RUSH: Sadly, my friends, I need to ask your indulgence. I need to start here with some housekeeping stuff. Your host is being smeared all over the United States over something I didn\u2019t even know had happened, and yet I am supposedly the leader of the group of people saying it. I didn\u2019t even know that this was happening or had been said until I started doing show prep today. And then I get the audio sound bite roster, and I find out I am the ringleader of this.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the deal. Apparently there is a member of the Florida legislature, a member of his staff went out there and said that he knows that a number of these students from the high school are hired and paid actors. And they\u2019re out there enunciating, you know, the typical left-wing anti-gun control slogans, messaging and so forth, and this guy has been fired because of course these students are not actors. Somebody researched it and found out that the two kids he was talking about are indeed students.<\/p>\n
Well, I didn\u2019t know any of this was happening. I didn\u2019t know that the Florida legislature, didn\u2019t know the guy\u2019s name, didn\u2019t know the staffer\u2019s name, didn\u2019t know the staffer had said any of this until I was reading all about it this morning, prepping the program, find out the guy has been canned. In fact, I read it in such a cursory way, I don\u2019t even remember names. And I remember thinking when I read it, why in the world would some doofus go out and say something like this if it isn\u2019t true? And it would be easy to find out if some of these kids on TV are not even students at the school.<\/p>\n
It\u2019d be easy to find out. If you\u2019re just gonna level this kind of charge, then I have to question the real purpose of leveling the charge, because this is just raw red meat for the Drive-By Media. Now they put me as the ringleader in this. You know, I got a note today from my buddy Jeff Lord, who writes in a number of places, the American Spectator and NewsBusters. He said, “Hey, we\u2019re working on a piece over here about the New York Times smear of you yesterday.”<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/APP-022118-Smear.jpg\")
And I wrote back, “I didn\u2019t know I got smeared yesterday.” So apparently I got smeared twice, or three times, and I\u2019m just finding out about it today. So to illustrate this, we\u2019re gonna start with audio from WCBS news radio 880 in New York. This is the coanchor Wayne Cabot reporting how I and other conservatives are reacting to student led anti-gun protests resulting from the shooting last week in Florida.<\/p>\n
CABOT: Right-wing groups are claiming conspiracy as some of the Parkland students, they say, are actors who travel to the sites of shootings and push a liberal agenda. In fact, President Trump\u2019s son, Donald Trump Jr., is among those who “liked” a pair of tweets about 17-year-old David Hogg, portraying Hogg as the son of a retired FBI agent being put in front of the cameras to defend the FBI while being manipulated and coached by the Democratic Party and gun control activists. The conspiracy theories are being picked up by people like Rush Limbaugh on WOR radio, who says everything the students are doing is right out of the Democratic Party\u2019s playbooks.<\/p>\n
RUSH: “Picked up the conspiracy that the two students are actors.” I didn\u2019t even that this thing had been launched, as I say, until today. Now, not only is this grossly misleading and false, it didn\u2019t stop there. Yesterday on NPR\u2019s 1-A which is short for First Amendment, they have a show called First Amendment, the host, Joshua Johnson speaks with a student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Chris Grady, about all of this.<\/p>\n
JOSHUA JOHNSON: Your cause is already becoming something of a political football. There\u2019s a narrative among some in conservative media about the students being used by the liberal media. Rush Limbaugh was on Fox News Sunday saying similar things, and others as well. Do you feel like you\u2019re ready to deal with the politics of this?<\/p>\n
RUSH: Stop the tape. Why don\u2019t you quote what I said on Fox News? It\u2019s easy to find the tape. Why don\u2019t you go out and actually tell this student what I said instead of lumping me in with a bunch of people who are saying things that I have not said. “Rush Limbaugh was on Fox News Sunday saying similar things, and others as well. Yes.” Okay, pick up the tape and resume it at that point.<\/p>\n
JOSHUA JOHNSON: Politics gets really nasty really fast and this shooting is still kind of raw for you.<\/p>\n
GRADY: It was expected. We know what we\u2019re up against, and, you know, we\u2019re gonna stay determined and we know we\u2019re going to get bogged down a lot in the politics of it all and it\u2019s not going to be resolved in a few months. But, you know, this could take years, but we\u2019re ready to hunker down and keep fighting.<\/p>\n
RUSH: But it wasn\u2019t finished there. Next we move on to of all places The Five on the Fox News Channel. Now, before I get to this, let me retrace some steps. And I\u2019ve got Koko at the website and Cookie looking at the audio to find this stuff, \u2019cause this burns me, this frosts me. I forget which day it was last week. Thursday or Friday. I spent considerable time on this program describing how impressed I was with these students, and I even called out one of them by name.<\/p>\n
I never once insulted any of these students. I never have mentioned a student at this school by name, other than Addison Jost in a praiseworthy way. I have commented on some of the sloganeering and the agenda that is being used here. And it is straight out of the Democrat Party, and I\u2019ve made the point that the left gets away with this quite easily by taking these kids or any group of people that happen to be activists advancing the Democrat Party agenda, and they immediately proclaim them as not political. The media does. And the students themselves did.<\/p>\n The students said we need leaders of both parties to put aside their differences and join us essentially in taking down the NRA. I said when you say that you\u2019ve made it political and you\u2019ve entered the political arena. But the Drive-Bys hoist all that up and then cast it as apolitical or nonpolitical, therefore giving it credibility so that anybody reacting to it then is accused of being political. It\u2019s a trick that the left has used, that the media has used for I don\u2019t know how long to set aside their beliefs and their ideology as not being ideology, as just being the norm, as what everybody else thinks.<\/p>\n And they\u2019re doing it in this scenario as well, where all of the student protests and the agenda here, the objective — what is the objective? What\u2019s the objective these protests? Could somebody tell me? I mean, it\u2019s right in front of your face. (interruption) On what? They want action on what? They want action on guns. Precisely. And they want action on the NRA. Now, you cannot escape who these teachers are in these schools. We know what the public school system is, and we know what kind of things the students have probably been taught.<\/p>\n You know something else that we\u2019re not seeing that probably also exists. I\u2019ll betcha there\u2019s a lot of students at this school that don\u2019t support this, that don\u2019t buy into this, that are not going to the protest marches. But you\u2019re not hearing about them because the media doesn\u2019t find them. The media\u2019s not interested in it. But here\u2019s the sound bite from The Five. This is Jesse Watters and Juan Williams yesterday.<\/p>\n JUAN WILLIAMS: Rush Limbaugh says, hey, these students in this march looks like a bunch of Democrats to me. What do you say?<\/p>\n WATTERS: Well, I hate to disagree with Rush. (laughter) I don\u2019t know how he can prove that. I think you don\u2019t want to make policy based on someone who\u2019s just lost a friend to a deadly mass murderer, because they\u2019re 17 and incredibly emotional. They have very noble feelings about this issue, and I think their voices need to be heard.<\/p>\n We even had callers comment on the fact that this looks exactly like the Democrat Party community organizing! It won\u2019t be long before we learn that George Soros is funding a lot of this. And George Soros funds what kind of causes? So, anyway, folks, this is how it happens.<\/p>\n BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n RUSH: So now how far around the world is it that I started this whole line of thinking that the students at the high school are actors being paid to articulate a Democrat agenda? I guarantee you it\u2019s halfway around the world by now — and there isn\u2019t a thing that can be done about it, outside the universe of you in this audience, people that use my RushLimbaugh.com app and website<\/a> and so forth. And I doubt that any…<\/p>\n WCBS is not gonna correct this, and NPR is not gonna fix this, and The Five probably won\u2019t fix it. It doesn\u2019t matter if they do. The first instance is always what defines things. But, you know, another thing is look at the purpose here of putting me with this, associating me with this. The guy that actually did this is a lowly no name, nobody-ever-heard-of-him staffer for a Florida legislator. Not a member of U.S. Congress. Florida legislator. This is the guy — and he probably got a lot of websites all hep\u2019d up and repeated what he was saying, that these two students were actors.<\/p>\n Well, of course they\u2019re not gonna lay it on this guy. Nobody knows who he is. So gotta lay it off on Rush Limbaugh. This is how you smear the entire conservative movement. You lay it off on me. Now, normally, you know, you don\u2019t respond to these kinds of things. As you know, I have a policy of not doing so. But this? I didn\u2019t even know this was happening. I know everything. But I don\u2019t watch cable news, and I don\u2019t listen to NPR, and I haven\u2019t seen The Five in a long time.<\/p>\n If this just became the latest Democrat Party rant, that\u2019s de rigueur. That happens after every shooting. But now we have the students. And along with this, there are now increasing calls for raising the age to get a… Let\u2019s see. What is it? Laurence Tribe came out the other day: Raise the age for rifle purchases. Okay, fine. To a lot of people, that sounds good. But, see, “solutions,” when offered by the left are never solutions. They are simply starting points for offshoots of the agenda.<\/p>\n So if Tribe, law professor at Harvard, comes out and suggests that we raise the age to 25 in order to be able to buy a rifle, well, what other constitutional right should we put an age restriction on? Free speech? You have to wait \u2019til you\u2019re 25 or 30 to engage in free speech, \u2019til it\u2019s judged you know what you\u2019re talking about? How about the Fourth Amendment, protection from searches? What about an age restriction on that?<\/p>\n How about an age restriction on abortions? How about this? How about if we make a trade? Since we\u2019re talking about the killing of children here, how about we come up with some deal where we agree to put restrictions on certain kinds of guns for new restrictions on abortion? How do you think that would fly? Not very far, ladies and gentlemen.<\/p>\n BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n RUSH: Looky here. This is a story. This is from Fox News. “Florida School Shooting Survivor: Media Using Tragedy to Push Gun Control <\/a>— Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior, Brandon Minoff, said he\u2019s upset about the media\u2019s coverage of the mass shooting… A survivor … previously interviewed by CNN and MSNBC following the mass shooting, told Fox News he believes certain media outlets are politicizing the tragedy to push gun control.” He\u2019s an 18-year-old senior — and, of course, he\u2019s a one-off.<\/p>\n “On Sunday, [Sheriff] Jones tweeted that he would be offering free concealed carry classes to teachers in the Butler County. He also hinted at offering training directly pertaining to stopping an ongoing shooting situation.” Fifty slots. He had 50 people he was gonna teach, and they were filled within 20 minutes with all kinds of people who wanted the opportunity to learn concealed carry and how to stop one of these events. So you see, it\u2019s not as one-sided as the media would have you believe out there.<\/p>\n BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n RUSH: We went back and found the transcript and the audio from last Friday on this program talking about the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students. Of course this, I guess, was not noteworthy to those who now wish to link me to this absurdity that the students are a bunch of actors hired by the Democrat Party. Now, the Democrat Party does that. The American left does that.<\/p>\n I mean, many of the actors in Ferguson — many of the protesters there — were rent-a-mobs. I mean, it\u2019s widely known. It\u2019s not even disputed. I mean, Robert Creamer — working with Obama and Hillary — hired people to show up and protest at Donald Trump rallies during the campaign. But I never said any of that was going on with these students. In fact, it was quite the opposite. This was Friday afternoon last week…<\/a><\/p>\n BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n RUSH: I want to go back to the students, Addison Jost, and unfortunately I didn\u2019t catch any other names. I don\u2019t mean to single her out. But she was amazingly composed and obviously intelligent. Emotionally intact. She\u2019s what TV would call a great interview. She presented well. It was amazing. I\u2019m looking at a 17 year old, I think, I\u2019m not sure. I\u2019m not sure what grade. But 17, 18, 16. It was… I\u2019m not around people that age much, and so I was remarkably impressed.<\/p>\n There was a prayer vigil last night. We have some audio sound bites of it coming up. One of the spokesmen is Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz and this district is close by. She showed up and tried to turn that prayer vigil last night into the Wellstone Memorial. She started hammering Republicans and started demanding that the kids and attendees vote Democrat — in the middle of a prayer vigil, just like the Wellstone Memorial.<\/p>\n What did the kids do? The students there started chanting, right in the middle of “Blabbermouth” Schultz diatribe: “No more guns! No more guns!” It\u2019s totally understandable the students want no more guns. They were just targeted. Seventeen of their classmates are dead. They\u2019re devastated. Their world has been turned upside down. They\u2019re scared and they\u2019re unsure and, of course, they want something done. Makes total sense.<\/p>\n END ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n RUSH: No one reported any of that on Friday night or on Saturday or Sunday or Monday or yesterday. Nope! Instead, it is made up that I somehow am leading this movement or am one of the most prominent people saying that the kids are actors and that they\u2019re not really students at the school. As I say, I didn\u2019t even know that somebody had alleged that — this staffer for the Florida legislator — \u2019til I used to doing show prep today. So we have posted that.<\/p>\n It\u2019s on the free side, so if you\u2019re using the RushLimbaugh.com app, you\u2019ll be able to share that transcript with anybody who you run into who thinks that I\u2019m insulting the students and calling them actors and so forth. The audio and the transcript are both available now, the website and the app, and they are on the free side.<\/p>\n Now, the students from the high school went to Tallahassee. They\u2019re there in Tallahassee, and they are participating. They\u2019re actually at a rally now. In fact, our microphones are there. And we can JIP a little bit of this. The students are following each other to the microphone and offering their thoughts on it. Let\u2019s listen to a little bit of it just to give you a flavor for it.<\/p>\n CALDERON: We know. We are old enough to understand financial responsibilities. We\u2019re old enough to understand why a senator cares about reelection or not. We are old enough to understand why someone might want to discredit us for their own political purposes, but we will not be silenced. It has gone on long enough that we… Just because we are kids, we are not allowed to understand. But trust me, I understand.<\/p>\n I was in a closet, locked, for four hours with people who I would consider almost family, crying and weeping on me, begging for their lives. I understand what it\u2019s like to text my parents, “Good-bye. I might never, ever get to see you again. I love you.” I understand what it\u2019s like to fear for your life, and I don\u2019t think we should ever be discredited because of that. I don\u2019t think we should ever be silenced because we are just children.<\/p>\n CROWD: (applause)<\/p>\n CALDERON: This is everybody in America. This is for every single kid who fears for their life. This is more than Parkland. This is more than Florida. This is more than the United States. This is something serious. It is about human lives. Please, I beg, and I demand that every single person in power who has the ability to change the fear that kids feel going back to school, that they do something. Because I want everybody to know: I\u2019m supposed to be going back to school — back to school in less than a week, and I\u2019m not ready.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think anybody here is ready. I don\u2019t think anybody here is ready to go back to class and just have an empty seat, and you know that that empty seat is because — \u2019cause someone\u2019s — c\u2019ause someone\u2019s dead, because it somebody lost their lives. And I don\u2019t know how I\u2019m gonna cope with it. I\u2019ve spoken to grief counselors, but grief counselors can only do so much. What we need is action. And we need it now, more than ever, because people are losing their lives, and it is still not being taken seriously.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what it\u2019s gonna take. I don\u2019t know what it\u2019s gonna take to get some people to realize, this is more than just reelections. This is more than just political gain. This is more than conspiracy theories and people trying to disqualify us from even having an opinion. This matters to me more than anything else in my entire life, and I want everybody to know: I personally, I\u2019m prepared to drop out of school. I am prepared to not worry about anything else besides this, because change might not come together.<\/p>\n It might not come tomorrow. It might not even come March 24th when we March for our lives down in Washington. But it\u2019s going to happen, and it\u2019s going to happen before — in my lifetime because I will fight every single day — and I know everyone here will fight for the rest of their lives — to see sensible gun laws in this country and so kids don\u2019t have to fear going back to school. Thank you.<\/p>\n CROWD: (applause)<\/p>\n RUSH: That was Alfonso Calderon. That\u2019s the name of that student.<\/p>\n CALDERON: Next, I\u2019d like to introduce —<\/p>\n RUSH: We\u2019ll get one more here before we have to go to the break. Is this political or not? What do you think?<\/p>\n CHADWICK: Hello, everyone. My name is Sarah Chadwick and I\u2019m a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. MSD is not only my school, but my home, and on February 14th, 2018, an intruder broke into my home and robbed 17 innocent souls of a chance to impact the world. These outstanding and compassionate evils left us too soon due to the lack of gun control in our state and country. This atrocious act not only broke the hearts of our community, but broke the hearts of the entire world. We cry, we mourn, and most importantly we ask why.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been asking that question a lot lately. I haven\u2019t gotten an answer that has satisfied me. So we came up with a solution to the answer that we would have never gotten. And it has a name: Never Again. Because never again should a child be afraid to go to school can be. Never again should students have to protest for their lives. Never again should a student\u2019s life be taken or to get an education, and never again should I feel guilty to be alive because Peter, Carmen, Scott, Feis, Hixon, Meadow, Jaime, Alyssa, Joaquin, Helena, Nick, Alaina, Cara, Martin, Luke, Gina, and Alex are not. That is why we have organized this revolution, for them, a revolution crated by students for students. Because at the end of the day, we\u2019re all positive, we\u2019re all passionate, and we\u2019re all proud to be an Eagle. Thank you.<\/p>\n CROWD: (applause)<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not why this event happened. The FBI let this shooter slip through their hands how many times? Thirty-nine different visits, 32 different substantive warnings. Expelled from school. The kid, the shooter exhibited signs of this kind of behavior for a long time. And there are a lot of people who could be questioned about why something wasn\u2019t done about him, why something wasn\u2019t done with him. But they are in Tallahassee protesting at the Florida legislator. On March 24th they\u2019re gonna go to Washington, where they are going to protest the United States government over this.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/APP-022018-Kids-hate-guns.jpg\")
<\/a>And I made the point that I could not believe how mature and composed<\/a> — this particular student\u2019s name was Addison Jost, and I don\u2019t know if she\u2019s a junior or senior, but I saw her being interviewed and she was epitome of composed and poised. And I had made supportive comment after supportive comment talking about the trauma these kids were experiencing, the shock, they\u2019d been shot at and so forth. And I noted how impressed I was with their maturity and their ability to speak off the cuff in answering questions that dealt with the emotions they were facing.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/FoxNewsSundayRush021818.jpg\")
<\/a>RUSH: And that is exactly how it happens. The fact that I said the same thing last Thursday and Friday. The fact that I have been totally supportive of the students and then when they make their political move, I, El Rushbo, comment on it. And when their move is then categorized or described as not being political, I comment on it. But at no time has there been any personal criticism that is lying, made up, or unfair here. I have simply described what I\u2019m seeing.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/APP-021918-Rush-Constitution-xx.jpg\")
So I didn\u2019t know any of this \u2019til I got the sound bite roster 10 minutes before the program started. I didn\u2019t know that I was being blamed for starting this whole business that the students are actors. I\u2019m not denying… In fact, I will stand by my observation that we are looking at the Democrat Party\u2019s way of advocating for an issue in these student protests. There\u2019s no denying this — and the fact that the media wants to try to deflect that and to distort that tells me that they are, in fact, trying to hide this for what it is and present it as something other than what it is.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/APP-021518-Florida-Shooting-00B-1.jpg\")
My point is, there are all kinds of these students out there. They\u2019re not gonna be found. They\u2019re not gonna be highlighted. So you see, it is not just me, ladies and gentlemen. There are all kinds of responsible, smart people that think this — and then there\u2019s this in Ohio. “County Sheriff Richard Jones has a novel solution for preventing the next school shooting<\/a>, and it involves putting guns directly in teachers\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/0Rush-Take.jpg\")
<\/a>Some others have been so overcome with emotion that they can\u2019t get through these interviews without breaking down or nearly breaking down. All of this is entirely understandable. They\u2019re kids. They\u2019ve been traumatized. They were there. They were the targets. And so whatever they say, you have to keep all of that in mind. But that\u2019s not how the media is using them. The media is using these students to advance the media\u2019s radical agenda. I\u2019ll give you an example of what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/APP-021918-Fox-Sunday-PARKLAND-kids-1.jpg\")
I feel that that is powerful, and it is one of the only reasons this movement is where it is right now. I am extremely, extremely angry and sad. And I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m going to be traumatized because of this. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m gonna have faith in my state and local government anymore, because what I saw today was discouraging. But I want everybody here today to know we will not be discouraged. We will not falter. We will not stop this movement, because this is more than just us.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/APP-022118-Student-Protest-Parkland-Florida-1.jpg\")
RUSH: And that was Sarah Chadwick. The students are participating in a rally at Tallahassee today, voicing their concerns over the lack of action. Now, may I say something here? Where are they? They are at the state capitol in Florida, which is Tallahassee. So they have decided, which a lot of people do, that to fix things they think are wrong, they\u2019ve gotta go to where politicians are, where laws are made.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/APP-021518-Florida-Court-1.jpg\")
The students remain in shock, and you can hear it when they speak, you can hear their fear, their anger, and it\u2019s real. Imagine going back into that school on the first day back, and there will be empty chairs in the classrooms. They\u2019ll never forget this. Not that they should, but they never will. And when something traumatic has happened to you, it\u2019s possibility of happening again is very real. All it takes is one time.<\/p>\n