RUSH: All right. We’re gonna get straight into this here, the “send her back” business. We’re gonna have a wide-ranging set of comments about this. I want to start, grab audio sound bite number 9. This is David “Rodham” Gergen, who was on CNN last night, Anderson Cooper, and the question was: “I’m wondering, as someone who’s worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations, what is it like to see the president on that stage tonight encouraging, or at least allowing the ‘send her home’ chant to grow?”
GERGEN: Listen, I think that this may work in a short term for Republicans, but if you look at the long term, it’s a much bleaker picture for the Republican Party. All the Millennials, they’re going to be a massive force along with women, people of color in our new politics just five, ten, 15 years down the road. So I think the Republicans are in an active slow self-destruction in supporting the president as much as they do, because, in the long term, this could be suicidal.
RUSH: Let me ask a question. Why is it not suicidal when Republicans get forcibly kicked out of, spat upon at restaurants? Why is it not suicidal for the Democrats when Black Lives Matter advocates shooting cops? Why is it suicidal for the Democrats when they defend Antifa? Most recent example in Oregon, Portland, Oregon, where the cops were ordered to stand aside while people were assaulted and businesses were destroyed. Why does none of that, why isn’t that ever said to be suicidal for the Democrats?
Why does none of the stuff that makes “send her back” pale in comparison, that pales in comparison to the actual activity, the assaults, the attacks, the damage done to businesses in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, why does the media never say, “Man, this is not good for the Democrats, that’s a suicidal move”? Let me tell you something. This “send her back” chant last night, there’s so much attached to this.
And let me just say at the outset, I don’t want to send her back. I want her to stay here! And I don’t want her to be silenced. I want Ilhan Omar to continue speaking, because it is working. Trump is winning this. I understand the “send her back” sentiment. I could give you, as I have just begun to do, a series of explanations.
Do you think Trump supporters, Republicans all over this country are not fed up with millions of things, just a couple of which I just gave the examples of? Republicans are constantly told that if they react or say this or do that, it’s gonna be damaging. The Democrats and the media have these rules that we’re supposed to abide by, which basically force us to shut up.
They force us to not react. They force us to not oppose them. They can do anything they want. They set the rules, and it’s justified. When they run around and attack Republicans, when they impugn Trump. Look at what Trump’s had to put up with for two and a half years ongoing. A silent coup, being called a traitor, said to have stolen the election. These things add up. It’s been a two and a half to three-year now solid assault on Donald Trump and his voters. And these assaults are coming from people who have made it clear they don’t like this country.
It’s very hard to sand aside and stand mute when you see the media supporting and amplifying and applauding this anti-American behavior over and over for years and years. Then we find out who Ilhan Omar is and what she believes in. It makes perfect sense that the American people — and I think a majority — would not want this woman to succeed.
So I understand it. I understand human psychology, and I understand human emotion here. And I understand the two sets of rules that we have. I understand the different sets of rules that basically permit the Democrats to do anything, to take any kind of action against — you think it doesn’t add up when people minding their own business running a bakery or a photo shop, one day in walk a couple of militant homosexuals who have targeted this store.
They could go get a bakery to bake a cake anywhere they want, a friendly bakery. They could go get a photographer to take pictures of the wedding reception, but they target people they know are going to refuse, then they lawsuit them, then they go out and get to the media and they start wreaking hell on these people. And this goes on in silence.
There’s no pushback, nobody says anything except somebody like Donald Trump will come along now and then and do so. But all the while the American people are fuming. All the while the American people are boiling and effervescing. They’re getting mad at it. The basic unfairness, the lack of application of fairness to things.
We know that they are targeting us. We know that they are taking political action against us. This stuff gets stored, there is no outlet for it, and then Trump’s rally happens last night, mentions Omar in context with everything that’s been happening here. It’s clear as a bell that Omar has got big problems with this country as founded. So do the rest of the members of The Squad. And let’s not forget the tie-in to illegal immigration, which I think also has a relationship to “send her back.”
I don’t think “send her back” is about one person or about one thing. I think it’s a culmination of many things resulting from a boiling over frustration. It is an overall expression of anger about the lack of enforcement of the morality and of the law and of the rules that preserve this country as founded.
The American people did what they could in 2016. They elected somebody that was gonna stop it. He has been opposed and thwarted at every move he’s made to try to keep his campaign promise, to stop this massive invasion of illegal immigrants into the country. He has been thwarted. You can understand frustration over this building and building and building.
All the while, the people who support this are being portrayed as the enemies of America, and they’re racists, and they’re bigots, and they’re homophobes. And people have been subjected to these insults now for years and years and years. And they’re tired of it. So here comes an outlet to express the frustration.
“Lock her up,” Hillary Clinton. She commits violations of the law, for crying out loud! She is exonerated, she gets away from them. People are fed up with this. They’re fed up with the two-tier justice system. She can do an illegal server. She can traffic in classified documents. She can have a pay-for-play, phony foundation where she’s accepting essentially bribes from foreign actors on the come, assuming she’s gonna be president. And the FBI and James Comey exonerate her after having a meeting with her husband on an airplane on a tarmac in Phoenix!
You think people are not fed up over all of this? And it’s just one thing after another that adds up! And it keeps adding up. And then you add to the fact that there’s no Republican stand up opposition to any of this! No! We get the Never Trumpers and the resigned members of the House blaming Trump supporters for this stuff! Blaming Trump supporters for lack of civility while it’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders being forcibly kicked out of a restaurant or any other number of Republicans.
We’re supposedly engaging in incivility? We’re minding our own business, we’re going about our lives, we end up being targeted. They try to ruin some of us. They try to damage some of us. They do anything they can, including taking physical action against us, and we’re supposed to sit there and be well-mannered. That will triumph in the long haul with the American people who will understand that we’re the ones who are civil.
I think we’re so past that as an effective weapon. But this such a two-way street, and it has been an unfair, imbalanced two-way street for years. Obama can get away with totally ruining the American health care system and then lie to people about it, and there’s not one bit of criticism. You can’t criticize Barack Obama because he’s African-American. Any criticism of the president of the United States is racist. Now we’ve got a new president, and he’s the racist! And he’s the bigot!
He doesn’t hate anybody. He doesn’t have an anti-Semitic or anti-gay bone in his body. And yet all of these character assassinations and distortions. I’ll tell you what this is not about. This is not about race. “Send her back” is not about race. And it’s not about Somalia. It’s not about anything other than an ongoing level of frustration with so many different things, including illegal immigration. The flaunting of the law, sanctuary cities.
The Democrat candidates for president raise their hands proudly and say, “You damn right! Illegal aliens are going to get free health care,” and then they hear those same people say, “Middle-class Americans are gonna get tax increase to pay for it!” We’re just supposed to sit here and smile and say, “Well, this is the new America,” and then you realize these people have no representation for their point of view outside of Donald Trump and maybe some people on the radio. That’s it! They don’t have anybody in elective politics running interference for ’em.
So when they show up at a Trump rally, it’s an opportunity to be heard. It’s something… How many times have you heard people call here and say, “What can I do besides vote? Voting isn’t enough. What can I do?” This is what they’re doing. They don’t really mean “send her back.” This is just a reaction. This is just the way they can communicate with the media, taunt the left, taunt the media. It’s not about race, not about Somalia. It’s about the ongoing disparity, unfairness, two sets of rules — the unpunished, uncommented-upon attack on the founding of this country. Which, as far as the media and the Democrats are concerned, is perfectly fine.
We can call the founders of this country slaveowners. We can say that the author of the Declaration of Independence is a slave-owning, worthless nobody — and we can ignore what he wrote because he’s a racist, slave-owning pig. You think this kind of stuff is just gonna be uncommented on, that people aren’t gonna take notice of it? And when their elected officials don’t push back against it, it’s left to them to do so. So when the opportunities arise, they do. It’s not just illegal immigration. It’s the fact that the ones coming here illegally are not even trying to become Americans. They’re not even trying to assimilate.
They come here and they continue the assault on this country. They rip it to shreds. I’m not talking about legal immigrants here. Don’t confuse the two — which the Democrat Party’s encouraging! The Democrat Party’s encouraging all of this. They’re encouraging kicking people out of restaurants. They’re encouraging Antifa. They’re encouraging Black Lives Matter. They’re encouraging all of this violence in Ferguson and Baltimore and wherever else, and yet nobody in the media ever says, “Wow. This could be suicidal for the Democrats.”
You think maybe it is and they just don’t want to recognize it?
The American people are not supportive of this kind of stuff.
The American people are not gonna sit here and happily support the demise of their country.
A lot of Americans are watching all this and thinking their country is being stolen. Our founding is being stolen. Our way of life is being stolen. Our resources, our middle-class status, our middle-class incomes — our goodness, our morality — is being stolen, and it’s being stolen by people like those four women in The Squad and the Democrat Party at large. So these reactions are totally understandable to me. But let me be clear: I don’t want to send her back. I want to keep her here. I want Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and all the rest of them to keep talking. And I will explain why.
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RUSH: What do you expect is gonna happen when Democrats in three states do the equivalent of a standing ovation after passing a law saying you can murder a baby after it has been born if it survives an abortion? What in the hell do people think is gonna happen? Oh, we’re gonna applaud this? We’re gonna join the standing ovation? And these things just keep on coming. We’ve had to put up with Reverend Wright and his “G-D America!” and all this. “America’s chickens have come home to roost.”
We’ve had to put up with all this talk about how our country is deficient, about how our country is racist. “Our country is sexist, our country is bigoted, our country doesn’t deserve to have superpower status, our country is nothing but a bunch of thieves!” We’ve gotta put up with this! For who knows how many years, this has been the official stance of the Democrat Party. And our old buddy, our old buddy Rahm Emanuel is out there saying (summarized), “Why is everybody so shocked? This is not new. This is who the Democrat Party’s always been.”
And he’s exactly right. We had a call yesterday, “Rush, where did this party go madcap left like this, these Millennials?” They’ve always been. This has always been who they are. They’ve just been wearing masks and wearing camouflage.
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RUSH: Now, a couple pieces I want to share with you here. First is by Matthew Peterson in American Greatness called, “Stiffening the Backbone of the Right,” and this ties in with the brilliant observations made by me, your host in the first half hour of this program.
The piece begins this way: “Many people seem surprised that CNN gave a platform to white-supremacist Richard Spencer this week.” I must confess, I didn’t know they had. So this was news to me. I don’t even know that… Is Spencer a white supremacist? I don’t even know that. Well, we’ll go with the flow here because there’s a point here. It’s not about Spencer. So hang on. “Many people … angrily decry the outrageous hypocrisy of the Left putting Spencer on the national airwave when it routinely de-platforms those on the Right for far less than giving voice to self-avowed neo-Nazis.
“But why? Don’t you know the rules? You know — the rules the Left is used to making, and the rules the ‘kept Right’ is used to keeping. Did you actually think any of what is going on in Big Tech is really about stopping radical hate and violence?” It isn’t. It’s about stopping “the Right.” “If” Big Tech were actually trying to stop “radical hate and violence,” then all the folks from Antifa … would be de-platformed.” All these people advocating shooting up the United States, all these fascists and pro-anti-American groups on the left would be de-platformed.
But none of them are.
None of the hate on the left is ever de-platformed. It’s never even silenced. It’s never criticized. It’s never taken down — and, “Don’t hold your breath,” for it to be taken down. But imaginary hate, nonexistent hate, simply alleged hate and racism on “the Right” can get you taken down. “The Left demands that every elected Republican official publicly apologize for a some nutjob murderer in New Zealand, but do you think that means [liberals] have to apologize for Antifa’s … domestic terrorism against journalists and government buildings here at home? Pfft. What are you, a racist?”
Isn’t that the case wherever there is any kind of civil disobedience, here comes the media, here comes the left with microphones and cameras thrust into the face of Republicans demanding they apologize, demanding they react to it, demanding they condemn it. And a lot of Republicans who know the rules follow right through and start condemning all. (impression) “We should not tolerate this. We shouldn’t put up with. This is horrible,” because Republicans think this is the way to sway moderate voters into believing Republicans are not bad people.
It’s such a scam! So we have a set of rules that’s been established on a faulty premise. The faulty premise is that everybody thinks Republicans are racists, sexists, and bigots and all that. A lot of people do, by the way, because of the successful branding or rebranding the left and the media have made. But that’s the presumption. Everybody thinks this. So there is an outbreak of violence or there is an incident where somebody gets shot up at a movie or there is violence at a public protest, and here come the media finding the Republicans.
“You condemn this, right? You don’t support this stuff!”
“Oh, absolutely right! We certainly do condemn this. We — we Republicans… (muttering) No way do we…”
Of course, the theory is that if we simply condemn this, moderate and swing voters will see that we’re not racist pigs and we’ll end up maybe giving us a fair shot. It’s all a crock. It’s a rigged game. The rules are stacked against Republicans, and the Republicans for so long have been fooled by it, that they fall into the trap and play by the rules. Folks, right now, “send her back,” “send her back,” whatever that was last night, is an outgrowth of an ongoing frustration of people sick and tired of having to play by the left’s rules, having to play by the media’s rules. Because the bottom line is those people on the left and the media, are free to insult us all day long.
They can lie, they can make it up, they can attach all of these horrible, rotten motives to conservatives, such as racism, bigotry, white supremacy. The president of the United States is said to be a white supremacist, for crying out loud. Do you hear any Republicans standing up condemning this? No. What you have is Republicans, “Gee, I wish we could make the media stop this. How can we make the media stop this?”
Well, that’s not gonna do any good! I’ve had my fill of that anyway. “Well, we gotta do something, Rush, to make the media stop this.” Well, how about pushing back against the two sets of rules that exist here and simply saying that this is unacceptable? Get right back in their face and tell them they’re full of it! And then proceed on a daily basis defeating these people in every political way possible.
I mean, I think I totally understand the frustration of a growing number of not just Republicans, traditional valued Americans who are just fed up with this. Every day they get to see and listen and hear how they have all these shortcomings, that they’re bigots, that they’re racists, that they’re mean-spirited, that they want children to starve, that they don’t care about people of color.
They have to put up with all of this crap and there’s nobody pushing back against it. The reaction, “Gee, how can we make the media stop saying this? Maybe if we got rid of talk radio. That’s what is. Maybe if we stop provoking, maybe if we just laid down, maybe they would stop saying these mean things about us.” Instead of getting mad, instead of demanding some fairness here in these so-called damn rules.
But the left makes its rules, they write the soap opera script. All of these personal insults go unanswered until somebody like Trump comes along, of course. And look at the reaction. Boy, when somebody like Trump comes along and engenders massive support, people start pushing back. Why, look at what happens to the rule makers on the left, they get all offended and all hurt, and they start acting like stuck pigs. In the process, it is they who end up exposed. Which is exactly what’s happening here with The Squad.
They don’t know how to deal with Trump. They’re never gonna learn how to deal with Trump because they’re not used to seeing it. They’re used to Republicans and conservatives saying quiet. They’re used to Republicans secretly reaching out to the media and saying, “Look, I’m not one of those. You can trust me.” Think tank Republicans, bloggers, a number of intellectual Never Trumpers. “Don’t lump me with the talk radio guy. Don’t lump me with Trump, no, no. I join you in condemning this kind of reprobate behavior on the part of my side.” Yeah, that’s very helpful.
And the conservative Republicans see that and the frustration just builds. This is why, many reasons, one of many, they hate Trump so much. He upsets the applecart. He doesn’t play by the rules. He doesn’t accept the rules of the deep state, establishment, or whatever. The problem is that for the most part he’s still fighting all of this alone. The author in this piece — again, Matthew J. Peterson — gives a ton of examples. This is a good one, again.
“The Left demands that every elected Republican official publicly apologize for a some nutjob murderer in New Zealand.”
But where are the leftists apologizing for Antifa or where are the leftists apologizing for — take your pick — Betsy DeVos, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, any of these other Trump administration people who have been physically intimidated into leaving restaurants, and then the proprietors go write op-eds in the Washington Post saying, “Yeah, and we’re gonna keep treating you that way and we’re gonna encourage other patrons treat ’em that way because we don’t want ’em in here.”
Why is that never suicidal for the Democrats? Why do not media people on the left worry about the message that may be sending about the Democrat Party? Arrogance and condescension. “These fundamentalist zealots have turned our public square into the show trial,” where conservatives are constantly guilty and on trial. “The choice is between public confession –” admit that you’re a bigot, admit that you’re a racist or we’re gonna keep dropping the guillotine on you. At some point people are gonna start pushing back, and I think it actually has begun.
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RUSH: Oh, yeah, I forgot to close the loop on why CNN wanted Spencer on. There were people on the left “how can you dare give a platform to this white supremacist?” Spencer was the guy that everybody thinks Trump was supporting in Charlottesville. That’s not what CNN was doing. CNN put this guy on. They wanted him to behave in ways they think he exists. They think he’s a white supremacist. They wanted him supporting white supremacy, and they wanted him endorsing Trump. That’s why he was on there.
But some people at the Washington Post, “Why is CNN –” Another Washington Post story angry at CNN for putting — these eight women that supported Trump, the focus group, those eight women are members of a group called the Trumpettes. They’re already Trump supporters. CNN passed them off as randomly selected women in the Dallas Fort Worth area.
So the Washington Post is calling CNN, “How can you do that?” Well, here, I can tell you what the ongoing theory from CNN is. The CNN theory is that if we put these white women, all of ’em overweight, if we put ’em on the air and have them really loving Trump, that it makes the point that everybody that loves Trump is a dumb white supremacist. I said, “They’re shooting themselves in the foot because that’s not how people are gonna see it.”
What is CNN’s premise every day? The Drive-By Media premise, CNN especially, is that nobody likes Trump. Their premise every day is that everybody hates Trump other than this small, little circle of people missing their front teeth playing the banjo down on the front porch in interior Georgia. Outside of that, Trump doesn’t have any supporters. That’s the message.
The message is that everybody hates Trump. Oh, my God. Everybody’s embarrassed, oh, my God. People want to get rid of Trump. So they go out and they find eight Trump supporting women, and they think that they are damaging Trump because these women appear to be blind and dumb and supporting no matter what. That’s not what happened. In my estimation, the CNN audience is seeing eight women who were able to speak very intelligently who like Trump. I think it undercuts CNN’s premise!
But the Washington Post was very mad because they think CNN lied to their audience. Anyway, CNN was doing a setup. The bottom line is CNN was engaging in a setup, didn’t tell the audience who these women really were, were trying to create the impression that Trump supporters are stupid white supremacist racists.
And it backfired on ’em.
“What do you mean, two sets of rules, Rush?” Okay. We can’t chant. Nope, can’t chant. We can’t riot, we can’t lie, we can’t use fake dossiers, we can’t concoct fake news, we can’t indoctrinate, we can’t propagandize, we can’t buy votes, we can’t spy.
They can do all of this! They can and do do all of that and expect to get away with it and expect you to support them getting away it. All of those things are reserved for Democrats.
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RUSH: Now, along the same lines, I have another piece here relatively close. This is from The Federalist, one of our favorite websites here at the EIB Network. It’s a piece by Hunter Baker. And the headline of this piece: “Stop Constantly Pressuring Me To Ritually Denounce Trump’s Twitter Feed.”
Now, this guy, I have to tell you, he verges on being a Never Trumper, but he’s not totally there. But he’s worn out. He’s tired of being told by everybody on our side “we have to disavow these Trump tweets. We we we we somebody.” You would be amazed.
Folks, you would not believe the number of people in the course of a week who reach out to me and beg me to tell Trump to stop tweeting. I’ll bet you it’s five to 10 people a week when it’s a specifically potent tweet or series of tweets. I mean, last Thanksgiving I had somebody say, “You need to go over to Mar-a-Lago and you need to tell Trump to stop tweeting.”
These are media people. These are prominent conservatives. I said, “Why?” And it always comes down to it embarrasses them. “I support the guy, but he’s making it really tough. He does this stuff I wouldn’t do. It’s really tough to support him. It’s embarrassing.”
I said, “Stop being embarrassed. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. There are things that we’re up against here that are too important to have your opinion of something based on being embarrassed. Let me give you a couple pull quotes from this guy, Hunter Baker. “I’m not going to freak out about President Trump’s choice of words when I live in a culture that regularly promotes the dehumanization of the unborn child.”
Okay. Can’t make it more clear than that. You want to tell me that I gotta start having conniption fits and I gotta disavow Trump over a bunch of tweets while these people stand around and give themselves standing ovations for passing legislation allowing them to murder babies after they’re born alive surviving an abortion. Is that really what you want to tell me I should be mad about?
Another pull quote. “I regularly give a lecture on Christian statesmanship where I make clear that Trump-style rhetoric does not promote good political culture. I likewise indict the other side on that score. If you think Trump is immoderate, look at what Democrats said about Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and even Brett Kavanaugh before his accuser even made a public case.”
I regularly give a lecture on Christian statesmanship where I make clear that Trump-style rhetoric does not promote good political culture. I likewise indict the other side on that score. If you think Trump is immoderate, look at what Democrats said about Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and even Brett Kavanaugh before his accuser even made a public case.” That would be Blasey Ford. They were trying to destroy Kavanaugh before Blasey Ford popped up anyway. And it’s another point here. So he gets it out there: I find what Trump does wrong, can’t take it. But don’t tell me that it’s a one-way street.
See, this is another example of the two sets of rules. Ted Kennedy can go character assassinate and destroy the life of Robert Bork. And then Biden and the rest of them in his committee can try the same thing, along with Anita Hill, on Clarence Thomas. And then they can get Blasey Ford and the rest of the gang from Dianne Feinstein and Avenatti to come along and do it to Kavanaugh.
We’re not permitted. If we engage in any kind of outreach or reaction to this, if we defend these people or if we go after leftists and liberals, why, that’s the essence of partisanship. It’s gridlock. It’s mean-spirited, extremist racism is what it is, when we don’t even try to destroy these people.
We just try to expose them! We just try to tell people who leftist judges are, in this case, or who Ilhan Omar is, or who Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is! We’re called racists. They can ruin lives. They can destroy careers and they are applauded by people in the Drive-By Media!