RUSH: I want to go to a couple sound bites here. I commented on this in my speech in Sacramento on Friday. Dan Rather on Thursday night was on Larry King Live. King said in a question to Dan Rather, ‘In essence, you are saying that the network got rid of you, copped out on the report because of appealing to the Bush White House? Is that what you’re saying, that they were trying to appeal to the Bush White House?’
RATHER: Yes, is the short answer to that. But I think that they and others have been doing it to part of Washington’s power structure long before then. And what I’m trying — look, in my own way, small way, perhaps I can’t succeed, is say to people, whether you’re Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, big government and big corporations have far too much influence and are intimidating, especially investigative reporting.
RUSH: Did you hear that? Dan Rather, who never met a big government program he opposed, Dan Rather, who admires people who grow government and want it to get even bigger, is now all upset because, in his deteriorating mind, he thinks that big government has influenced news; big government is damaging the independence of people in investigative reporting; big government is stopping Dan Rather, or CBS News, from asking the tough questions. Now, when his ox gets gored by big government, why, it’s horrible. Why, we can’t have this. Why, this is too intrusive. Why, it’s hurting our independence, it’s hurting our ability to do the best we can, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But when Dan Rather looks across the country and sees American poverty and doesn’t say, ‘Hmm, look what big government’s done to these people?’ He says big government is great. It’s trying to help those people. When big government raises taxes on people, that’s great, big government ought to intrude. When big government tells you what you can and can’t eat, and where you can and can’t smoke and what you can and can’t smoke, that’s great when big government does that.
When big government tells landowners how they can and cannot use their land, that’s really wonderful stuff. When big government gets into full swing and tells the public school system you better teach this or we’re going to withhold your money, that’s wonderful. When Democrats are running big government, that’s even better, but when big government affects Dan Rather — and I’m not accepting his premise — big government is like anybody else, they try to influence news coverage in their own favor. But these independent journalists are supposed to be guardians against the excesses of power, and it is their job to bring down power, especially after they’ve helped those who get it acquire it, especially if they’re Republicans. I just think this is great. I think this is wonderful because it exposes once again the pure hypocrisy of these people, and it just shows you the liberals are all for rules and limitations on us that they will exempt themselves from. Now, Dan’s out there thinking in his paranoia that big government got him canned, that big government forged his documents, and that big government forced him to forge the documents, that big government probably created Bill Burkett for the purpose of discrediting Dan Rather — who knows what he thinks. By the way, some editorial board member, writer of the Washington Post, has a pretty funny piece today exposing Rather and his lawsuit. He asks a real simple question: Was Dan Rather’s lawsuit forged?
RATHER: Yes. And I think most people know by now that it was correct. By the way, I think there was a lot more in the president’s military record that we don’t know about. We have a wartime president whom I, among others, have supported him, and we want to support the troops, a wartime president whose own military records are rather mysteriously missing. We describe in that story what turns out to be the military record of President Bush. It wasn’t — it wasn’t a — a fraud. The facts of the story were true.
RUSH: He’s defending the story, he’s insisting the story, wants to prove it. He is still going after George W. Bush, he’s still saying nobody has proved that the story was wrong. No, Dan, the documents that you produced were forged. That doesn’t matter. ‘Whatever it takes to prove the story is what we’ll do. Nobody’s denied the allegations of the story.’ He’s still out there trying to defend it. If this lawsuit ever goes to trial, if the Rather lawsuit ever goes to trial, do you know what will be incumbent upon CBS to prove this story was a fraud? They will have to prove that the story was totally bogus, which they’ll be able to do, which destroys Rather’s whole reason for going to court. It’s almost sympathetic, in a way, but I’m not that big-hearted.