RUSH: It’s time now, ladies and gentlemen, as promised for an amazing series of sound bites here from Friday afternoon on CNN featuring the wife of the vice president, Lynne Cheney. To get this started, we need to go back to Fargo, North Dakota. <a target=new href=”http://www.wday.com/hottalk”>Scott Hennen</a>, the anchor at WDAY in Fargo, and I have appeared with Mr. Hennen when I did a Rush to Excellence Tour. I’ve been out there. He’s probably… There aren’t very many people been in radio in one place as long as Scott Hennen has, and he was interviewing Vice President Cheney, and he said, “Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?”
CHENEY: Well, it’s a no-brainer for me, but I — for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.
RUSH: So let’s cut forward to CNN on Friday, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer interviewing Lynne Cheney. He played that sound bite that you just heard and says there’s been interpretation to this effect, that he was in effect confirming that the United States uses this water boding, this technique that has been rejected by the international community that simulates a prisoner being drowned, if you will, and he was in fact supposedly confirming that the US has been using water boarding.
LYNNE CHENEY: It’s a complete distortion. He didn’t say anything of the kind. It’s kind of the point of a lot of people right now to try to distort the administration’s position, and if you really want to talk about that, I watched the program on CNN last night which I thought it’s your 2006 voter program, which I thought was a terrible distortion of both the president and the vice president’s position on many issues. It seemed almost straight out of Democratic talking points using phrases like domestic surveillance, when it is not domestic surveillance that anyone has talked about or ever done, it’s surveillance of terrorists, it’s people who have Al-Qaeda connections calling into the United States. So I think we’re in the season of distortion, and this is just one more.
RUSH: And it was a big — he didn’t talk about water boding, he didn’t confirm it, but the press acted like hyenas and it was a feeding frenzy on Friday with the Tony Snow press conference, the press briefing at the White House, and she’s exactly right. The mischaracterization is contemptible, the mischaracterization of the foreign surveillance act as domestic spying. It is purposeful and it is contemptible. They have attempted to create in the minds of as many Americans as possible that the administration is just a bunch of voyeurs and they’re listening in on your secret phone conversations as you arrange a date to the Playboy party, or whatever else you’re doing. Your lives are not that exciting Democrats, contrary to what you might think, but regardless, it’s a total misstatement, and she has called ’em on it, and CNN knows this. They know it like anybody else knows it, but they use the term domestic spying, domestic surveillance as a means of frightening the American people. So while the ACLU may pull back on their Patriot Act lawsuit because the American people do not think according to a CNN poll, by the way, that their national security, their civil rights are threatened because of the national security policies of this administration, doesn’t matter. CNN, despite their own poll, moving forward in their attempt to mislabel and mislead their viewers as to what’s at stake. Wolf as a follow-up said, “You’re referring to the CNN ‘Broken Government’ special, Mrs. Cheney?”
LYNNE CHENEY: Right there, Wolf, ‘broken government’. Now, what kind of stance is that? Here we are, we’re a country where we have been mightily challenged over the past six years. We’ve been through 9/11, we’ve been through Katrina, the president and the vice president inherited a recession. We’re a country where the economy is healthy. That’s not broken. This government has acted very well. We’ve had tax cuts that are responsible for our healthy economy. We’re a country that was attacked five years ago. We haven’t been attacked since. What this government has done is effective. That’s not broken government.
RUSH: By the way, Mrs. Cheney at one point said, you know, Wolf you asked me in here to talk about my book, and for ten minutes we’ve been talking about Jim Webb’s book and you’ve been mislabeling and misreporting what’s in my book, and she says, “Can we talk about my book?” and Wolf says, “Okay, we’ll talk about your book.”
LYNNE CHENEY: Right. But what is CNN doing, running terrorist tape of terrorists shooting Americans. I mean, I thought Duncan Hunter asked you a very good question and you didn’t answer it. Do you want us to win?
BLITZER: The answer of course is we want the United States to win. We are Americans. There’s no doubt about it about that. You think we want —
LYNNE CHENEY: Then why are you running terrorist propaganda?
BLITZER: With all due with respect, this is not terrorist propaganda. This is reporting the news, which is what we do. We’re not partisan —
LYNNE CHENEY: Where did you get the film?
BLITZER: We got the film — look, this is an issue that has been widely discussed. This is an issue that we reported on extensively. We make no apologies for showing that. That was a very carefully considered decision why we did that, and I think, and I think —
LYNNE CHENEY: I think it’s shocking.
BLITZER: — if you’re a serious journalist, you want to report the news. Sometimes the news is good, sometimes the news isn’t so good —
LYNNE CHENEY: But, Wolf, there’s a difference between news and terrorist propaganda. Why are —
BLITZER: Put it in context.
LYNNE CHENEY: Why do you give the terrorists the floor?
RUSH: Why do you give the terrorists the floor. Note he wouldn’t answer where they got the tape. He wouldn’t answer her question, where you got the film. “Oh, we’ve talked about this. It’s been extensively reported where we got it.” We’ll tell you how they got the tape. They sent an e-mail to terrorist leaders in Iraq. They have admitted this. AmericanSpectator.org had the story last week. CNN insiders admit, yes, they send e-mails out, and in order to get such tape of terrorists and their snipers shooting to kill and succeeding American servicemen in Iraq, CNN says, “We’ll give you a fair shake.”
Now, they think, or they would have us believe that this is honest and fair reporting of the news. They didn’t “get” the film. CNN didn’t go out and have their cameras shoot the video. There was no “journalism” here. There was an outreach to terrorists, the terrorists responded after being assured they’d get a fair shake, CNN runs it, under the guise of the people need to know the truth of what’s happening in Iraq. It was repugnant and it was despicable, and Mrs. Cheney called him on it and asked him again, do you want us to win? And this is the first time I have heard a CNN journalist say yes, we want the United States to win.
Mostly they avoid the question. “Well, I can’t choose sides. Why, that would compromise my precious principles as a distinguished journalist. I can’t answer that. Yeah, we want the terrorists, we want Americans to win. There’s no doubt about that. Do you think we want terrorists to win, or we want Americans to win? We want terrorists to win?” Yes, some of us ask that question. Some of us are not sure that we’re getting the right answer here. You have a track record. CNN has a track record. Bernard Shaw, the first Gulf War would not allow himself to be debriefed by the CIA or the military on what he had seen in the al-Rashid Hotel. Eason Jordan writing his op-ed in the New York Times in which he admitted CNN suppressed the news of atrocities committed by the Saddam Hussein regime in order to not have their bureau closed and shuttered and kicked out of Baghdad. There’s a track record for CNN here, and there’s a track record for much of the Drive-By Media that does raise questions about where their loyalties lie.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ve just got a couple more sound bites, a couple more sound bites from Wolf Blitzer talking to Lynne Cheney Friday, late Friday afternoon on the Situation Room on CNN. He says, “This is in the news today. Your name has come up, so that’s why we’re talking about it.” But listen to this.
WEBB: There’s nothing to spin in any of my novels that in my view hasn’t been either been illuminating surroundings or defining the character or moving a plot. I’m a serious writer. I mean, we can go and read Lynne Cheney’s lesbian love scenes if you want to, you know, get graphic on stuff.
LYNNE CHENEY: Jim Webb is full of baloney. I have never written anything sexually explicit. His novels are full of sexually explicit references to incest.
RUSH: Exactly right. There is a huge difference between love scenes and incest and perversion, the kind of despicable, twisted sick stuff that appears in all of Jim Webb’s novels — and you do have to wonder. If I were a female voter in the state of Virginia, and I had heard about the writings of Jim Webb, and I have not read any of his books, I would certainly be curious what kind of thoughts permeate this man’s mind. These are the kind of things that would hit me as a huge shock and a big surprise, and I’d start comparing things. Yeah, I hear George Allen, why, he’s Macaca, and the confederate flag, and the Washington Post became the official campaign headquarters for the Jim Webb campaign and spent weeks trying to destroy and ruin George Allen, which is what the left does — not just defeat, destroy and ruin.
By the way, the race in Maryland, I have to observe this, the race in Maryland between Michael Steele and Ben Cardin, and that was some debate yesterday on Meet the Depressed, and we have audio sound bites there. Steele cleaned his clock, and the Washington Post today has one of the most misleading reviews of this debate, don’t recall the headline, but it’s outrageous. But apparently the Washington Post campaign headquarters have shifted resources from the Webb campaign in Virginia over to Maryland because it’s getting too tight. This guy, Steele, neck and neck, and he cleaned Cardin’s clock in this debate on Meet the Press yesterday.
This is a two to one Democrat voter registration blue state, and Steele is pulling even, had a great ad responding to this now disgraced and ineffective ad from Michael J. Fox on stem cells. Fox yesterday, by the way, on ABC admitted he hasn’t even read Amendment 2 in Missouri. The pro-cloning constitutional amendment for the state of Missouri, said he hadn’t even read it, yet he’s out there doing commercials for it. Now, that was an interesting turn of events, so now they have to go out and sandbag Lynne Cheney’s appearance, sandbag her with what James Webb thinks of her and what her books are as a means of deflecting attention from what he has written. The conversation between Wolf and Lynne Cheney continued.
LYNNE CHENEY: I did write a book entitled —
BLITZER: It did have lesbian —
LYNNE CHENEY: — descriptions — no, not necessarily. This description is a lie. I’ll stand on that.
BLITZER: There’s nothing in there about rapes and brothels —
LYNNE CHENEY: Wolf, Wolf, Wolf, could we talk about a children’s book for a minute?
BLITZER: We can talk —
LYNNE CHENEY: I think the segment is like 15 minutes long, and now we have ten minutes —
BLITZER: I just wanted to clarify what’s in the news today —
LYNNE CHENEY: Sex, lies, and distortion, that’s what it is.
RUSH: “Sex, lies, and distortion” are what’s in the news, and CNN promoted all of it and attempted to sandbag Ms. Cheney. I have to tell you something. As a viewer watching this, I’m sitting in the chair and I am cheering this. This is the kind of reaction and response that is called for all the time when these kinds of personal assaults and attacks and contemptible misrepresentations are made about people, but too many on our side just sit back and take it, and they don’t respond, they’re afraid of responding for ginning the whole situation up even further — and Mrs. Cheney went out and adequately defended her husband, more so than adequately, appropriately did so, and then perfectly blew up the whole premise of CNN’s broken government show by explaining that government isn’t “broken,” and she gave rhyme and reason why it’s not broken, and in fact why it’s working extremely well.
But this whole show, Broken Government, is a classic illustration of an agenda oriented news department and newsroom at CNN that’s designed to further the action line of a Democrat campaign talking point, and that is everything’s going to hell in a hand basket. The Bush administration’s destroyed a great economy, they’ve destroyed peace and tranquility, they’ve destroyed opportunity, they’ve destroyed everything, nobody is happy, everybody’s miserable, it’s Bush’s fault, it’s the administration’s fault, and Mrs. Cheney is one of the few to fire back. I admire that. There’s nothing wrong, when confronted personally like this with lies and distortions about your husband and about yourself and about your husband’s administration in which he works, there’s nothing at all wrong with nuking and blowing all of this stuff out of the water. There’s a fear that, “Oh, no! I’m going to look mean. I’m going to look disrespectful.”
Americans want facts, and more than that, the Republican base wants a little fight from their people.
RUSH: Looky here, folks. I’m holding here in my nicotine-stained fingers a CNN story: “Lynne Cheney Novel Churns Controversy in Senate Race — Lynne Cheney, deflecting talk of the sexual content in her novel Sisters, a 25-year-old book that resurfaced in a campaign Friday and is stirring up controversy.” Really? It resurfaced in a campaign? Wonder how that happened? “The novel, featuring a lesbian love affair [supposedly] was brought up Friday amid a contentious Senate race in Virginia. Soon a Democratic committee and Cheney herself in an interview on CNN were weighing in.” Of course, if the Democrat committee hadn’t weighed in CNN wouldn’t know anything about it.
CNN apparently waits for talking points to be e-mailed or faxed from a Democrat Senate campaign committee or a Congressional Campaign Committee, MoveOn.org, who the hell knows. All this is, folks, is payback for Mrs. Cheney kicking Wolf Blitzer around on Friday. All this stuff about her novels came out during the 2000 campaign, and nobody gave a rat’s rear end about it. Furthermore, she’s not running for the Senate. In fact, she’s not running for anything. I don’t care what they can dig up from what Lynne Cheney has written, there is no comparison to the literal, tawdry, sick stuff that permeates a Jim Webb novel. There’s no comparison whatsoever.
Yet when the Republicans get close to scoring a point, the CNN action news team, along with the rest of the alliance between the Democratic Party and the Drive-By Media kicks into full gear to make sure that nothing is allowed to stand, especially if it’s true in the case of the Webb novel analysis, because we have to distract attention from it is what they think. But they’re failing in this case. In the process, every time they play Mrs. Cheney, if they rerun that interview, it’s nothing more than a win-win for her, especially when she repeats Duncan Hunter’s question, “Do you want us to win the war on terror?” And for the first time in my memory, a journalist has actually admitted that he wants America to win, which is noteworthy. Here is Johnny in Andover, Massachusetts, Welcome to the program, Johnny, nice to have you with us.
CALLER: I’m a prior service Marine and I just have a question with regard to Wolf Blitzer’s statement to Lynne Cheney.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Doesn’t a journalistic approach have to involve a journalist of some kind of reputable credibility? How do they justify having a sniper team, you know, give footage, who’s the journalist in that?
RUSH: Well, there are many, many definitions of journalism in America today, and there’s certainly one that will fit here. What CNN did, as we explained — and I raised your question, by the way. Most people think of journalists as people with notebooks and cameras and microphones, and they leave the office, and they head out there in hunt of a story — and that they are somewhere where a story happens, where most people aren’t, and then they tell us what happens. What did they see that we didn’t because we weren’t there?
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Well, that’s quaint, it’s old-fashioned, and they may still do that in high school newspapers, but I’m not even sure about that. What this kind of journalism was, was outreach. A producer or series of producers or editors at CNN went to the Rol-O-Dex, and in it they found the name of some Ali Holly Terrorist, and sent him an e-mail or gave him a phone call and said, “Got anything for us?” Terrorist said, “Yes, we’ve been murdering American citizens.” “Oh, you got tape?” “Yes, we do.” “Man, would we love that.” And they start negotiating. And finally CNN promised the terrorists to give them a fair shake in exchange for the terrorists giving them the video. The terrorists also promised not to blow up the CNN News site in Baghdad at the same time. So it’s a twofer. They get to keep the bureau open, safe from terrorist attack, plus they promised the terrorists a fair shake, and they get exclusive video of terrorist snipers murdering American soldiers.
CALLER: You, you gotta love that, huh, Rush?
RUSH: That’s the journalism. You know, and then they supposedly agonized over whether to broadcast the video, but in the final analysis, journalism showed the way. Journalism said this is what the war in Iraq really is, and the American people deserve to see this. There’s, I think, a hard, cold rule. Somebody correct me on this if I’m wrong, but I think that there is a restriction on an American broadcast network showing Army or Navy or Air Force-made videos precisely because it’s propaganda. Is that not true? I think I’m correct on this, and even if I’m incorrect, one thing I know I’m right about is if the Army called Wolf Blitzer or CNN and said, “We’ve got great video of what we did in Fallujah,” they’d reject it, because they wouldn’t trust it.
No video news releases are allowed, because you can’t trust it. It might be propaganda! But let our enemies, after being — minding their own business, you know, refining their IEDs and planning their next attacks, and all of a sudden the phone rings and it’s somebody on the other end from CNN. And they put a deal together, and of course here comes the propaganda film, or tape, whatever it is from the terrorists, and CNN agonizes, tough decision, what’s the journalism call on this? They ultimately bite the bullet and run with it, so they’re airing propaganda from one side but they will not do so on the other because you can’t trust the good guys. The good guys will feed you propaganda. The people on your side you can’t trust, but you can trust Ali Akbar, whatever his name is, because, of course, who are these people?
They fit the mold of the way liberals look at people. These are minorities, these are economically disadvantaged, they’re depressed, they’ve had rotten socioeconomic circumstances, and here is the big, bad, evil United States in their part of the world, trying to take over their land and their oil for Halliburton and Bush. So it’s natural that a bunch of liberals would choose sides with the people they think are the victims in all of this, as a means of leveling the playing field. It’s sort of like when Madam Albright lamented that we are the only remaining superpower in the world, somehow in her view that just isn’t fair, and it’s also destabilizing to have a country such as the United States, the only superpower in the world. No concept of the good guys and bad guys in that world view. Eric in Tucson, Arizona, I’m glad you waited. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, master Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Fine, sir. Thanks el mucho. Thank you for that assessment.
CALLER: The reason I’m calling is because I believe that this is payback against against Lynne Cheney because of the Clinton interview with Chris Wallace earlier this year. I believe they were trying to make her look like the same type of idiot Bill is, and voila, here we are, and they set her up.
RUSH: You know, I don’t take it that far. I think Mrs. Cheney has book, she’s got a new children’s book, they booked her. And after they booked her, the vice president gave them their red meat by making them think that he said he was for water boarding, and then the salacious details of what’s in Jim Webb’s novels came out; that’s when the Democratic talking point machines went into action and briefed CNN on what the questions Mrs. Cheney should be asked. But, you know, it’s an interesting comparison that you have illuminated here. Compare Mrs. Cheney and the way she reacted to questions from Wolf Blitzer to the way Bill Clinton reacted to one legitimate and innocent question from Chris Wallace. I mean, Lynne Cheney didn’t lean forward and start pointing a finger in Wolf’s, accuse him of a number of nefarious things. It was quite a contrast. Eric, I’m glad you waited. Up next, Jay, in Alpha, New Jersey. Welcome to the program, Jay.
CALLER: Hey, big dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: You were talking in the last hour about the Harold Ford commercial, and this is a record that we’ve heard before play. I don’t remember if it was the Kerry election or if it was the mid-terms when there was that commercial where the word “Democrats” was flashing towards you, and then they freeze framed one part of it at the end that, said, look at how they’re putting the word subliminally “rats” in front of you, and then they show their outrage, and the media feeds on it and again shows what might have been a very powerful commercial, but they just make it into their own little —
RUSH: They had to freeze frame that ad to prove that it said “rats” in there instead of “Democrats,” and their charge was that subliminal advertising was being used by those evil, mean Republicans. Is that what you’re talking about?
CALLER: Absolutely. You know, again, it was like, oh, was this all part of Karl Rove’s great plan to brainwash people into voting for Republicans?
RUSH: Yeah. Well, subliminal ads. We’ve been through those, done our own share of them in fact. (Laughing.) Mike, go to the archives (Sample: <*AUDIO*>) and drag out some of the subliminal ads that we’ve done. I’m not talking about Slim Whitman. I’m sorry, I’m not going to be able to help you because my fertile brains, neurons firing at rapid pace still can’t remember any of the titles or the subject matter, but we’ve parodied subliminal ads right about that time, too. Anyway, that was grasping at straws, and it was an attempt to portray the Republicans in a light that they want Democrat voters to see them. Anyway, you’re right on that.
END TRANSCRIPT
*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.