{"id":237017,"date":"2017-06-14T13:40:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T17:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=237017"},"modified":"2017-06-15T16:24:56","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T20:24:56","slug":"hodgkinson-soaked-up-liberal-fake-news-like-a-sponge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/06\/14\/hodgkinson-soaked-up-liberal-fake-news-like-a-sponge\/","title":{"rendered":"Hodgkinson\u2019s Facebook Page Reads Like a CNN Panel on Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: I want to go to the audio sound bites, and I want to start here first with our buddy Brian Ross. Grab sound bite 29 then we\u2019ll go to 33. Brian Ross, ABC News, when there was a mass shooting in Colorado — I think it was a movie theater, I\u2019m not sure. Brian Ross\u2019s first instinct, first instinct was to try to find a connection between the shooter and conservatism. So he got the shooter\u2019s name, and the first thing he did — instinctively — was look at a roster of Tea Party organizations to see if he could find the guy\u2019s name there.<\/p>\n

So there was a mass shooting in a movie…<\/p>\n

\"\"You note these things just don\u2019t happen. Conservatives don\u2019t do these things, much as the media is waiting constantly for it to happen, it doesn\u2019t. Things like this are perpetuated by genuinely insane, out-of-balance people or people like this guy Hodgkinson. At any rate, he found a name on a Tea Party roster in Colorado that was very close to the shooter\u2019s name. So Brian Ross goes on ABC and says, “We can\u2019t be sure, but the shooter could possibly be a member of the Tea Party.” Well, he knows as well as anybody: You don\u2019t even have to confirm it! Just put it out there as a possibility and let your buddies on Twitter take care of the rest — and they did, and for a while the narrative was that the mass shooter in Colorado was Tea Party.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s kind of poetic justice that Brian Ross today could not cover this up.<\/p>\n

ROSS: He\u2019s (pause) politically active, according to his social media. On Facebook just a few days ago he was critical of Trump. He said, “Trump and company need to be destroyed because Trump is destroying democracy.” We know he\u2019s 66; he ran a home inspection business, which seemed to have gone out of business sometime last year.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Home inspection where he lost his license to inspect homes. But that doesn\u2019t even scratch the surface of who the guy is and the hatred for Donald Trump that he harbored. Look, I know people are able to arrive at opinions independently of stimulation or influence. I understand this. But I have been worried for quite a while about the cumulative effect or impact of this constant anti-Trump hysteria everywhere in mainstream media: New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC. It\u2019s hysteria. It\u2019s lies.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s things that are completely manufactured about Trump personally, about Trump and Russia, about climate change, about any number of things. As you know, I have been seriously, folks — seriously in a humanitarian sense, not political. I have been very concerned about what all of this is doing to the average, base Democrat voter. I have sensed them getting more and more fringe and imbalanced, and the evidence for it is everywhere in the things that they tweet. They openly promote violence, and advocate some of the most despicable things happening to their political enemies.<\/p>\n

\"\"The hatred is raw, it is undiluted, it\u2019s just savage. These are the mainstream of the Democrat base, and I don\u2019t have any doubt that they are being radicalized. They\u2019re being radicalized. In this case, this guy\u2019s favorite TV shows, Comedy Central, Bill Maher, left-wing comedians. John Oliver on HBO. Half the people at Comedy Central. Rachel Maddow was his all-time favorite. He thought she should run for president. These people have radicalized guys like this all over this country.<\/p>\n

I would be remiss if I didn\u2019t mention that while all of this has gone on, since this program began — it\u2019ll be 30 years ago in just a month or about to. Since this program began, the American media has attempted to portray you people in this audience as being identical to the guy that shot up members of Congress today in Virginia. You know it as well as I do. You\u2019ve heard it. You\u2019ve listened to them say it. They\u2019ve tried to characterize me and you as agents of hate and all of this. And it\u2019s all rooted in nothing more than political, ideological differences. And it\u2019s been going on for I don\u2019t know how long.<\/p>\n

Every time there has been a mass shooting or an act of terror, I guarantee you the first thing the media has done — and this was really par for the course in the first 15 to 20 years. Before Fox News kicked up, the first thing the media did when there was any kind of a mass crime or shooting, is they tried as hard as they could to find evidence that the perpetrator was a listener of this program and then of talk radio and then later a viewer of Fox News. They have been doing this since this program began, and they have yet to be able to find one example where that linkage has been established. Not one.<\/p>\n

I have been very sensitive to it. The reason I\u2019ve been sensitive to it is because of the way it characterizes you, the audience to this program. As a result, I\u2019m sure you\u2019re aware of it too. Now, I do believe that the message on this program is in no way related to hate. It is not fatalistic. This program each and every day is nothing but upbeat and inspiring. Of course we talk about things going wrong but from the point is of trying to fix them, from the standpoint of it\u2019s possible to fix them, that it\u2019s necessary to do so.<\/p>\n

And to have it categorized as something other than that has been something that\u2019s common for 20 or 30 years. And then this event happened today, and it\u2019s something that I have honestly been worried was it going to happen because I don\u2019t think that you can bombard people with this kind of hatred from the time they were in day care all the way up to kindergarten, and then middle school, high school. You get \u2019em into college, and they start watching their late nine comedians, and all of this stuff is just… Some of it disguised as “comedy,” but it\u2019s all coming from a foundation of anger and rage and hate.<\/p>\n

We had a Drive-By call. We had a caller from Houston who has demanded that I stop calling this a shooting and refer to it instead as a matter. That calling it a shooting is judgmental. We don\u2019t know that it was a shooting. The FBI hasn\u2019t confirmed it was a shooting. They haven\u2019t confirmed the motivation. They haven\u2019t confirmed that congressman who were shot were actual targets. Meanwhile, they know the Russians did whatever they didn\u2019t do. Here\u2019s Bernie Sanders condemning the act of his supporter. Audio sound bite number 33.<\/p>\n