RUSH: Mrs. Clinton, planting questions, having questions planted at campaign appearances. She has responded to these allegations, and she said, ‘Well, it was news to me. And neither I nor my campaign approve of that. And it will certainly not be tolerated.’ (laughter) I didn’t know about it. Certainly, this is news to me. My campaign won’t tolerate it. Yes, your campaign will! Your campaign plans it. Your campaign sets it up. ‘But it may not have been the first time. In a telephone interview Saturday, Geoffrey Mitchell, 32, said he was approached by Clinton campaign worker Chris Hayler to ask a question about how she was standing up to President Bush on the question on funding the Iraq war and a troop withdrawal timeline. The encounter happened before an event hosted by Iowa State Sen. Gene Frais on a farm outside Fort Madison, Iowa. Clinton’s Iowa campaign confirmed … that one of its staff discussed questions with Mitchell before her April 2 event, but denied attempting to plant a pro-Clinton question.’ Oh, of course, of course. There’s a huge distinction here, folks. I don’t know why anybody would assume that when a campaign aide goes and talks to somebody who’s going to be in the audience, that there would be any attempt to influence or plant a question. Why would we assume this — especially about the Clintons, who are clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, and beyond ethical suspicion? Why would anybody suspect this?
‘Mo Elliethee, spokesman for Clinton’s campaign in Iowa, told Fox [News] that Hayler and Mitchell ‘had a previous relationship,” quote, unquote. Well, what could that be? ‘[T]hat a discussion about Clinton arose out of a normal conversation between two people who knew each other well.’ Yeah. ‘They had a previous relationship and were talking before the event and the topic of the senator’s position on Iraq came up and Geoffrey said he had some questions, ‘ Elliethee said. ‘Chris suggested Geoffrey ask a question.’ Mitchell, however, said that he and Hayler did not know each other personally before the event.’ So the campaign’s out there saying, ‘Ah, these are good buddies! They’ve known each other for a long time.’ No, one of them says. No, I didn’t know these people. I don’t know this person in any way, shape, manner, or form. We’ve got audio sound bites on this. Last Tuesday in Newton at a campaign stop here in Iowa, this exchange between an unidentified student and Senator Clinton. This is one of the planted questions.
PLANTED QUESTIONER: As a young person, I’m worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?
HILLARY: Well, you should be worried, and — and you know, I find as I travel around Iowa that it’s usually young people who ask me about global warming.
RUSH: (sigh) Well, what a stock, planned answer. You know, after the episode with Russert in the debate on the driver’s licenses for illegals, they gotta be quaking in their boots back there at Clinton campaign headquarters. It’s got the crime scene tape around it. We all know that. Another thing: global warming. You know, I wasn’t thinking. I want to applaud my hometown paper, the Southeast Missourian. We do need winter awareness tips, because everybody thinks winter is over, that global warming is here, and it’s odd horizon, that ice is melting. How can ice melt in the middle of winter? Now, John Edwards, the Breck Girl, decided to charge in here Saturday night in Des Moines. This is after the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, and he said this to reporters about Mrs. Clinton’s planted question.
EDWARDS: That’s what [President] George Bush does. [President] George Bush goes to events that are staged, where people are screened, where they’re only allowed to ask questions if the questions are favorable.
RUSH: Yeah, that’s the whole point of planting questions. We have to ask now: How long has this been going on? Senator Clinton has answered that. She didn’t know anything about it. But they’re going to have to get this out there to end this. Get it out, get it all out there now, because if they don’t get it all out there — and, by the way, they’re botching getting it all out there. ‘I didn’t know! My campaign won’t tolerate this. Certainly I didn’t know anything about it.’ Here’s what’s going to happen. She is going to live in fear and the whole campaign will live in fear, that several people who have been approached with planted questions will be held back for an October Surprise, quote, unquote, by one of her opponents, either Barry Obama or the Breck Girl. So, when this happened, when I first heard about this over the weekend, I said, ‘The staff is going to get blamed. Mrs. Clinton will say she doesn’t know anything about it,’ and the prediction has come true. ‘Well, it was news to me,’ she said. ‘Neither I nor my campaign approve of that and it will certainly not be tolerated.’ The staff didn’t leave the tip. Now they’re out planting questions and Mrs. Clinton doesn’t know a thing about either!
So ‘The Staff’ is guilty. See? Not a person. ‘The Staff.’ No investigation, nothing to back up the assertion, just ‘The Staff,’ the nameless, faceless Staff takes the hit. Do I do that on this program, when the staff here screws up? They don’t very much. Sometimes they do, and sometimes I don’t know about it. When I find out, I, ladies and gentlemen, take the hit. The buck stops with me, or I suspend the guilty — which, in fact I even suspended myself on Friday, for contemplation and reflection, of how I could have been hoaxed. I figured out a bunch of things about it. We know who the hoaxer is. He’s a journalist. He’s a liberal journalist and he writes for The Guardian. At any rate, what this is with Mrs. Clinton and, ‘I didn’t know. The staff didn’t know. It certainly won’t be tolerated,’ is a phony excuse. It is a dodge. No responsibility is taken. There’s no accountability. I’ve had people ask me if we ever plant questions from callers on this program. People have said, ‘That call was just too good. Did you plant that?’ We never, ever plant phone calls on this program. If I found out that somebody had planted a phone call, I would tell you which phone call was planted, and I would privately raise a ruckus with whoever it was that had engaged in the fraud.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The Clinton campaign, despite every other campaign denying it, is out there saying that virtually every professional presidential campaign plants questions. What is this, every professional? Can somebody name for me an unprofessional presidential campaign? Who’s she talking about here? Kucinich? Ron Paul? Bill Richardson? By the way, did you see Richardson on Fox News Sunday yesterday? My gosh, it’s like there’s a script and he’s going to say whatever he’s going to say regardless, but he was dead wrong, 180 degrees wrong on the war in Iraq. It was amazing to watch this. Chris Wallace just handed him his lunch. He didn’t know it was happening. This was just primary time script reading. Didn’t matter what the facts were, he had to trash the war effort, deny any success was taking place and get the hell out of there. So the Clinton campaign says that every professional presidential campaign plants questions, routine part of preparation for the advance people staging every event.
It’s just like everybody lies about sex. Everybody lies about sex. Everybody plants questions. Everybody’s dishonest. Everybody’s a snake. Everybody has no ethics. Everybody has no morality. Why are you pointing your flashlight at us?