RUSH: Well, so far, folks, we have the perfect Clinton campaign: planting questions with college kids, using pre-teenagers for health care ads, laundering money through Chinatown, and now threatening the media! The perfect Clinton campaign. The Drudge Report on his home page reports that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has been warned not to focus Thursday’s Democrat debate on Hillary. A Hillary, Inc./Clinton, Inc., spokesman told Drudge: ‘This campaign is about issues. It’s not on who we can bring down and destroy. Blitzer should not go down to the levels of character attack and pull a Russert.’ Blitzer is set to moderate this debate from Vegas on Thursday night, questions also being posed by Suzanne Malveaux. So Clinton, Inc., has threatened Blitzer! (laughing) What I’m wondering is, did they threaten Blitzer personally as well as publicly here on the Drudge Report? How about the Clinton war room? I’m really worried about Wolf. I think Wolf’s a nice guy, I like Wolf, and you people know this. But he’s been warned now. This is serious stuff. ‘You keep your hands off of our Hillary’ — or what? What’s going to happen?
I’m thinking about maybe calling Blackwater, the shadow army that protects dignitaries in Baghdad, and say, ‘Wolf, I’ll be glad to hire a bodyguard detail for you before and after the debate, regardless how you moderate it; I mean this is a straight-out threat.’ I’m wondering, should Wolf now beg off of the debate, like diplomats at the state department begging off of going to Baghdad, because who’s going to take care of Wolf’s kids if something goes wrong here? Who’s gonna take care of Wolf’s children, folks? This is a serious matter to be dealt with. Seriously, now, the question is whether Blitzer and other reporters will now be intimidated by this. We shall watch and we shall see. I just want to see how CNN reacts to such intimidation tactics, because I’m going to tell you something, folks, if this were Richard Nixon, the media would already be up in arms over this claiming abuse of power. They would be fuming. They would be outraged over this kind of thing, and Clinton, Inc., can just send out this little story saying, ‘Yeah, well, Wolf gotta be warned here,’ don’t go after Clinton, don’t go after Hillary, keep your hands off of her, as though that would be a problem. And how about Bill Clinton? Try this audio sound bite. This is yesterday in Charleston, South Carolina, at a Hillary Clinton rally.
CLINTON: It’s a great time to be a Democrat, and I like it (cheers) — I like it because even though those boys have been getting kind of tough on her lately, she can handle it.
RUSH: Even though those boys have been getting tough on her lately? Does he not realize that one of those boys is a proud African-American? So here’s Senator Bill Clinton, President Bill Clinton, defending Hillary. And, you know what? I think he only did this because she’s being attacked by a black guy. Does that sound familiar, ladies and gentlemen? Remember it was one of the early White House correspondents dinners in Washington at the Hilton hotel, maybe the second or third year of his presidency, it was after the Waco invasion, and Janet Reno is up there being grilled by John Conyers on what happened, how could of this happened? You remember Clinton passed the buck on that, ‘Don’t ask me about that. Go ask Janet Reno, that was her operation. I just found out about it last night when I read the paper,’ or something of that nature. I got no brief for Janet Reno in that whole event, but Conyers was simply showboating and not trying to get to the bottom of anything.
I played clips of that on my TV show, and I defended Janet Reno, and Clinton told a joke at the White House Correspondents Dinner, said, ‘Hey, did you see Rush’s program the other night? You see him defending Janet Reno? It’s only because she’s being attacked by a black guy.’ So I’ve waited for the opportunity to turn this back around, so Clinton is now attacking all the boys who are hitting on his wife a little heavy here for him. (Clinton impression) ‘She can take it, though, she’s a big girl.’ Bill Clinton defending Hillary. He only did it because she was getting attacked by a black guy. But I think this needs to be amplified, folks. Let’s get down to brass tacks, can we? Who is it who has been acting like a boy and has been tough on her for his and her whole life? Let’s talk about how he, not Obama and not the Breck Girl, has been acting like a boy. Let’s talk to him about Monica, about Gennifer, about Susan, about Kathleen, and all the many others, and how was that tough on his wife? It was very tough, forced her to clean up his messes. He gave her one of the only accomplishments in life, but really, Bill Clinton’s been as tough on her as any of these opponents in the Democrat primaries.
Calling these guys ‘boys’ is just insulting. This guy is not presidential, he does not have that aura, he has lost that, and now he’s out there defending his wife on this stuff because she can’t, just like the spouses of all the other candidates are out there trying to defend their candidate spouses because for some reason they can’t do it. I tell you, folks, it’s the perfect Clinton campaign. It’s gotten off to just an unsurprising start. The only thing that separates Hillary from her husband is that she is faking intellectual orgasms. His orgasms are real; she has to fake her intellectual orgasms. That’s the only thing that separates Hillary from her husband. So we got planting questions with college kids. More on that coming up in just a moment and there’s a pattern here. We went back to the archives and we found out that in 1999 prior to her Senate run, a question was planted in an audience about whether or not she was going to run. We have the audio from that back in 1999. So planting questions with college kids, using pre-teenagers for health care ads, as in S-CHIP, laundering money through Chinatown, and now threatening a member or warning a member of the media, better not cross the line the Clintons have drawn when questioning Mrs. Clinton at the debate Thursday night in Las Vegas.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know what Wolf ought to do at that debate on Thursday night? He ought to have a disclaimer prior to every question: ‘This question approved by Ann Lewis. This question approved by Bill Clinton. This question approved by Howard Wolfson. This question approved by Hillary Clinton, herself. This question planted by Hillary Clinton, herself.’ Here’s the only safe line of questions for Wolf Blitzer to ask Hillary Clinton at the debate on Thursday night: ‘Mrs. Clinton, what points would you like to make this evening? Mrs. Clinton, do you need more time to make your points? Mrs. Clinton, what would you like to be asked about now, as we’re nearing the end of the debate? Mrs. Clinton, have we asked the right questions to help you get your points across? Because, frankly, we haven’t understood a thing you’ve said tonight.’ Well, he’d better not throw that in there. You know, Wolf’s already got a reservation he’s not aware of to Fort Marcy Park. (laughing) Can you believe this? There’s a story in of all places, the New Republic — the home of fake, phony soldier, anti-war in Iraq stories.
They have a piece on the website by Michael Crowley, and it’s called ‘Bunker Hillary.’ This is a very liberal publication. ‘On June 1, The New York Times published a front-page article titled, ‘One Place Where Obama Goes Elbow to Elbow.’ The feature detailed Barack Obama’s love for pickup basketball, his jersey-tugging style, even the time he hit a long game-winning shot after getting fouled. The Obama camp clearly welcomed the humanizing glimpse at Obama’s life; his rivals, probably not so much. In an ordinary campaign, that might have been it. But this is no ordinary campaign — not when Hillary Clinton is a candidate. And so, the Clinton team let Times reporter Patrick Healy, who covers the Hillary beat, know about their ‘annoyance’ with the story, as Healy later put it. If grumbling about a basketball story seems excessive, it’s also typical of the Clinton media machine,’ and Michael Crowley goes on to detail the efforts by the Clinton, Inc. War Room to shape and intimidate reporters in their coverage, and then he adds this: ‘Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage. ‘It’s one of the few times I’ve seen journalists respect someone for beating the hell out of them,’ says a veteran Democratic media operative. …
‘So far, the strategy has worked brilliantly. In the current climate, where the mainstream media is under attack from both conservatives and liberals, Clinton may have picked the right moment to get tough with the press.’ We shall see. This stuff works well when nobody knows it’s happening. But now the press is starting to talk about it, and what’s also amazing is, the Clinton campaign is starting to brag about it. I mean, when you call Drudge and say, ‘Hey, we just warned Wolf Blitzer that he better not be tough on Hillary. He better not ask these personal-attack questions. He better not do a Russert. He better stick to the issues,’ this is arrogance personified. You know who I really fear for? Today, I have real fear for this young college student in Grinnell, Iowa, who is out there admitting that she was a plant and that they asked her to be a plant. Remember, the campaign’s denying all this. Well, they’re not denying, but Hillary said she didn’t know anything about it here. The student’s name is (I hope I pronounce this right) Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, and this is this morning on CNN, the network where Wolf Blitzer works, the network hosting the debate on Thursday night, Wolf Blitzer having today been warned by the Clinton war room to keep it right. So she was appearing, and this is what she said about the planted question to Hillary.
GALLO-CHASANOFF: On the way over there in the car, they asked me if I would ask the senator a question. I said, ‘Sure,’ you know, ‘I’d love to ask her a question,’ and when we got there — we were there a little bit early — they brought me to one of the senior staffers, and he asked me if there was any question I wanted to ask, and then I kind of thought about it, and I said, ‘Yeah. Can I ask how her energy plan compares to the other candidates’ energy plans?’ and he said, ‘Well, I don’t think that’s a good idea, because I don’t know how familiar she is with their plans,’ and then he showed me in his binder. He had a piece of paper that had typed-out questions on it, and the top of this is a plan specifically for a college student. It said, like, ‘college student.’ Then I asked how it worked. He said, ‘Raise your hand when — when she asks her for a question. Raise your hand, and she’ll call on you.’
RUSH: Do you hear how articulate that student is? That is one of the most well spoken college students that I have heard in a long time. But how about what she said? ‘Well, I want to ask about the energy plan.’ ‘Well, I don’t think you should ask about that, because she doesn’t know what her opponents’ energy plans are.’ Not only that, she doesn’t care what her opponents’ energy plans are — and if she doesn’t know, that’s why. ‘Then he showed me in his binder. He had a piece of paper typed-out questions on it, and the top of this plan specifically for a college student, said, like, ‘college student.’ When I asked how it worked, he says, ‘Raise your hand. She’ll see you, and she’ll call on you.” Now, Mrs. Clinton says she’s unaware that any of this is going on, and this is intolerable, and they won’t tolerate it anymore. I’ll tell you, here’s the thing. You watch. If the Clinton campaign holds true to form, this young student is about to be trashed, just like Paula Jones was trashed. Remember Carville said, ‘Well, you never know what you’re gonna find when you drag a dollar bill through a trailer park out there.’
Of course the NAGs, the NOW gang, said nothing about all of these women being trashed and destroyed. So now we have great compassion and concern for Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, because she’s going to get trashed. This is what the Clintons do. It will be interesting to see if the media ignores that. Now, here’s one thing. I think this is worth pointing out. This woman is a college student in Grinnell, Iowa, and as such, she’s young. She’s no older than 22. I don’t know what year she is in college, but the odds are she’s no older than 22. She’s probably younger than that, and so she’s not old enough to have been affected by the Clinton mystique of the nineties. She’s not among the female population of this country who wished it was her under the desk instead of Monica Lewinsky. You know, this is something the Clintons are going to have to learn to understand. Not everybody in this country looks at them as royalty and looks at them longingly and hoping, ‘Oh, my God! I hope we can get the Clintons back.’ These young students were too young to appreciate anything other than the definition of ‘sex’ being changed by Clinton’s under-the-desk behavior with Monica Lewinsky, but they just weren’t intellectually old enough to be as affected as today’s journalists are. These stories about how they marvel, the journalists do, at how well the Clintons lie. They marvel about how well Clinton is able to intimidate the media. They sit there and marvel at all this. These young college kids, they’re not of that nature. They’re not old enough to have experienced that mystique. So it will be interesting to see if the Clintons do trash this student and others, you know, what the reaction will be among people in that demographic or age-group. She also, by the way, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, added this about the planted question.
GALLO-CHASANOFF: So, I mean, I don’t know for sure that she knew in advance, but there were like 200 people there, and everyone was raising their hand. I was one out of four. That doesn’t seem random, exactly.
RUSH: Everyone was raising their hand. ‘There were 200 people there,and everyone was raising their hand. I was one out of four. It doesn’t seem random,’ and, by the way, she’s saying, ‘I wasn’t the only one they tried to plant a question with. I wasn’t the only one they approached about this.’ Let’s go back to the original exchange. We can see that Mrs. Clinton’s young-people-asked-me-this-question answer was all part of a script. Here is Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff last Tuesday in Newton, Iowa, asking the question of Hillary.
GALLO-CHASANOFF: 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 found as I travel around Iowa, that it’s usually young people who ask me about global warming.
RUSH: We need that skit, that parody that we did when Hillary announced her chat line on her website, ‘Ask Hillary’ or whatever. That was one of the greatest and most brilliant, because it’s true, parodies of Mrs. Clinton and her ‘listening tour’ listening whatever it was, when, in fact, she doesn’t do the listening. She does the talking. It’s just funny, as you can see here. The young student wanted to ask about energy plans. She was steered away from that, and asked a question about global warming. ‘Well, you should be worried. I find as I travel around Iowa it’s usually young people who ask me about global warming.’ Yeah, who have been set up to ask you about global warming! All right, let’s go back. Sunday in Waterloo, Iowa, Senator Clinton spoke with reporters. A reporter said, ‘Your campaign admits staging a question at an event this week in Iowa. Edwards has said, ‘That’s George Bush-like behavior, and that the process in Iowa must be open and honest.’ Can you respond to that allegation and to the incident itself?’
HILLARY: Well, it was news to me, and neither I, nor my campaign, approve of that, and, uh, uh, it will, uh, certainly not be tolerated.
FEMALE REPORTER: Were those the only instances that you know about, those two that were reported?
HILLARY: Uh, you know everything I know.
RUSH: Do you think George Bush got away with that kind of an answer? In the first place, it’s obviously not true. ‘Well, it was news to me.’ If 200 people are in the room, she had to be told which one had the question on global warming! She had to be told this. None of this is believable. It’s a classic, perfect Clinton campaign: planting questions with college kids, using preteens for health care ads, laundering money through Chinatown — and intimidating and warning respected members of the Drive-By Media to go easy on the questioning at the Thursday night debate…or else. They didn’t say ‘or else,’ but what are they going to do if Wolf doesn’t believe and follow their instructions? They’re warning. What are they going to do? Wolf has to be thinking about this. We have an incident, by the way, back in 1999, I mentioned earlier, where a planted question was asked of Hillary. There’s a pattern here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is the actual question and answer, the planted question by Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff asking Mrs. Clinton a question last Tuesday, a week ago today in Newton, Iowa.
GALLO-CHASANOFF: 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 found as I travel around Iowa, that it’s usually young people who ask me about global warming.
RUSH: Okay, we parodied the way Mrs. Clinton takes questions from people listening to her, and that sort of thing, and see if you note the brilliant construction of our parody here to that end.
(Playing of Hillary parody.)
RUSH: And we have another one of those, and it runs a little longer. We’ll find that and play that for you, too. You have that one? Go ahead and play that, because that one was our second phase. This was the original.
(Playing of original Hillary parody.)
RUSH: Okay. I want to bracket our parody with, again, with what we were parodying. Audio sound bite number three again, please.
GALLO-CHASANOFF: 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 found as I travel around Iowa, that it’s usually young people who ask me about global warming.
RUSH: There you have it, Mrs. Clinton — and by the way, after the event, according to Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, she said, ‘I heard another man talking about the question he asked, and he said the campaign had asked him to ask that question.’ Now, this is in the text of the CNN story. They did not release that audio of interview with her from where we got the audio that we have played previously here. Yesterday on PMSNBC Live, Hillary Clinton campaign chairman Tom Vilsack was asked about this. Question: ‘Senator Clinton herself said that she knew nothing about this planted question business and promised it wouldn’t happen again.’
VILSACK: Obviously Hillary Clinton does not condone, uh, planting of questions. She didn’t know that this young person had been given that question. The senator has no idea — in the hundreds of thousands of people that she’s talking to — uh, who’s talked to an aide and who hasn’t. She just basically tries to look around the crowd and, uh, tries to answer a half a dozen or a dozen questions at — at, uh, stops.
RUSH: Right. So it’s circle-the-wagons time. This is just like when Madeleine Albright came out of the White House and said, ‘If he said that he ‘didn’t have sex with that woman,’ then I totally believe him.’ If Mrs. Clinton has said that she didn’t plant questions and doesn’t know anything about it, then I totally believe her — and you should, too. But we know that she wasn’t aware of it because she has to know who to call on, because they’re not planting questions with 200 people or a hundred people or everybody in the crowd. This is just common sense. David Shuster on PMSNBC last night, reported this about the planted question to Senator Clinton in Iowa.
SHUSTER: Clinton’s campaign is on the defensive after acknowledging that staffers planted this friendly question at a Clinton town hall. Watch the wink.
RUSH: The wink is apparently the signal, ladies and gentlemen, for the planted questioner or somebody. So they’re circling the wagons out there. The Drive-Bys are getting a little distressed about this. I don’t know how long it’s going to last. Let’s go back to this incident in 1999. Last century, Clinton, Inc., planted a question for her big Senate run announcement in 1999. Now, we don’t have all the audio, but we’ve got the nut audio. Let me give you the setup. This was The News with Brian Williams on November 23, 1999. ‘We have a lot to tell you about tonight, beginning with what had become a whisper campaign of late, and it went like this: ‘After what turned into a somewhat disastrous trip to the Middle East, and with polls showing she should not run, Hillary Rodham Clinton just might pull out of the race for Senate from New York.’ Well, today the first lady responded to a planted question at a teachers union event, and made it clear she is in the race for the US Senate.’ Brian Williams reported — in 1999, last century — that the first lady, was responding to a ‘planted question.’ Here is the planted question. It’s by the teachers union head in New York, Randi Weingarten, and they have this exchange.
WEINGARTEN: So, is it yes?
AUDIENCE: (laughing) Or is it no?
HILLARY: I believe that if we work together, we really can make a difference for the children and families of New York. So the answer is — yes! I intend to run!
RUSH: It was a planted question. Andrea Mitchell reported this. ‘Brian, today’s events were as carefully choreographed as the New York City Ballet. Under pressure to either get in or get out, Hillary Clinton finally makes it official by answering a prearranged question from a friendly union leader.’ There’s a pattern here, folks. So let’s take a look at this. Fundraising abuses? ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. My mind is Jell-O.’ Pardons? ‘Oh, I had nothing to do with the pardons!’ The billing records? The Rose Law Firm billing records? ‘I don’t have any idea! I didn’t know anything, and when they showed up in the Map Room I was more surprised than anybody else.’ Cattle futures? ‘No, I thought everybody could turn a thousand dollars into a hundred thousand dollars. FBI files in the White House? No, I have no clue how little had happened, but if we work together, we can solve the issue.’ Travel office firings? ‘No, I don’t know anything about that.’ Real estate shams on property they worked? ‘No, I don’t know anything about that.’ Planted questions? ‘No, I didn’t know anything about that.’ Monica Lewinsky? ‘No, I didn’t know anything about that. That was the vast right-wing conspiracy. I didn’t know anything about that.’
She doesn’t know anything about anything! I’ve gotta give you some more details from this story that’s in the New Republic today by Michael Crowley, and it just debunks all of these myths. ‘So far, the strategy has worked brilliantly. In the current climate, where the mainstream media is under attack from both conservatives and liberals, (Hillary) Clinton may have picked the right moment to get tough with the press. But, as the murmur of discontent among the [media] grows — and Hillary’s coverage has taken a sharper tone since a widely panned debate performance late last month — even some Hillary supporters fear that the strategy may produce a dangerous backlash.’ Here’s a section on a long history of shutting off the press, and you have to figure here that the Drive-Bys have Battered Liberal Syndrome, like Battered Wife Syndrome, because no matter how they were abused and mistreated by the Clintons, they keep coming back with their tongues out. They keep coming back bent over forwards, and asking to be spanked again.
Quote, ‘Clinton’s wariness was forged by her husband’s nightmarish experience on the 1992 campaign trail. Battered by stories about Bill’s mistresses and financial dealings, Hillary seethed at the press and resolved to control their coverage. Bill disliked the press, too — but not with the loathing of his wife, who even tried to throw the press out of the White House itself. In January 1993, she and her friend Susan Thomases proposed to move the White House press room next door, to the sleepy Old Executive Office Building. When that scheme was deemed untenable, aides closed off a hallway connecting the press room to the West Wing. Outraged reporters pounced on press secretary George Stephanopoulos, who later recalled thinking, ‘I’m not your problem; Hillary is. … [Bill] Clinton seems to be on my side. He asked me again this morning why we were closing the door. Um, have you talked to your wife about this, Mr. President?” She has a history of shutting them out. Get this. This is not news to you people. Because I have told you, you are fully informed on this. ‘Many reporters…’ This is the New Republic story by Michael Crowley.
‘Many reporters also suspect the Clinton camp of employing outside proxies to attack troublemakers in the media. After Hillary’s shaky debate performance late last month, the Drudge Report … quickly featured an unusual blind quote on its homepage in which an unnamed ‘top Hillary advisor’ said debate moderator Tim Russert ‘bordered on the unprofessional.’ Joining in the attack on Russert was Media Matters, the liberal press-watching website founded by former … Clinton ally David Brock. Many in Washington believe the campaign feeds material to Brock’s site, as when Media Matters went after New York Times reporter Anne Kornblut last July after Kornblut misrendered a quote that led to an erroneous story claiming Hillary had criticized fellow Democrats.’ So they’re on the case, finally. The Drive-Bys are on the case. They understand that Media Matters is simply a Clinton proxy. They will still use Media Matters things if it suits them to go after their enemies, people like me. ”That’s their imprimatur,’ says the Democratic strategist with presidential experience. ‘When there’s a story they don’t like, they seize on it and turn it back on the reporter, and make it about the reporter.’ (As First Lady, Hillary called for a public ‘frontal assault’ against The Washington Post’s lead Whitewater reporter, Susan Schmidt,’ and I remember that, ‘according to…Howard Kurtz, though the plan was never enacted.)’ It was certainly planned.