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CALLER: A dog has fleas and it\u2019s Trump\u2019s fault. You know, sooner or later… This is really becoming apparent of what the left is all about going forward, and I\u2019m just curious to see how, you know, the campaigns on the left are gonna use this, you know, like Elizabeth Warren seems to use things to her advantage. I\u2019m thinking this is gonna really, you know, expose \u2019em for what they are. I\u2019d also like to know about the Booker-Harris connection to certain phone calls that are — How would you say? — not being released. That would be really interesting — and thanks for taking my call, Mr. Limbaugh.<\/p>\n
RUSH: You bet. You talk about Booker and Harris and their anti-lynching law. I didn\u2019t know that lynching was still legal, did you? Is lynching still legal? Why do we need an anti-lynching law? I thought it\u2019s been illegal for like a couple hundred years. Maybe people have forgotten. You know, look, I understand. Folks, I understand how you\u2019re curious about how the Democrats are gonna use this, and I can give you any number of wild guesses as to how they will try to turn things like this in their favor.<\/p>\n
My guess is this one, they\u2019re gonna try to forget — and we\u2019re still two years away. There\u2019s so much that\u2019s gonna happen that we can\u2019t predict, that this is gonna fade away to nothing. It\u2019s gonna fade away to nothing so deeply that even using it as a reminder… I mean, if you try to dredge up the Trayvon Martin story today, do you think you could convince one person not to vote Democrat by using it?<\/p>\n
“I heard about that before. Yeah, I remember Trayvon Martin. I remember that. Wasn\u2019t that Obama\u2019s son? Wasn\u2019t that what he said? Yeah, yeah, yeah.”<\/p>\n
Ancient history. People forget. Not persuasive.<\/p>\n
The question for me always comes down to: Is our side going to be ready for whatever they do? Is our side? From the Trump campaign to other Republicans and conservatives running for office to campaign strategerists and consultants, is our side going to be ready for whatever they do on the left? That\u2019s the question, isn\u2019t it? How many Never Trumpers are gonna rejoin the effort? I don\u2019t think any! I know the Never Trumpers are gonna stay joined with the Democrats to try to get rid of Trump in 2020.<\/p>\n
I think there\u2019s still plenty of dummkopfs on our side who do not see any of this that\u2019s happening as a genuine crisis facing America, and so my question always is: Is our side going to be ready? Let me put it to you this way. You know, Donald Trump every day — every day, multiple times a day — tweets and pushes back against all the lies, all the garbage, all the drivel that the media pumps out, that the Democrats pump out.<\/p>\n
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He\u2019s the only one who does. What if Trump\u2019s not around? What if there is no Trump? Who\u2019s gonna do this? Don\u2019t say me, because conservative media\u2019s been doing it for years and years and years, but we\u2019re not running for office, and we\u2019re not in office. We\u2019re not covered as though we\u2019re running the country. Of course, I am now. But still. Who\u2019s gonna carry that mantle?<\/p>\n
Will our side be ready for what they do? There\u2019s gonna be ballot harvesting. We heard a little bit about that. That\u2019s how the Democrats actually won five Republican districts in Orange County, with ballot harvesting. Are we going to be ready for everything they do? And everything they do… You know, trying to figure that out, like, how will they use this? That\u2019s all part of actually determining how we are gonna be ready for it.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: So what will the Democrats do? How will they use this in 2020? Folks, have you ever heard of the governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam? Have you ever heard of him? Justin Fairfax, the lieutenant governor? Have you ever heard of him? They\u2019ll bury it. They\u2019ll forget about it. “Jussie who? Ah, I don\u2019t know who you\u2019re talking about. Ralph Northam? What did he do? I haven\u2019t seen the media talk about Ralph Northam. What? What? What? I forget what that was.”<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what\u2019s gonna happen here.<\/p>\n
Jussie Smollett will cease to exist for a while, as will this sordid tale.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Here is Bill in Conover, North Carolina. Great to have you, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Maha Rushie. Thank you for taking my call, sir. My comment is this whole Smollett thing is obviously such a clumsy attempt on his part to cover up his racism. He assumes that because he\u2019s a black man and the sheriff\u2019s superintendent or whatever is a black man, that nobody\u2019s gonna take the investigation seriously.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Do you think he was aware that the police superintendent of Chicago — African-American. You think it was a factor in his decision to do this?<\/p>\n
CALLER: I believe so, yes. I believe totally.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, could be.<\/p>\n
CALLER: That\u2019s just how arrogant they are.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/NY-Post-SMOLLETT.jpg\")
RUSH: Well, I don\u2019t dispute that. I have — it\u2019s not that different a theory. But it goes something like this. If you look at what the police superintendent said Smollett was after, he wanted a raise. He wanted more money, and he wanted more camera time. He wanted more scenes on the show. He had sent a letter calling him a black slang term for a gay person with crushed aspirin in there that\u2019s supposed to look like a poisonous substance. That didn\u2019t get anybody\u2019s attention on the show. The show didn\u2019t publicize it. The show didn\u2019t use it to promote him. “Man, this guy must be hot, hate mail like that.” That\u2019s what that was designed to do, and it failed. The show didn\u2019t do anything with it. They didn\u2019t call the media, nothing, so he got ticked off. And he said, “Okay, I gotta pull out all the stops here.”<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think that Jussie Smollett ever thought that anybody would doubt him because of the way he watches and consumes news. He has seen the people in Ferguson get away with it, people in Baltimore get away with it… He knows the media is gonna soak it all up. They\u2019re gonna believe everything. He doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s gonna go far. He thinks the show is gonna feel so sorry, and he thinks the show, the people that produce the show, Empire, are gonna be so dazzled and impressed that they\u2019ve got a bigger star on their hands than they ever knew, that he\u2019s gonna get his money and he\u2019s gonna get more scenes.<\/p>\n
He never thought that the cops would actually pursue this. Or maybe he did. And maybe he thought he\u2019d get away with it. It\u2019s hard to tell. But the thing that argues for the fact that he really, really intended this to happen was that he attempted to find a camera, a community TV camera where this attack would be on video.<\/p>\n
And I have to remind everybody again, if he had succeeded at that, if there had been, before today\u2019s press conference by the police superintendent in Chicago, if there had been video that was on a continuous loop on every cable network for the past four days of this guy getting beat up by these two guys wearing MAGA hats, can you imagine the further damage that might have happened and occurred all over this country in reaction to that?<\/p>\n
We really dodged a bullet that this guy chose a camera that was not aimed right. Or maybe he did choose the camera that was aimed right, that wasn\u2019t gonna videotape this, because maybe he didn\u2019t expect anybody to doubt him. Maybe he didn\u2019t think — look. The guy\u2019s a kid. He obviously, I don\u2019t believe, thought that anybody would take it as far as they did. He wasn\u2019t thinking it through that way. He was simply seeing his objective of getting a raise and a more prominent role on the TV show. And this was simply a way to raise his profile. It was a signal, it was a way to tell the producers that he\u2019s much bigger on this show than they think.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t Terrence Howard that got attacked. It wasn\u2019t Taraji P. Henson. It wasn\u2019t any of the other actors. It was Jussie. This has “notice me” all over it. But I think there is an element of he thought he\u2019d get away with it because he\u2019s African-American, gay, and Democrat.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Let\u2019s stick with the phones. Rochester, Michigan. Mike, you\u2019re next. Hello, sir.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Hey, I have a question and a comment. And I\u2019d like to get your commentary on it.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Certainly. Certainly.<\/p>\n
CALLER: My question is, how long do you think it might be before Democratic ties to this whole Smollett hoax are uncovered? To me, \u201cI wanted a raise,\u201d sounds completely spurious. It reminds me of the Benghazi video excuse. I think \u201cI wanted a raise” is a sham and a misdirection. To me this thing that he did I believe to be an actual hate crime against President Trump. They put on MAGA hats, clearly giving their message of who they\u2019re going after, and they committed a hate crime against the president. I\u2019d like to see them prosecuted for a hate crime.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/APP-011419-MAGA-hat.jpg\")
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RUSH: I\u2019m glad you mentioned that, because I observed yesterday, if we\u2019re talking about hate crimes, how many of them are there every week that are aimed at Donald Trump? I mean, how much of the media coverage aimed at Trump is actually a hate crime based on the way the left has defined hate crimes and set them up? I think you\u2019re right about this business. I think the raise is a way of avoiding a more serious charge or prosecution. So I agree with you about that.<\/p>\n
But it will be interesting to see what he is charged with. We only know I think of one charge and that\u2019s filing a false police report. But, you know, this guy, he scratched his own face. He defaced himself. That is a crime. You know what else is a crime? That letter. That letter. He used the postal service. That is mail fraud. Do you know what the penalty for that is? That\u2019s five to 10 years. That\u2019s a federal crime.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if the Robert Mueller investigation will take time to charge Jussie Smollett — I\u2019m making a joke — but he is in violation of a serious federal statute here by using the postal service to conduct fraud. And he\u2019s admitted he wants a raise, so he\u2019s doing this for money. That has an extensive jail time component to it, five to 10 years.<\/p>\n
This guy, if he\u2019s fully charged with everything that he did, could be looking at a long time in jail. Therefore, the claim that he just wanted a raise, I think you\u2019re probably right, try to reduce the perception of the seriousness of what he was involved in.<\/p>\n
Kelly in Broward County in Florida thinks the same thing. How are you doing? Welcome.<\/p>\n
CALLER: I\u2019m great. Thanks, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. Great honor, been listening my whole life since my dad picked me up with you when I was in high school, probably when you first started in the eighties. And I\u2019ve been listening ever since.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, I appreciate you, you\u2019re a lifer, and I can\u2019t ask for more than that. Thank you.<\/p>\n
CALLER: The previous caller took my point exactly that I don\u2019t buy his motivation being he wanted a raise. It\u2019s pretty lame. I think that\u2019s something they came up with in the couple of days that they hid from the police. I think that just like you said, it\u2019s an avoidance for being charged with a hate crime. Because if you look at his Twitter account he was totally raging against Trump.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Yeah. You know what else? He also has a record. I think there is lying to cops in a DUI investigation —<\/p>\n
CALLER: I think I read that he told them he was his younger brother, so he lied about who he was.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Right. He\u2019s got a record of lying to the cops. He\u2019s not an innocent young thang out there who just been caught up in the rigors of the political system. He\u2019s a player and he\u2019s very active here. Do you think that he was actually engaging with intent in a hate crime? Do you think this was actually aimed, not at raising his profile on the TV show, but actually aimed at damaging Trump?<\/p>\n
CALLER: I think it\u2019s both. I think he, you know, wanted to raise his profile as well as do as much damage as he could.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Okay.<\/p>\n
CALLER: On a bigger scale —<\/p>\n
RUSH: Let\u2019s go back to the previous caller that you say stole some of your thunder. If that\u2019s true, if the part of this that he really was targeting Trump to do damage to Trump, then are there, as yet undiscovered, links to the Democrat Party in this?<\/p>\n
CALLER: Oh, I don\u2019t know about that. I think it was so poorly executed. It didn\u2019t seem very smart, so I don\u2019t even know that there\u2019s any real brains behind it. Not that there are really any brains in that political party to begin with. But I think that if there were bigger honchos behind it, it would have been a little bit more smartly executed.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/APP-022119-Smollett-Mug-Shot.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, it\u2019s obvious that he was confident he would not be closely examined. He paid his collaborators with a check. I mean, that\u2019s like paying a prostitute with a check. You\u2019re waiting to be discovered. I don\u2019t think he had any frontal fear that he was going to be exposed here. What it was, he lied about how he was in a DUI. He signed a false name to his ticket and summons, and he got two years probation and a fine. That is the previous offense. So he\u2019s got a record. He\u2019s got a track record. He has a behavioral pattern here. I appreciate the call, Kelly. Thank you.<\/p>\n
Nancy\u2019s next in Greenville, South Carolina. Hi.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Hello, Rush.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Yeah, hi. How are you?<\/p>\n
CALLER: Good. How are you? I have a problem wrong with calling him a kid. He\u2019s 36 years old. Why do we continue to call 36-year-olds children?<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, because they are in this day and age. But I get your point. He looks like a kid on TV. He looks young. But 36-year-olds today, many of them still live at home. They\u2019re treated like kids. I\u2019m not trying to sabotage your point. Your point is that calling him a kid is another level of excusing the behavior.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Exactly.<\/p>\n
RUSH: That\u2019s unwarranted.<\/p>\n
CALLER: It\u2019s exhausting. I have a brother that\u2019s 54 and continues to treat himself as a child. We have got to stop treating these people as children and as adults.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, he clearly — you know, whatever else he was doing, I still believe — I\u2019m not discounting this hate crime business. In fact, I\u2019m gonna predict something to you here, that after the media and these celebrities and these presidential candidates collect themselves — remember, this police superintendent has just ripped them a new one and plastered them up one wall and down the other for falling for this thing. He has embarrassed them and chastised them. So now they\u2019re in the process of regrouping, and they\u2019ve gotta come up with a way of, quote, unquote, credibly justifying their rush to judgment on this.<\/p>\n
And I can pretty much tell you what it\u2019s gonna be. “In this climate created by Donald Trump \u2013” and they\u2019ll talk about what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, when Donald Trump refused to criticize a bunch of white racists in that whole confab there, Donald Trump has created this atmosphere where people are so enraged, and they are so out of sorts and they\u2019re acting so abnormally, that we\u2019ve got to do something about Donald Trump. Maxine Waters has already laid the groundwork for this one.<\/p>\n
So it won\u2019t be long before, “Poor Jussie! He just got caught up like we all are in the damage Donald Trump is doing to blacks and homosexuals and transgenders,” and you go down the list of the favored victims of the Democrat Party and all the damage Trump is causing, “and some of them are just losing their minds temporarily, and some of them are just losing self-control — and it\u2019s unfortunate. But this is another reason why we must get rid of Donald Trump.”<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/APP-112118-ZZ-App-RUSH-FLAG.jpg\")
This is the way this is gonna happen. They\u2019ll find ways to try to rehab Smollett or at least lessen the damage, because, look, if it\u2019s left to stand as it is, Smollett has spread the damage all over the American left and the Democrat Party. They have to try to limit that. It\u2019s no different than when Dan Rather got caught making up the story about George W. Bush and the National Guard in Texas. Well, when the story was exposed as entirely made up, what happened?<\/p>\n
Leading anchors Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings created a new journalism award to present to Dan Rather at a massive gala dinner in New York, because they had to circle the wagons to save “the news.” They had to save “journalism.” They couldn\u2019t let what Rather did — the stink of what Rather did — attach itself to them, and the only way to do that was to counter all this by acting like Rather didn\u2019t do anything wrong.<\/p>\n
In fact, Rather was so courageous and so great, he lost his job for the cause, and we need to give him a brand-new award. Now, not predicting they\u2019ll do that with Smollett, but they have to cover their tracks. They have to somehow keep this from attaching itself to them going forward, and the way to do that is to find numerous ways of blaming Trump for it — and once those strategies are developed, then the media will take over and start running the narrative for as long as it takes to create that narrative as the dominant narrative in the minds of the news-consuming public.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Jussie Smollett. Do you know that he is half white? It doesn\u2019t matter to me. I\u2019m just telling you. He\u2019s half white. His father was Jewish from Russia. So Smollett is a black Russian. So where is the outrage at Russians meddling in our crime in Chicago? Hmm?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: There are some people who are livid at this Smollett business and I gather some who might even disagree with me a little bit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":279205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n