RUSH: Robert in Norfolk, Virginia. Welcome, sir. I’m glad you called.

CALLER: (gabled cell) Hi, Rush. Quick profile on me. I’m a conservative. I’m a Trump guy — although I’m a little annoyed with him sometimes, the things he says. I’m a businessman. I’m the first guy that says that Kaepernick putting his knee down, I hated it, just like Drew Brees said. It’s disrespectful to the flag.

Until this thing happened in Minneapolis when we all got a chance to see that cop with his knee on that guy’s neck, and as you said the other day, I couldn’t get over it. I couldn’t get past it. I was deeply moved and my daughter at the dinner table said to me, “You’re deeply moved and shocked? Well, black people haven’t been shocked.

“They haven’t been shocked for years.” So I started to open my eyes for this because then you see the event with the guy from New York was selling the cigarettes, and the little boy with the toy gun who was shot and you start looking back and wonder if the guy in LA — “Can’t we all just get along” — maybe there was something more going on with that.

And I’m not sure there’s institution racism (grabled) the police, I’m (garbled) and I’m a conservative but you start to wonder that with all the peaceful things been going on there hasn’t been any change… I’m sorry. There hasn’t been as much change as the blacks would like (garbled).

RUSH: Well, now —

CALLER: (garbled)

RUSH: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hang on a minute. Hang on. I’m gonna tell you some things you may not know. Well, I guarantee you don’t know them based on what you just said, and you’ll be surprised. Fatal police shootings of unarmed black men across the United States have plummeted. There were 38…

By the way, none of this is acceptable, but I’m just telling you: Things were trending in the right direction. It was not getting worse. There were 38 police shootings of unarmed black men in 2015. Last year — and this is the Washington Post database. Do you know how many there were last week, 2019?

CALLER: (silence)

RUSH: You don’t. There were nine. So 38 shootings of unarmed black men in 2015, so Obama still had two years to go. In 2019, two years into the Trump presidency, nine fatal police shootings of unarmed black men across the country. So it was getting better. It was not getting worse. The question is, “What did Trump do to fix what was broken?”

Did Trump do anything? Was it simply a matter of fixing the economy? Something happened. There were many fewer shootings of unarmed black men in 2019 than there were in 2015. Could it be — and hang on, Robert. Could it be that record-low African-American unemployment could be a reason? Was it Trump’s prison reform act?

Don’t forget, the African-American community has been demanding prison reform on the basis that too many innocent African-Americans are in jail, that they have essentially been railroaded; they’ve been convicted unfairly. Guess who came along and enacted prison reform that resulted in getting a lot of African-Americans falsely convicted out of jail?

It was none other than Donald Trump. Now, you don’t know any of this, and it’s not your fault. None of this was reported. The prison reform act was, but the import of it was not. It was reported begrudgingly. But yet here you are — and I totally understand. That thing that happened in Minneapolis to George Floyd… (sigh) It goes beyond being sickening.

It was just stupid. It was just so damn stupid. There was no earthly reason for it. There cannot have been. But it isn’t typical; however, it’s being portrayed as typical, and the media coverage of it is working. The fact that you are starting to see the points made by the other side is totally understandable based on the coverage of all this that you’re seeing.

CALLER: (garbled) But you also have the events that people have forwarded to me, for example, where the black landowner is sitting on his yard and an unprovoked question by a policeman says, you know, “May I see your ID?” and I never really focused on that before. (garbled) You know, maybe I’m being oversensitive — and again, my daughter said, “You’re not being oversensitive. It happens often. It just may not be reported,” and again, I’m not a… I’m not liberal. It’s just sometimes I wonder. Maybe (garbled).

RUSH: Now, you’ll forgive me, because I’m having trouble hearing you. You’re speaking fast and the phone quality is not the best. Am I correct or incorrect in assuming that your daughter is playing a significant role in your changing your mind on this?

CALLER: No. We’re having a family discussion at the table, and most of us — my sons and I — are conservative. She’s probably a conservative too. But she has… She’s very intelligent and we have this discussion where she’s trying to make us all see the other side, for which I appreciate.

RUSH: Right. Well, you and I are never gonna know what it’s like to look in the rearview mirror and see a cop and be black in the car. You and I are never gonna know what that’s like. We can try as hard as we can but we’re never gonna know, right?

CALLER: That’s right. That’s right. I think maybe that’s what the comments to Drew Brees is saying. I’ve heard this now several times, it’s not about the flag, and it (garbled) when people kneel for the national anthem. But we’re asking —

RUSH: Well, but see —

CALLER: — protests —

RUSH: See, when it first started, it was about the flag. Everybody’s forgotten. When Kaepernick… When this whole thing first started, it was about the flag, and then he said, “police brutality,” and shortly thereafter, it became symbolic for being critical of America at large, not just the cops.

And Brees, he’s been there and done that with this — and for some reason, Drew Brees felt compelled, in the midst of all this — and I can’t explain why. I don’t know. But he felt compelled to come out and defend the flag. He felt compelled to come out and defend his grandfathers and the military.

He saw this as something that almost required him to go out and defend the flag, defend the country. I don’t know what it was. But that’s what he said, and it was not accepted. It was not tolerated at all, and he was made to walk it back and apologize for it.

CALLER: By who? Who would have made him walk that back?

RUSH: Well, his teammates, for one. Who knows the kind of pressure that was being exerted, but he obviously felt some.

CALLER: Yeah, (garbled) was probably for speaking up. But that would begin the dialogue with someone like him who people respect. And the fact that you had Charlamagne God (sic) on your show the other day —

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: — that was very important, too, that you did that.

RUSH: Yeah, but Charlamagne’s out there saying it was a waste of time. He wished he hadn’t done it. It didn’t do anything. It wasn’t worthwhile, and all that. So —

CALLER: Uh, have him back.

RUSH: (chuckling)

CALLER: That’s — that’s —

RUSH: He doesn’t want to come back. He doesn’t want to come back. He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to do the first one. Look, you’re undergoing a “change of mind,” as you say. You’re starting to see the points on the other side. So where does that take you? What does it mean for you, your family, the country? What do you think it means if there are more and more people like you who are now beginning to see the points of the other side?

You mean you didn’t, up until this instance in Minnesota, you really weren’t that sensitive to what their complaints were? This is what brought it home?

CALLER: When you see some of the videos from before, there was always question, you never quite had the whole video, you never were quite exactly sure where the police were, what happened just before the video started. I decided let’s get all the facts in. Don’t rush to judgment. But this is the first time where it’s been perfectly clear what happened. There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind. And that’s when I said maybe there’s been other times where it happened, too, and we just ignored it, we moved on, they argued, they protested and we gave it an ear and then nothing has really happened.

RUSH: Okay. Let me then now ask, do you think since you now see — and there’s no wrong answer. Do not misinterpret the tone. I’m not asking anything here in an accusing way, so don’t misunderstand it. Do you now think, since you’re seeing the points of the other side, do you think that the looting and the destruction of private property is understandable, too, and that it may even be called for now in order to get people’s attention?

CALLER: I have to say absolutely not. It’s anarchy, and this is completely unrelated to the Floyd death, completely unrelated. It’s people, as you say —

RUSH: Well, it’s not unrelated to the Floyd death. It’s being done in his name despite what his family’s trying to get them to stop doing.

CALLER: I think there are peaceful protesters out there which I admire and I think they should, but I think the looters and the rioters are paid to be here like some of the other events that happened, the rocks are being delivered. It’s very much organized, just like the Panthers were in the sixties, this is not just grassroots people who are angry. And I do understand their anger.

RUSH: That’s right. This is bought and paid for. These are organized. These are people that are laying in wait for the trigger. Whatever it is, they’re laying in wait for the go signal from whoever it is that’s giving them their orders. But then the media comes along, the media comes along and essentially reports on them as organic, legitimate, they were minding their own business, they were bothering nobody, they were so outraged at what happened to George Floyd that they couldn’t contain themselves.

In other words, the media is reporting all of it as legitimate and justified, where over half of this stuff is as organized as the stuff in the 1960s was. Anyway, Robert, I’m glad you called. I appreciate it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’m glad I don’t have a daughter out there working on me every day to change my mind about stuff. You know, I know more people whose kids are changing their minds about things than I care to even think about.

It’s amazing. I could never change my parents’ mind about anything because as far as they were concerned, I wasn’t wise enough. I hadn’t lived long enough. I didn’t know enough compared to what they knew. Oh, they thought my opinions were cute, and they respectfully listened to them, because I don’t think I was ever able to tell my dad something he didn’t know.

And I don’t think I was ever able to tell my dad a point of… Well, until later in life, but certainly when I was college age. (chuckling) Ho-ho-ho! That’s when… You know, I didn’t go to college, but my brother did. He and his buddies would come home from college, and these guys, they’re feeling their oats and they’re thinking they’re the king of the walk.

They’re college guys, and they’re coming in and trying to tell my dad stuff, and he just sits there and kind of shakes his head and smiles, and then lets them know how little they knew in the first place. It was fun to watch. My point is, I may have had a way of looking at the something that my dad hadn’t looked at, but the idea that I was gonna be able to talk my dad out of his core beliefs? There was no way!

It just wasn’t gonna happen, and it seems like it’s happening all over America today.