RUSH: Right now, in Minnesota, it seems like you can get arrested for opening a business, but you can’t get arrested for looting one. But given what happened there, you have to understand the literal outrage that some of these people are feeling.
The rioters… I’ve got a story by Victoria Taft at PJ Media: “Rioters Are So Angry About Police Killing That They… Stole Baby Clothes and Air Fryers from Nearby Target.” See, on the other side of the glass here there is raucous laughter. (laughing) There is. It’s multiracial laughter, by the way, occurring on the other side of the glass.
“Protesters broke off into riotous mobs who smashed their way into Target where [they] stole every imaginable thing. The rioters’ righteous anger impelled them to grab … an air fryer… Nothing says [f—] the police like frying up some grub or, as one woman did, grabbing baby clothes. Another guy must have checked out a friend’s wedding registry before rioting because he walked out with several sets of bedding.” And he didn’t even get the best!
He didn’t even get high end sheets because they’re not available retail, or maybe he was planning to stay overnight in the Target and needed some new sheets and bedding stuff to sleep on before awakening the next day to continue the rioting. This is the way people deal with these kinds of things. For example, the media… The media is viewing Minneapolis looters as protesters.
But Americans protesting to go back to work? Why, those are dangerous lunatics! Americans demanding to be let out, Americans demanding that their jobs be reopened, Americans demanding to go back to work are being treated as major problems — major lunatics, great threats to the health of America — whereas the people looting stores in Minneapolis are called “protesters.”
And if you take a look, look at who has been savagely condemned by the media. It’s people reopening their businesses. Not the people burning businesses. Not people looting them. Not the people tearing them down. In the media’s world, the people reopening their businesses are being savagely condemned — or people going to a swimming pool in the Ozarks, or people going to a beach somewhere.
They’re being condemned by the media as risky, as dangerous, as uncaring lunatics. And in the media’s world, this is all because the looters and the rioters were properly triggered. Their actions are completely understandable in Mediaville, in the media world because they were properly triggered, and so they are labeled “protesters.”
“Protests that turned violent,” now. Whereas opening up businesses and going to pool parties “too soon” is “premeditated manslaughter.” You remember the stories that were written claiming that people opening up too soon, going to back to work too soon or going to a public pool or a beach, “Why, those people… Those people are engaging in potential manslaughter!”
I remember the stories. They were being accused of having so little compassion and concern for their fellow citizens that what they were doing might end up in other people dying. So I have a question for the media. Who is more dangerous, looters and rioters in Minneapolis (or wherever they may be) or the people in a swimming pool in the Ozarks? (interruption)
“Were the looters and rioters wearing their masks?” (chuckling) I don’t think so. But you know how they end this? (interruption) Looters and rioters were distancing properly? (interruption) The media says they are. Remember, they’ve been properly triggered. So they don’t have to obey any of the distancing or of the mitigation rules. They can ignore Dr. Fauci and the Scarf Queen because they have been properly triggered.
There ain’t no way they’re gonna put up with mass numbers of people showing up with MAGA masks. You remember all these people had those vagina hats that they were wearing and all this symbolic stuff after Trump was inaugurated and the first travel ban, and they’re storming JFK airport and Manhattan in the hundreds of thousands.
They were fools — they were literal fools — and they are still out there.
But this mask controversy on the left you have the mask is necessary for safety, and on the other side you have people… You’re not gonna have me walking around in a state of permanent, constant fear. Like I said yesterday, if six-feet separation is enough to protect you, then why do you need a mask? And if the mask is the magic that they’re saying it is, why do you need to separate by six feet, if you’re wearing masks?
I mean, there’s so much contradictory stuff. Look, folks, the police who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis are gonna get their day in court, and I hope it’s good and hard. But what about all the people who’ve been killed in nursing homes? They were consigned to their deaths. They were consigned to their deaths by blue state political leaders, otherwise known as governors — and particularly in the state of New York.
They were consigned.
They were sent there.
It’s grotesque incompetence, negligence on the part of blue state governors, and it is so widely known now to be the case that these blue state governors are doing all kinds of twisting and pretzeling to try to blame Trump for that, that Trump made ’em do it, that Trump had some policy that made them do that or they wouldn’t get federal money or some such thing.
Nothing of the sort is true! You know, right and wrong — the concepts of right and wrong — are so easy to see if you aren’t blinded by politics. But if your world is governed by politics, if your world has no reality because it’s governed by politics, well, that’s how you look away at people like Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Clinton, all of them.
Bill Clinton’s still Teflon in all this stuff, and it’s all because of politics mattering first. Politics is why the Barack Obama FBI looked away from Hillary Clinton’s lawbreaking. Politics drove Obama to spy on the Trump campaign. Politics drove Cuomo to consign a bunch of elderly people to nursing homes. You know, nothing that’s happened so far this year — nothing that’s happened in 2020 — is all that complicated. It’s very easy to understand.
But if you’re governed first and foremost by politics, therefore corruption, then you are blind to reality and blind to the truth. Look, one more thing about this Minneapolis situation and George Floyd. I mean it. I hope these cops are dealt with good and hard. I’ve seen the video like everybody else, and it makes me so mad I can’t see straight.
I don’t know… I still don’t know what precipitated it. I don’t know why they had George Floyd on the ground. I don’t know, but I don’t care what it was, unless he fired a shot at them, and even then, there is no… What policy? What policy is there anywhere that mandates that kind of treatment of a suspect or prisoner who is totally under control?
(interruption) Okay. All right. So he passed a counterfeit bill in a store.
Fine.
That doesn’t come close to justifying what happened to him, with people watching that cop for five minutes kill the guy! There’s no other way to describe what happened. I understand people are out there calling it murder. It makes me so mad, I can’t see straight. So, I ask, how does something like that happen? There has to be some police manual or handbook.
Look, you people in law enforcement know I’m at the top of the list of people who support you and understand how hard your jobs are and the rigors and the arduous circumstances you have to go through every day. I still, given all of that, do not… I cannot find a way to explain that. I can’t find a way to justify it. I don’t care what the guy did. If it’s all about a counterfeit bill, it’s even… Look, I gotta take a break because I’m up against it on time. Back in a moment.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: RUSH: I got an email during the break, “What made you so mad about the video of George Floyd?” What makes me so mad about the video? A… You know, these are blue states. This is a blue state where this happened. This is a state-run by Democrats. This is a state-run by leftists. This is a state-run by people who believe in utopias, and they openly promise them — and they particularly promise every minority group in the world that they’re gonna protect ’em.
And who are they gonna protect ’em from?
They gonna protect ’em from you and me, us meany conservatives and Republicans. We pose the biggest threat to them. That’s what these blue state leftists in the media and in politics all say as they defame us and impugn us. And yet look at what happens to minorities in these blue states. Now, I know it’s not exclusively happening in blue states, but that it’s happening in them — and look at the way the elderly are dealt with.
The Democrats have been running out my whole life claiming Republicans are gonna cut their Social Security; Republicans are gonna kick them out of their homes. Now look what happens! Democrat governors consign them to their deaths during a pandemic by sending COVID-19 patients into nursing to infect everybody. No, I’m not saying it was on purpose.
These are the people who run around saying they care more about people that we do — they have compassion and we don’t — and look what they do. Even if it is incompetence, then when they’re caught, what do they do? They turn around and blame us! They blame us and the people we elect. There is simply no explanation for George Floyd dying on the ground because of a cop with pressure on his neck — via a knee — for five minutes while people are around and witnessing and watching and videoing it on their iPhones.
That’s how we see it, and nothing changes what the cop is doing. So I’m asking myself, “There’s gotta be a policy somewhere that dictates this — and if there’s no policy, it means that the cop may have a big problem.” But it’s in a blue state. This kind of stuff is not supposed to happen in the blue states. It’s not supposed to happen with liberal Democrat leadership.
I can’t tell you how mad it made me. There aren’t words. There is no excuse for it. (interruption) Yeah. The guy’s… (interruption) Well, that was Eric Garner. Eric Garner in New York. “Officer, I can’t breathe. Officer, I can’t breathe.” That’s what Eric Garner said, “Officer, I can’t breathe,” and, by the way, that resonates with me on a personal level — and it was unnecessary.
The guy in no way threatened or posed a threat to virtually anybody. But if you want to give people the benefit of the doubt, okay, there may be a manual or there may be something in training that deals with how to subdue and how to maintain submission while reinforcements arrive or whatever. It’s just inexplicable to me.
And as I say, I probably am angering some of you in law enforcement who may think that you have an explanation for this that I just don’t know and haven’t heard. I’m not criticizing law enforcement. This cop, yeah. It’s just so unnecessary. The guy was a good guy. He wasn’t a problem. Okay, so he had a counterfeit bill. Big whoop.
As I point out, there are people in this country today opening up their businesses who are being held out as a greater threat to the country than the looters and the rioters. And that’s a whole different story. But you’re gonna have some people say, “You know what, Rush? I can understand the looting. I can understand it. This is outrageous what happened here.”
But it didn’t happen to the looters. What are they gaining by destroying the stores in their own neighborhoods? How does that constitute protest? It doesn’t. It demonstrates abject rage. It’s not how I would deal with it, but… (interruption) I know. I know. I’m just trying to be very careful here, Mr. Snerdley. I know that they’re opportunists and I know they’re taking advantage of the situation and so forth.
And it comes in the midst of an economic shutdown where nobody has anything anymore, and they’re simply taking advantage of the opportunity here — and some of them may be legitimately outraged. They’re two separate things, as far as I’m concerned, when you start commentating on them or analyzing ’em. Let me get a phone call in quick.
RUSH: Hey, Rush. You’re right on this. I live in south Minneapolis with my wife. We’ve been here about eight years. I’m heartbroken when I saw that video. I almost couldn’t finish it, and those cops should be made an example of. But Minneapolis has been run by radical left-wing Democrats for years —
RUSH: Yep.
CALLER: — and the MPD has always had a small percentage — like I think a lot of departments do — of people who don’t respect the community. You know, maybe there’s some prejudice. Maybe some of that. But how has that not changed with all of the radical, left-wing policies in this city? I’m deciding whether I want to stay in Minneapolis right now. Do I want to leave? I’m more scared of the protests and the fires and the unrest that’s now been created than I am of the coronavirus today.
RUSH: I… Look, I understand and hear you. The dash, I mean, some people are looking at Minneapolis today as the worst city in the country right now. But, folks, I am not trying to be political when I point out that leftists, utopianists, and all of these, “We’re superior to everybody else,” people are running this city. They’re running that state, and look what it is.
And it’s not just there. Go to any place where leftists and liberals have had unchecked power at either state or city or county level, and you’re gonna find similar kinds of problems.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: You’re gonna find human circumstances exactly opposite of what they promise, particularly when it comes to the lives and the circumstances of minorities.
CALLER: Yeah, and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of living in this beautiful city with all these great lakes and these great people and trying to connect with people of all different races, colors, origins, beliefs, and trying to live under the tyrannical rule of the leftist city council and mayor and governor of the state and really trying to participate. This stuff still happens, and it still ends up as people carrying TVs out of the Target that my wife and I go to. You know, it’s just… It’s crazy to me. I don’t… I’m giving up. I don’t know what else to do for this city.
RUSH: Where you gonna go? Got any idea? Where do you want to go?
CALLER: (chuckles) Well, I’m from up north. Northern Minnesota is God’s country is anyone will tell you. You know, we’ve always thought about that as a possibility. But I love the Twin Cities. I love my teams down here and love so many friends and family down here. But I’m at a loss today. I don’t know what to do.
RUSH: Well, I can understand the despair at seeing something like this, especially since you said you live relatively near where it happened. It’s… You know, I keep searching for words to describe the anger and I felt over it — and the disbelief when I first saw this, and I realized what I’m watching. “This guy’s gonna die in five minutes.” It just… It goes far beyond senseless. Anyway, Andrew, I’m glad you called. I appreciate you taking the time.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, this guy George Floyd, if he’d been passing counterfeit FISA applications, he might still be alive. Instead, he’s passing counterfeit bills? (interruption) Well, I’m just saying. This just… I cannot describe how this ticks me off — and you know what, folks? I will bet you that every good cop that you or I would run into, retired or active, would also say this is indefensible.
I would make that wager, and I’ll bet you that in police departments all over this country a lot of cops and a lot of chiefs are boiling over at how this circumstance has now made their jobs in all these other cities practically impossible. This one stupid, senseless, unnecessary — I mean, totally unnecessary — act is going to have the potential of paralyzing police departments around the country.
I mean, it’s just a disgrace. It’s just an absolute disgrace, and I’m sorry for harping on it. But the fact that it’s happening in a blue state… I watch these mayors and these governors and they get up there they do their press conferences and they talk about, “It’s time for healing. It’s time for us to come together as one.”
You’ve been doing that for 50 years! You’ve been doing that for the 35 years you’ve been running these places. It’s your standard campaign speech. “We must come together as one. We must put aside our differences. We must…” You people never accomplish any of these social justice objectives that you claim to exclusively own. All that happens is things get worse, and other people end up getting the blame for it all.
Let me go back to the phones. This is Larry. Larry’s in Cleveland. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Mr. Limbaugh. Thank you. Thanks for covering this story. This latest example of a death caused by a bad cop, they go on every year. They affect people of all different races and colors who are killed by bad cops. There’s a virus in police departments across this country. Good cops know who these bad cops are.
Their partners know who the bad cops are. Their sergeants, lieutenants, captains and department chiefs know who the bad cops are. But they don’t do anything about it. They don’t do anything to get them out of the department before these deaths by bad cop go. You hear very often that police departments and police chiefs decry the snitches-gets-stitches belief in many, many communities around this country.
RUSH: Wait a minute. So you want to make the point that the good cops —
CALLER: Are doing nothing.
RUSH: — in police departments are just as culpable as the bad cops?
CALLER: They’re not turning the bad cops in. They’re their partners. They’re their seargents. What was said about the (crosstalk)
RUSH: How widespread do you think this is?
CALLER: (unintelligible)
RUSH: How widespread do you think this is?
CALLER: Every state.
RUSH: Every state, every police department you think has a certain percentage of bad cops in it that go rogue like this?
CALLER: Not every department, but many of them. And certainly in the bigger departments in the major cities when you have hundreds and thousands of police, there are a lot of bad cops. And we see examples of it every year in incidents like this that affect black men, that affect Asian men, that affect Hispanic men, that affect white men. They’re getting killed by bad cops, and it won’t end until the police start to police themselves, until they eradicate this virus that is in these departments across the country.
RUSH: Well, a lot of people probably share your opinion. Before you go, very quickly, do you think…? Since you… I’m only asking because you obviously are passion about it. You’ve thought about it. You have an opinion. Do you think there’s a political component to any of this?
CALLER: There very well may be. I don’t know enough about the major departments across the country. There very well may be.
RUSH: Because I think politics has corrupted everything. Liberal politics has corrupted everything. I don’t think there’s any denying that. Okay, Larry, I appreciate it. Thanks for the call. This is Robert next in York, Pennsylvania. Hi. Great to have you.
CALLER: Hi, Rush! Mega dittos. Hey, I just want to say that it was a shame that George got killed. But I think it was inevitable, because when you lock an entire country down for two months, and then give police the power to go out and arrest a mom for not wearing a mask in the subway like in New York, this is gonna happen — and I think a lot of the people on the left were waiting for it and hoping for it.
RUSH: Now, this is an interesting take. So you lock the country down for two months, scare people half to death. If they start clamoring to be let out, you accuse ’em of manslaughter if they open up too soon. In order to enforce the lockdown for these two months, you have to give the cops — and you’re citing de Blasio in New York — all of these amazing powers.
CALLER: Right! You know, if you give power to the police like that, then you’re gonna turn the police into a police state, and a cop that thinks that the governor is gonna have their back if they go out to enforce these Draconian rules that are unconstitutional — and, you know, they’re doing it all across the country. They’re locking down businesses that are just trying to survive.
RUSH: Oh, I know! I mentioned that at the opposing of the program. You can loot a business with impunity in Minneapolis, but you can’t open up.
CALLER: Exactly. Exactly. And if you know anything about Cloward-Piven, they have eight steps to turning this nation into a socialist nation. And the Democrat governors are taking all eight of those steps. I won’t list them, but anyone can look them up. Cloward-Piven, eight steps to socialism.
RUSH: Oh, yeah. We’ve discussed it. It’s even worse than that. You’ve got two governors of these blue states openly acknowledging that they can thwart the national economic recovery by keeping their states locked down — and they say it with smiles on their face, Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo. I appreciate the call, Robert.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have an audio sound bite here from the mayor of Minneapolis. His name is Jacob Frey, and he held a press conference. It was in the last half hour, and I want to play for you an excerpt.
FREY: What we’ve seen (big sigh) over the last two days — and the emotion-ridden conflict (gasp) over last night — is the result (gasp) of so much built up anger and sadness, anger and sadness that has been ingrained in our black community, not just because (gasp) of five minutes of horror but 400 years.
RUSH: (chuckling)
FREY: If you’re feeling that sadness, that anger, it’s not only understandable, it’s right. It’s a reflection of the truth that our black community has lived.
RUSH: So, I mean, this is classic. This is a teachable moment. This is how they do it. These are the people… Don’t forget, these are the people who have been promising their African-American voters this stuff’s gonna stop for 50 years. They have been promising them they’re gonna end racism. They’ve been promising them they’re gonna deal with the racists.
They have been promising African-Americans that they’re gonna punish the people that mistreat they happen. They’ve been promising for 50 years that they’re gonna get ’em out of poverty. They’ve been promising for 50 years that they’re gonna end the vicious cycle of all the African-Americans ending up in prison. And what happens? It all continues, and it all gets worse.
They don’t fix anything! They don’t make anything better. And in their own backyards, in their own neighborhoods — in their own towns, cities, and states — this kind of thing happens, and then what do they trot out? “Well, you must understand this happened because of 400 years of an imperfect nation and its flawed Constitution.” I’m sorry, the United States Constitution has nothing to do with what that cop did.
And however imperfect or flawed you think the United States of America is at founding, that has nothing to do with what happened to George Floyd. It just… It’s classic. This is how they get away with. This guy, I’m sure, ran for office on the premise that there was gonna be equality and there was gonna be fairness and we’re gonna wipe out all of the injustice and all this — and look!
Right in his own backyard, in his own police department, this kind of stuff goes on. And then when it does, let’s put on the Andrew Cuomo “How big a mayor” hat and learn to blame people that had nothing to do with it. And see if we can pass that off as the explanation. “Yes, blacks have had such a tough 400 years because of the evils of America, and so this is totally understandable.
But I’m sorry, folks. I am so sick and tired — I’m so worn out — of the moral superiority of Democrats and leftists who have been promising all these solutions, blaming people like you and me for all the trials and tribulations and travails of the minority populations in this country, blaming us while claiming they are the only ones who can fix it, make it better, because they’re better people.
And you give them total power to run a state or to run a city, and they’re clueless. They haven’t the slightest idea what they’re doing. And it may even look like they have no intention. So it’s just a relevant point to me, the politics of these people, the ideological beliefs that they possess. By the way, Bernie Kerik, the former police chief in New York City, has said that George Floyd’s arrest — and, obviously, his death — “defied logic.”
“It defies common sense. It defies training. It defies arrest policies and procedures,” and I am glad to hear some former high-ranking police chief person say this ’cause I think this is why a lot of people are upset about this. It doesn’t make any common sense. There can’t be that procedure and behavior in a training manual. There’s no justification for this.
Add this to the pile of things that are happening these days that don’t seem to be making any sense.
It just amplifies itself.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Brandon in Forest, Virginia, we go back to the phones. Thank you, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. I’ve been listening to you since I think ’89 is when I first started listening to you and I just want you to know that my wife and I are praying for you. Hope you… Wish you the best.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: Also looking for the Betsy Ross masks.
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: If you can get some of those, I think they’d be top sellers.
CALLER: But, Rush, I was calling today because I’m an attorney, I’m a defense attorney, and I was watching this George Floyd video, and it is disgusting. It’s a horrible video. I don’t know how to describe it other than that, and I’m not calling today to defend the officers, but there’s some stuff I saw on it that, you know, makes me wonder how much of this was the officer possibly asphyxiating Mr. Floyd and how much of it may have been something else?
There’s reports that he was acting erratically beforehand, and if you watch the video — or in the video it states — there’s some guy, one of the bystanders having a little conversation with him saying, “Why don’t you just get in the car?” and Floyd says at a certain point, “Okay, I’ll get in the car now,” and the officer says, “We’ve been trying to get him in the car for 10 minutes.”
So there had been more going on prior to this, but the erratic behavior is what I’m looking at is that… Is he behaving in a way that may show that he was on some kind of drug, some kind of substances, and did the officer actually cause his death or did he have some kind of OD that took place at about the same time, or did the officer compound the drugs that were in his system?
So I think until we have the autopsy results, I think we’re maybe jumping the gun a little bit in saying that the officers caused his death for sure. If they did, they ought to be punished, they ought to be prosecuted appropriately, and they ought to do whatever time that they’re sentenced to. But I’m afraid that if the toxicology comes back that he had a massive OD from heroin or something like that, you know, maybe it wasn’t the officers that caused it. (crosstalk)
RUSH: I have to tell you, you are the first person that I have talked to or read about that’s talking about bringing up the fact that he might have taken a heroin overdose, and that then the cop’s actions inadvertently killed him, when the cop didn’t know the guy was on drugs.
CALLER: Well —
RUSH: I never heard anybody say any of this before. I’ve never heard about the 10 minutes prior to it that the cop couldn’t subdue the guy. It looked to me like he was subdued with a knee on the neck.
CALLER: You are right there. The police officers, they definitely used excessive force. There’s no doubt about that. My point is that he was behaving erratically. I haven’t seen anything that said he was using heroin or anything like that, but the erratic behavior combined with his behavior, you know, bystanders sitting there saying, “Hey, you should have just got in the car,” and he said, “Okay, I’ll get in the car now.”
So it sounds like there was some kind of altercation between him and law enforcement. On top of that, he says you can’t breathe but at the same time he was talking. You know, there’s certain things that you look for when somebody can’t breathe, and being able to talk if it’s a strangulation case —
That’s just not how it works. (sigh) But look, you’ve introduced things here that I’ve never heard from anybody. Heroin overdose, 10 minutes of behavior that we haven’t seen. And I know you’re a defense attorney and this is how you look at things, and I applaud you for that and so forth. But I just… I’m not gonna change my perception of this because there’s no excuse for this.
You can try all you want to excuse what happened here, and you can’t. There is… I don’t care if the guy had been brandishing a weapon 10 minutes beforehand. He wasn’t at the time he was killed — and believe me, he was killed. He didn’t die. He was killed. That is just… You can’t explain that away. At least nobody can explain it away satisfactorily for me. Anyway, Brandon, I appreciate the phone call.
Moving on to Summerfield, Florida. Chris, you’re next. Take your best shot. How you doing?
CALLER: (silence)
RUSH: Testing one, two, three. Are you there, Chris?
CALLER: Yes, Rush, can you hear me?
RUSH: Yeah, I do now. Thank you.
CALLER: I’m sorry. Mega prayers, my friend.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Longtime listener. Thrilled to be here talking to you. I’ll get right to the point. I’m a 30-year retired veteran of police work — I retired as a lieutenant, northern Illinois — and I can tell you straight up that your last call, I can’t believe he was a defense attorney, frankly. But it’s completely unacceptable, and at no point is any officer trained in any way to kneel on somebody’s neck. It just doesn’t happen. That’s not proper procedure.
RUSH: And not let up on it for five minutes!
CALLER: No, no.
RUSH: It just does not happen.
CALLER: No, no. But listen, Rush, what really ticks me off and annoys me more than anything else was that there was another officer standing there with his feet in cement, keeping his mouth shut and he didn’t intervene. It’s one thing for one officer to make the mistake — if you want to call it that — of doing that, but the other officer should have knocked it off, and should have pulled him up and stopped that.
That’s what really troubles me about that Minneapolis incident. It just sickens me. It absolutely sickens me. We’ve done so much good since — you know, and now this starts again. It just sickens me. It does not represent a vast majority of American law enforcement in any way, and for this to be… I just wish that other officer… I understand four of them got fired. Where was the supervisor? That’s my other question, and I would also say, Rush — I’ll shut up in a second here — where was the supervisor? Where were the supervisors in this incident?
RUSH: Well, look, while I have you, let me read to you from the Minneapolis police report, and let me share with you some things that some devil’s advocates are saying, okay? Number one. Here’s from the police report: “Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted that he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance, where he died a short time later.”
CALLER: Yep. Inexcusable, sir. It just should not have happened. It’s just beyond belief that that happened. I don’t care —
RUSH: But this says he died at the hospital, not on the street.
CALLER: But still he was under… You can tell. When you’ve got somebody in custody, first of all, you don’t kneel on their neck. You pick them up, if you (crosstalk) you give ’em a (crosstalk).
CALLER: (laughing) From what I understand, he was a large man. I’m not gonna get into the weeds. I’m not a coroner. But we —
RUSH: I know. I’m just…
CALLER: (crosstalk)
RUSH: The devil’s advocates are coming out. The people trying to stop this away are coming out and I’m giving you a little heads-up into what they’re saying.
CALLER: No, you’re exactly right. There’s no excuse for it. The man was killed. If you want to call it — at best — incompetence, lack of training, that’s gonna probably come out. I dealt with this many times. I don’t want to say many times, but a few times. It’s also… It’s gonna come down to being lack of training. Obviously, the City of Minneapolis is gonna be cutting checks.
RUSH: It’s not gonna come down to that.
CALLER: I think —
RUSH: It’s not gonna come down to lack of training. You can tell from this police report that’s not where this is headed. Let me read to you the police report again — some. It’s not in its entirety, obviously. “Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress.” That means they didn’t cause it.
They had to work hard to get him in cuffs. “They noted that he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. Mr. Floyd was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.” So he died in the hospital. He didn’t die on the street.
He didn’t die while the cop’s knee was compressed, depressed, jammed into his neck. And then you’re gonna have people pointing out, “Wait a minute. The cop’s knee wasn’t even on the guy’s windpipe. It was on the side or the back of his neck. How does that strangle anybody?” So you can see how this is going to be — shall I say — attempted to be explained.
And the fact that he did not die there on the street but died in the hospital and the cops knew he was in distress and called for the ambulance… Now, despite that — and that’s an excerpt from the police report. Despite that, these cops or that cop was fired practically on the spot, once the video had been seen. I appreciate the call out there.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’m gonna stick with the phones here because I’ve got people who want to talk about this particular subject, rather than move on and introduce other things and then 20 minutes from now go to the phones and the callers go back to this. It’s not good for continuity. So we’ll stick with this for a minute. We’ll get into the other aspects of news. Stuff besides this is happening out there at the top of the next hour.
In the meantime, Cumming, Georgia, this is Bill. Great to have you, sir. Glad you waited.
CALLER: Hi, Mr. Limbaugh. I’m a first-time caller, and I’ve been listening to you for about six months. So I’m a rookie.
RUSH: Well, it’s great to have you here, then. You’re kind of like a virgin in a lot of ways here, so it’s gonna be a great experience for you.
CALLER: Yep. But my call originally was to discuss what the gentleman you had on — I guess about an hour ago — who said the police don’t do anything about their officers, that they see ’em doing something wrong, they seem to turn their heads. I’m not gonna say that doesn’t happen, but I’m gonna say for the most part there are about 800,000 cops in the United States.
So when you have an incident like this with Mr. Floyd that shouldn’t have happened, in my opinion, it’s just a terrible thing and it certainly reflects on all 800,000 active law enforcement. However, that gentleman that called in and said that the police never do anything? I served in two police departments in the state of Maryland — Baltimore and Howard County, Maryland.
And as a captain with the Howard County, Maryland, police Department I was in a position three to four times to bring charges against three different officers, all of whom were terminated from the department — and they did nothing close to what happened to Mr. Floyd. We’re talking about theft in two cases, and a minor crime of sexual nature in another case, and these guys were fired.
CALLER: No. I’m saying that in my life experience, both in Baltimore and in the other department in the state of Maryland, we took action against officers that didn’t do their jobs or do ’em well. If they did something criminally, they were terminated.
RUSH: Oh. So our disagreeing with the guy.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Oh, I misunderstand. It says up here, “Caller: We do nothing to police our own.” So I thought you were agreeing with him.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: Okay. I’ve been laboring under a misunderstanding since you started.
CALLER: Well —
RUSH: Okay. So you’re saying the first caller — who was a 30-year veteran of this program — didn’t know what he was talking about and you, a six-month rookie do?
CALLER: Uhhhh, I would go ahead with that, yes.
RUSH: Yeah. Absolutely. Stand up for yourself.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: And it’s like the department… I live in Cumming, Georgia, and we’re policed by the Cumming police, but I live on the outskirts and we’re policed by the Forsyth County sheriff’s office, and I can say without a doubt, if you screw up in the sheriff’s office, you’re gone.
They don’t tolerate inappropriate actions or lack of action or any type of violation, serious violation of departmental rules. You’re gone. So I don’t know where the guy was coming from. The only other thing I would say is I think the officer in Minneapolis, if you had four officers there, there’s no reason that guy should have had his knee on that man’s neck, on the carotid artery.
RUSH: That’s it for me. I don’t care — and to not release it once the guy was subdued? That’s just… Folks, here’s the thing. We all only get one life, each of us. We get one. There’s not a do-over. And this guy lost his for inexplicable, unjustifiable, no-matter-who-wants-to-play-devil’s advocate-with-me-all-day reasons. There is no reason that George Floyd should have lost his life because of whatever happens that day.
There’s just no explanation, there’s no justification for that. That is why we make a big deal out of due process in this country. That is why we go to the end of the world to make sure that when we catch people suspected of murder, we try to keep them alive so that they get their day in court, so that they are not deprived of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness without due process.
And what separates us as a country from the tyranny and the dictatorship and the bondage of the rest of the world. And then when you see that kind of thing happen in your country, I don’t care what the justification attempts are, what the efforts to explain it away are. There is no reason.
George Floyd did not deserve to lose his life, and we pronounce that sentence on very few people who are born and have a life in this country. We don’t execute many people. I don’t care what you think about capital punishment, we don’t execute that many people — and that’s what this was, whatever his cause of death was, at whatever interval they want to say it happened.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just saw some guy commentating on TV. He says, “Yeah, well, of course I disagree with them setting the city on fire.” (laughing) Really? You disagree with them setting the city on fire? Let me tell you, whatever is happening in Minneapolis, it’s way beyond whatever happened to George Floyd. I mean, there are people who are venting frustrations way beyond whatever happened to George Floyd.
At least the mayor there didn’t say that. (chuckling) “I mean, I don’t agree with them burning down the buildings.” It looks like Blade Runner in that town! Minneapolis looks like Blade Runner, and I’m telling you, this reaction there is far deeper than what happened to George Floyd. It’s a convenient opportunity, excuse for whatever kind — and, folks, look, get mad at me all you want.
I just want to ask you again: Who runs this town?
What kind of thinking runs this town?
What kind of promises have been made to people?
You know, the people burning down the town have been promised a utopia. They’ve been promised a panacea. They’ve been promised that everything that agitates them is gonna get fixed. They have been promised that the people mistreating them are gonna be dealt with — and it never happens. You want to talk about 400 years of this?
These people, we’re talking in the… There’s at least 50 years of frustration at liberal, Democrat politicians with all of these empty promises — promises to fix things, to get even with people. It’s just… It is a factor. It is a significant factor, a teachable moment. (interruption) Yeah, I know. I saw the same thing. I saw some footage.
You know, some of the rioters, some of the people burning down the town are wearing masks. Dr. Fauci has to be so proud as he watches this, and Dr. Birx. They have to know. They have to be confident that the people burning down the town are at least listening to the National Institutes for Health before they go out and do it. (interruption)
I know. If I were Dr. Fauci, I’d be proud as hell. I’d be looking at it as, “See? Even rioters and looters are smart enough to know that when they go out and riot and loot, they need to wear masks, and they need to be practicing social distancing.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s another. This is a tweet. NBC News. Minneapolis city council vice president Andrea Jenkins: “I’m asking my colleagues… to declare a state of emergency declaring racism as a public health issue,” Jenkins said.
“Until we name this virus, this disease that has infected America for the past 400 years, we will never, ever resolve this issue.” Now, what do you think this babe’s doing? This babe is absolving herself of any of her responsibilities as a failed leader by deflecting this off on the country — and what is this 400-years business?
Four hundred years? The United States is not 400 years old. So now they’re buying into this New York Times bogus story that the actual founding of America was in 1619 with the first arrival of slave ships? “I’m asking my colleagues… to declare a state of emergency declaring racism as a public health issue.
“Until we name this virus, this disease that has infected America for the past 400 years, we will never, ever resolve this issue.” So now racism is a virus. It’s a disease. When do we work on the vaccine? What would the vaccine be? What would the treatment be? This is simply her trying to let herself and her fellow leaders off the hook as having no culpability, no responsibility whatsoever for any of this.
What is this?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Greg in Alabama. I’m glad you called. It’s great to have you on the program today, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. I appreciate your taking my call.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I just want to express (unintelligible). I’m a 25-year veteran police officer, and any police officer that says that this is not a terrible thing is not a good police officer. This was horrible. That report that you read from, that’s a CYA. The guy died on the scene. He was “pronounced dead” at the hospital, and they’re just trying to CYA. They realized they screwed up and they are trying to find a way out of it, and I can’t imagine any… Once the cuffs are on, the fight’s over.
RUSH: I know.
RUSH: I know.
CALLER: Ridiculous.
RUSH: Greg, you have to understand, I have people who love it when I’m wrong, and I have people who love being the ones to point out that I’m wrong. So when I was talking about this, they said, “He didn’t die on the street! He died at the hospital! He didn’t die on the street! Get it right!” And then the police report comes out, and the police report points out what you just heard, that the cops were very tough.
It was very hard to get him in handcuffs, then they got him in handcuffs, and he seemed to be in some distress, and so they called the ambulance and the ambulance came and he was he’s “pronounced dead” at the hospital. Your point is pronounced dead is not the point, that he probably was dead on the street. Is that what you’re thinking, and pronounced dead is a CYA?
CALLER: Oh sure. Certainly. I’ve taken many people to the hospital knowing that they’re dead, or I’ve followed the ambulance to the hospital because we can’t pronounce somebody dead. The doctor comes out in the parking lot and puts I stethoscope on him and says, “Yep, he’s dead,” and then he’ll sign the death certificate. It’s silly. But the whole thing is just disgusting, that he would do that and much less the other three guys stand there and allow him to do that. I’m not saying they’re as culpable as he is, but they’re (crosstalk)
RUSH: You mean the other three cops, you mean, standing —
CALLER: Yeah. Well, the so-called cops that allowed that to go on.
RUSH: Well, yeah, I… Look, I wondered all of that. And with no effort?
CALLER: No.
RUSH: Not one attempt that we see, anyway, on the video —
CALLER: And for it to have gone on eight minutes. That’s plenty of time to come to your senses. I can see possibly in the heat of the moment doing that, “Whoops!” and coming off of it. But I can’t see sitting there and waiting and waiting and waiting ’til he died, even after he told you he couldn’t breathe and, “You’re killing me,” and other people were saying that too. I mean, what’s going on through your head? They’ll probably have about 20 years to think about that, but (crosstalk).
RUSH: Let me ask you something. Let me ask, because you’re a police veteran, you’re a police officer veteran. You know, we all have had interactions with government where we get frustrated as hell because they’ve got a policy, and they’re not gonna change it. You could be standing in line the DMV, you could be interacting with any government agency, and they’ve got policy.
They’ve got procedures, and nothing is going to change it. Nothing! What I’m asking is, in any of your experience, is there any possibility of some kind of crazy training procedure here that no matter what happens this cop was not gonna release his knee from the guy’s neck? Is there?
CALLER: No, sir.
RUSH: No?
CALLER: There is no possibility. They used to use… I mean, I started in 1982. Back at that time, there were some of the older officers using something called a chokehold where you put pressure on the carotid artery that could make a person faint that you’re having a struggle with. You know, we haven’t done that in the last probably 35 or 40 years. That officer’s obviously not that old.
He would not have been taught that. The FBI… When I went to the police academy, the FBI came and taught us use of force because they’re the ones that come and investigate a use of force complaint against us. And we were certainly never taught such a thing. It would never occur to any modern, you know (chuckles), 2020 police officer —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — to do a chokehold on somebody or even, you know, put pressure on your neck. There is something called “positional asphyxia” where you have to be careful… They taught us this. You have to be careful when you cuff somebody how you position them, because the weight of their body could make it impossible for them to breathe.
And that may have been part of it; I don’t know. But in addition to him being on his belly with his hands cuffed behind his back, and then you put the 180/200 pounds of the officer’s knee on his throat, it would really be surprising to me he didn’t die. It’s untenable, and there’s certainly no… I can’t come up with any policy, any legitimate police force that would use that.
CALLER: Well, there were some civilians saying, “You’re killing him,” et cetera. I heard that in the background. But it’s on those cops. They are trained to “serve and protect,” or they’re supposed to be — and the use of force, take someone’s life? You have to be in fear of your life or someone else’s life. They were certainly not. It was over, the guy was cuffed, they should have taken poor guy there, pick him up, put in the car, take him to jail, and we wouldn’t be talking about this.
RUSH: You keep raising things. I couldn’t… When I first saw the video, it was an optical illusion. I thought the guy was under the car. I thought for some reason he was trapped under the car, and then I saw the officer’s knee on the neck, and I found out I’m just seeing an optical illusion. Why not get the guy up off the street after a certain passage of time and hustle him away?
CALLER: I don’t understand it.
RUSH: I mean, the cops didn’t look like they were afraid of anything going around ’em.
CALLER: No, he looked perfectly comfortable to me. I’m sorry. I don’t… I’m not gonna pronounce this guy guilty, but I think it certainly merits a really hard investigation.
RUSH: Well, they’re gonna get lawyers, and there’s gonna be a story, and that police report, I think, is going to — or it does — offer, maybe, an advance view of the road map that the defense here might try. But you know there’s gonna be a defense. You know, they have lawyers, the police union lawyers and so forth. I appreciate the call out there, Greg.
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