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RUSH: Let’s go Cleveland. This is Mark. You’re next. Thank you for waiting, sir. You’re on the EIB Network.

CALLER: Hi. Why is Speaker Pelosi lionized for her intervention but President Reagan was excoriated in 1980 for allegedly meddling in state affairs, undermined Jimmy Carter?

RUSH: You know, that is a brilliant question. That is a brilliant question. What he’s talking about here, folks, is (Cosell impression) the ‘October Surprise,’ and you know, you remember what that was, Mark?

CALLER: Yes, sir. They were holding the hostages, allegedly, until late so that Reagan would get the big boost and win the election.

RUSH: Here are the details. It’s even more interesting than that. During the campaign for the 1980 presidency, of course, the Iranians were holding American hostages. They were held for a total of 444 days. After the election and after the inauguration, Iran releases them. They’re free, and everybody said, ‘Whoa, what happened here?’ The liberals, the Democrats just could not accept the fact that this happened. There had to be some subterfuge here, and so it wasn’t long after that charges of an October Surprise took place, and the elements of the charge were that people from the Reagan camp had been sent to Paris under cover of darkness, in the cloak of secrecy, to have secret negotiations with the Iranians. The purpose was, ‘Look, keep those hostages through our election. Keep ’em there so that Carter gets hurt, and then when we win the election, then you release ’em, and we’ll be nice to you. We’ll do all kinds of great things for you.’ That was the charge. There was never any evidence. It got so ridiculous that a guy who is or was at Columbia University, highly respected, made frequent appearances on Nightline.

His name is Gary Sick, and Gary Sick wrote an entire big book on the October Surprise, and the upshot of this was that George H. W. Bush, was flown to Paris in an SR-71 (one of these spy planes that exceeds the speed of sound out there), and that he met with these guys, and he’s the one that arranged the deal. This happened in 1988 or ’90. Tom Foley was the speaker of the House. I forget when it happened. But it was years, years after 1979, and I’ll never forget Tom Foley said, ‘We have no evidence, and precisely because we have no evidence, and because of the seriousness of the charge, we must conduct hearings,’ and Congress actually conducted investigations into the October Surprise, using Gary Sick’s book. There was never any evidence of this. Never. So Mark’s point here is, ‘Well, wait a second. If Syria’s going to get all kinds of credit now,’ and it probably won’t be long before Pelosi claims some, too…’

Because what the Democrats are going to want people to believe is, if this happens, is that Pelosi went over and told Assad: ‘Look, we have no problem with you. Just give us time to get rid of our president here, and we will work with you. We want peace in the region just like you want peace. We’re just like you. We just want piece for our children,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and in so doing, Assad will say, ‘You know what? We don’t care about these 15 Brits! I’ll get hold of Ahmadinejad and say, ‘Hey, Mahmoud? We don’t care about these 15 Brits. They’re more valuable letting them go than keeping them. Let ’em go and make yourself look like a great hero, a great savior. Do it around Easter time, and in the process, you’ll look great.” It’s just like Jesse Jackson gets hostages released. These people know who their friends are in the United States. They know who the weak-minded are. They know who they’re going to be able to dominant and intimidate.

It’s the Democrats, so make it look like Pelosi might have something to do with this? I don’t know if that’s going to happen but I’m just telling you I won’t be surprised if it does. In the meantime, everybody’s hailing this intervention by Syria. ‘Oh, it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing! Mahmoud is such a great guy.’ But in 1979, why, this was something to be investigated! How did those Americans get released, and it was thought to be a Republican plot. Those of you who are relatively young and have scant memory of times 20, 25 years ago, it’s just more of the same now. It’s always been this way. Democrats are who they are. That’s why I keep saying that the pages of the playbook never change, they just get recycled and the playbook ends and go back to the front and start executing the same stuff with different issues or circumstances.

RUSH: David in Montgomery, Alabama, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Well, good afternoon to you, Rush, and US Air Force dittos to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I wanted to call in and ask your opinion on this, because I think the Democrats (or liberals, I guess one and the same) they kind of have a demonstrated track record of things like this, intervening with what a lot of people refer to as the enemy. So back in the ’94 election time frame, we had a president and some other people involved in getting money from people we did not want to be closely associated with politically, namely the Chinese. I’m kind of curious if it wouldn’t be worth watching what kind of money starts coming into the coffers of the DNC, and from where, now that Miss Pelosi has gone over there to do what she is doing.

RUSH: Why?

CALLER: I wonder if this is a campaign funding troop.

RUSH: Goodness gracious, I can’t believe the cynicism among some of you people out there! You actually believe that Syria and Iran might actually contribute to the Democrats like the Chinese did to Clinton?

CALLER: (Laughing.) Well, why not? They’re printing our money over in Iran all the time anyway. I imagine they wouldn’t mind giving some of it back.

RUSH: They’re printing counterfeit money. (Laughing.)

CALLER: It’s true. What they’re doing, it’s a big counterfeit ring. Maybe Algore can do a movie, call it ‘Some Inconvenient Cash’ or something like that. I don’t know.

RUSH: Well, I have no idea about this, even though I always say, ‘Follow the money,’ but I think just the fact that you’ve conjured this possibility is a great indication of what some people think Democrats are capable of and what the whole point of the trip might actually be is money. The problem is, they’d have to launder it through somebody. You remember the Chinese money came in the form of travelers checks that were brought in bags by Johnny Chung. (Laughing.) Bags of money dropped off to the DNC. (Laughing.) Travelers checks by the guy that ran the Chinese restaurant in Little Rock. Oh, nobody had a problem with that. ‘No, no, no! These people just want to be involved. They’re Americans. They’re just a little unsophisticated and don’t quite know how our system works, but we’ll keep the money.’ It’s like Algore and the Buddhist monks out there at that Buddhist temple in LA. They got shafted, too, but that’s what Democrats exist to do.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, look, you people, you’re going to have to start listening closer. I just checked the e-mail during the break. ‘Rush! Rush, you blew it, and you do this too many times, and it fuels your enemies to say that you make mistakes and you get things wrong. Tom Foley was the speaker of the House. Tip O’Neill was speaker of the House in 1980.’ I know that! That’s not when the investigation of the October Surprise what happened. That was the point. It wasn’t for eight or nine years after it that Sick’s book came out and the then-speaker, Tom Foley, in the late eighties or nineties decided that there had to be an investigation because there wasn’t any evidence, but the ‘seriousness of the charges’ dictated that Congress look into it. This is the late eighties. All those years run together. Fort Worthless Jim was the speaker of the House at some point in the mid- to late eighties, and then Foley came on after him, but it was Foley who investigated. The point was, it was so many years after the so-called October Surprise had taken place, and it was no different than what the Democrats are doing now in investigating the Bush administration. The president, George H. W. Bush, was in the White House when this was happening. He was elected 1988. I was an investigation of the Republican president who had been accused of participating in the October Surprise.

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