
So CNN sent Nic Robertson over there to find out just what the people in Tahrir Square in Cairo thinking of Obama while this was going on — and the answer was zip, zero, nada! They weren’t thinking anything of Obama. But CNN wanted to make it look like Obama had everything to do with it. Like these protesters in Egypt were taking their inspiration from the Obama campaign. It was sickening! I mean, it was literally sickening. It was so sophistic stupid. But that’s how they saw it.
Now that they don’t have the White House and Trump does, every event is seen and reported through the prism of, “How can we make this hurt Donald Trump? How can we make this harm the GOP?” So you have this horrific massacre at a synagogue in Squirrel Hill, the Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh, and immediately — the next day, that night, Saturday night, certainly by the Sunday shows — it’s, “What does this mean for the midterm elections?”
That’s what I mean when I say they politicize everything, while hiding it, somehow getting away with the idea that they are the compassionate people and the tolerant people, and their side has no hate, and their side has no bigotry and so forth, when it’s the exact opposite. So here we have “NBC: If Americans Are ‘Fed Up’ and ‘Mean It,’ They’ll Vote Against Trump/GOP.” That’s a story about the synagogue.
“ABC: Trump ‘At the Center’ of All the Political Violence Right Now,” something that cannot be established, something that cannot proven, but yet there it is reported as fact. Gleefully, I might add. So now we have a tweet from Max Boot. You know, I don’t know what happened to Max Boot. Max Boot used to be a columnist and reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He’s an international political expert at what have you, and I used to think of the guy as a conservative, being a Journal opinion writer.
He would occasionally send me his pieces in advance, thinking I would enjoy them. But ever since Trump was elected, he has gone off the reservation — I mean, to the point that a lot of people are asking, “What happened to Max Boot?” Now he’s on CNN as often as he can get on there just ripping Trump a new one, primarily from the standpoint that Trump’s manners and his behavior and his comportment just isn’t presidential. You know, the usual complaint from the establishment crowd.
So he tweets out, “There is partisanship on both sides of the political spectrum, but no left-wing outlets propagate extremism as successfully or widely as conservative media do. Conservatives are being brainwashed in an ‘echo chamber’ for ‘rumor and conspiracy theory.'” This tweet is then replied to by John Harwood, a former New York Times/Wall Street Journal reporter now at CNBC who has never been anything other than an uber-ultraleftist.
Harwood says Max Boot “is 100% correct. most important: extremism on the right has gotten baked into the entire movement and GOP – WH, Congress, Fox, Limbaugh, Breitbart, CPAC etc.” I maintain to you, as I said in my opening monologue of the program today, that we get up every day and we see people and institutions that we admire and respect under attack. I mean, every day the left is politicizing everything, including mass murder wherever it happens. They are politicizing the weather.
Republicans have been called murderers by the Democrat Party and willing accomplices in the media, Mr. Boot, simply because we don’t believe in the man-made climate change hoax. Murderers! Republicans have been called murderers for not supporting Obama’s takeover of the American health care industry for the purposes of putting it under the auspices of government for the purposes of controlling the way people live. “Partisanship on both sides but no left-wing outlets propagate extremism as successfully or wide…”
The mainstream media is extremism, if you ask me. That’s what they’ve become. Daily media reporting has become extremism. It certainly isn’t factual, it certainly has an investment in the outcome of events, and somehow we conservatives in the media are far more successful in propagating extremism — and that you in this audience are being “brainwashed in an echo chamber by rumor and conspiracy theory.” Which takes me to President Trump. President Trump tweeted — and I also mentioned in the first hour that Trump was elected to behave differently.
He was elected precisely because he is cut from a different cloth. These people have never… (chuckles) Look, it’s kind of understandable in one sense. I mean, the guy comes down the elevator and talks about these hordes of illegal immigrants containing people who are murderers and rapists, and you just don’t talk about ’em that way. I mean, nobody’s supposed to talk about ’em that way. But Trump did, and so they all start laughing at the guy.
“This guy can’t be serious. He’s not gonna last this campaign two weeks!” And then the first polls came out, and they saw Trump leading. And they said, “Ah, this is not gonna last. This is crazy.” Trump kept slowly but surely eliminating all of the other Republicans in the primary, and all of them had this preferable, laid-back, walk-all-over-me attitude toward the left and Democrats that you want.
Trump kept eliminating them one by one by one with catchy nicknames and so forth. They thought, “This is just… It can’t happen! It… It… (sputtering) He’s never gonna survive.” Then the Access Hollywood video comes out. They thought that was it. It was over. Nobody could survive that. Trump survived it. Then they started the two-year silent coup, and that is the real reason for all of the suspicion about those of you on the left. I’m gonna tell you something, Mr. Boot.
There is nothing that I or anybody else I know in conservative media could do that even approaches what the Obama FBI, Department of Justice, and intelligence community did and is doing in corrupting the highest levels of our government for the express purpose of overturning an election. I don’t care how much power you think I’ve got, I couldn’t come close to doing what was done and has been done the past two years.
Including the Mueller investigation, including the planting of outright lies five times a day in media all over the country from anonymous people alleging that it was only a matter of time before proof that Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the election was found. For two years, Mr. Boot — for two years, with no evidence and everybody in on it knew there was no evidence — everybody in on this knew there had not been any collusion. They were hoping.
They were hoping, and they lived every day with the idea they’re gonna wake up and that the smoking gun was gonna fall into their lap. But they knew that there wasn’t any collusion. They knew they were trying to create some. They knew what was going on. The FBI, the DOJ, they knew the tricks being played, and they willingly supported those tricks. They ignored the real collusion and rigging of elections on the part of the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC.
I don’t care what kind of power you think we’ve got over here on conservative media, but we couldn’t get anywhere… I mean, we couldn’t come close to getting away with running any kind of a soft or a silent coup using the upper reaches of power at the Department of Justice, all Obama loyalists and Hillary loyalists. No way we would have the power to plant spies in the campaign of a presidential campaign that we opposed.
There is no way any of us could write up a phony document purported to be real intelligence claiming that Hillary did despicable things on a bed in Moscow and go get a FISA warrant to spy on the Hillary campaign. There’s no way any of us in the conservative media could come close to doing anything that has become a natural, everyday occurrence on the left. You want to talk about extremism and this so-called magical ability to brainwash?
What do you think’s happened the past two years in the mainstream media? Brainwashing the American people? Do you know how…? I’m gonna ask a question here. When Robert Mueller does not come up with the goods — when it is finally admitted or alleged that Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians and he didn’t cheat to steal the election — how many crazies on the left are gonna go bonkers when they hear this?
Meaning how many people in this country to this day, at this moment, still believe that Trump stole the election, that he worked with Putin and the Russians to do it, and it’s only a matter of time? And why do they think this? Because the media has assured them that it happened for two years with the constant reporting of anonymous sources, leaks here, leaks there. James Comey manufacturing leaks to get a special counsel appointed.
James Comey refusing to go public and tell everybody Trump wasn’t a target when Trump was! Trump has always been the target! Nobody else. Trump remains the target! Now, how many people are out there — dangerously unbalanced on the left — who think that between now and Election Day, this gigantic October Surprise is gonna be revealed, that Mueller is gonna somehow issue a report or something’s gonna leak? Something’s gonna happen to prove that Trump colluded.
But when that is not shown to have happened, what are some of the lunatics on the left gonna do? ‘Cause you know how many people believe it, Mr. Boot? Do you know, how many people — average, ordinary Americans who get their news from your vaunted Drive-By Media. Do you know, how many people believe this and who knows how many other lies about Trump and conservatives in general have been reported that people that we don’t know yet…? Like this guy who shot up the Republican baseball practice.
What set him off? His hatred for Trump! The fact that nothing was happening to Trump. The fact that Trump was getting away with it. Why? Because his media had assured him that Trump was history. When he finally figured out it wasn’t gonna happen, he lost it. There’s no way I or my conservative compatriots could come anywhere close to creating scenarios like that. Trump himself is accusing the media of stoking great anger.
You want to talk about a guy not standing down? If you want to talk about somebody who is pushing back and does so with no apology, try this tweet from President Trump. This was last night at 9:12. “The Fake News is doing everything in their power to blame Republicans, Conservatives and me for the division and hatred that has been going on for so long in our Country. Actually, it is their Fake & Dishonest reporting which is causing problems far greater than they understand!”
The next tweet… Actually, the next one here came before it. “There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly.
“That will do much to put out the flame of Anger and Outrage and we will then be able to bring all sides together in Peace and Harmony. Fake News Must End!” Stop and think for a moment if it did. Stop and think if the news media were not so blatantly associated with the destruction of one party and president. Stop and think how American day-to-day life would be different if there wasn’t any hate routinely reported as news in the Drive-By Media. That’s Trump’s point.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Brian in Chesapeake, Virginia. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. What a great honor and privilege it is to speak with you today.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: I just wanted to make a couple additional observations about the ABC News reporting on the synagogue shootings.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: Now, I normally watch Fox News, but I always try to watch a network program every day just so I can legitimately compare the two. So on the ABC News reporting, they quoted a study showing a rise in anti-Semitism in this country. Now, when they said this, neither my wife nor I could remember their ever reporting this before, even after the Farrakhan “termite” comments. Also on the report when addressing the issue for armed security for places like the synagogue, more than one person commented that, “If we started this, where would it end?” I couldn’t help think what a classic liberal response to think we can’t do anything that might make sense because of their fears about what might happen. My thoughts were about armed security for these places.
RUSH: You know, they never have that fear about if you keep getting government bigger and bigger and bigger and more intrusive… They never worry about, “Where is this gonna end?”
CALLER: Very true.
RUSH: But if you do things that give people more safety, more control — if you give people a greater feeling of security that liberals can’t lay claim to — then all of a sudden they fear, “Where is it leading to you? Where is it headed?” It’s absurd. What do you mean, where is it headed?
CALLER: Yeah. My own thought is people are getting killed. Armed security, if you think about that issue, my thought is, “Where can we start?” I mean, if it’s true that anti-Semitism is on the rise, maybe synagogues are a great place. Maybe in our schools, since that’s obviously a very common target these days.
RUSH: Well, except, see, the left says, “”We have gun-free zones at schools. Now, you can’t put guns in there! The only people who get in with guns are the bad guys who shoot people up.” The left thinks that’s the way it should be; that if you put more guns in there, then somehow… See, the gun itself, to the left, is the problem. So the presence of guns means havoc. The people involved? Nah! No biggie.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Well, looky here. Our buddy Brian Stelter over at CNN “Blames Synagogue Shooting on Fox News Coverage of Caravan — Brian Stelter and his panel (made up of largely liberal and anti-Trump commentators) blamed both” Fox News and right-wing media “for the political violence and death from the past few days. … Stelter drew viewers’ attention to internet posts the shooter made and tried to tie it to right-wing media:
“‘He posted, “I noticed a change in people saying ‘illegals’, that now say ‘invaders’ …” What’s he talking about there? … migrant caravan'” invaders. So Little Brian is saying that Fox News is calling it an “invasion;” therefore they got Cesar Sayoc all riled up to go out and start sending bombs to be Fox News’ fault.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The media tried to blame Trump today at the White House press briefing. Sarah Sanders had a good reply. She said, “The very first action that the president did was condemn these heinous acts. The very first thing that the media did was condemn the president.” She’s exactly right.
Related Links