RUSH: ‘CNN said Wednesday that commentator Jack Cafferty was referring to China’s leaders — not the Chinese people — when he described them as a ‘bunch of goons and thugs,’ and apologized to anyone who thought otherwise. On Tuesday, China demanded an apology for Jack Cafferty’s comments broadcast on CNN, in which he also described Chinese products as ‘junk.’ Beijing had already singled out US-based CNN as among Western news outlets that produced allegedly biased coverage of violent anti-government protests in Tibet and across western China last month. ‘CNN would like to clarify that it was not Mr. Cafferty’s, nor CNN’s, intent to cause offense to the Chinese people, and would apologize to anyone who has interpreted the comments in this way,’ the network said in an e-mailed statement. ‘CNN is a network that reports the news in an objective and balanced fashion.” (laughing) The ChiComs aren’t going to buy that, but they’ll at least take the apology.
Now, it was only, I guess, the day before yesterday that Jack Cafferty on CNN compared all of you people who live in the small towns that Obama was talking about to Al-Qaeda terrorists. Will CNN and Jack Cafferty apologize to Americans who live in small towns for being compared to Al-Qaeda? (interruption) Oh, you didn’t hear this? Oh, folks. I wish I had the bite. I shoulda thought to ask Cookie to get it, but I’m sure she can drum it up real quick. But he and Jeff Toobin were talking about Obama’s comments in San Francisco about people in small towns being bitter and clinging to God and their guns because the government’s forgotten about them, and they’re miserable out there. And Toobin said he’s exactly right. Cafferty then chimed in, (paraphrasing) ‘Yeah, not only is he exactly right, it’s been going on for 30 years, these people in the Rust Belt and small towns have been ignored, and what happens –‘ (interruption)
You have it? Good, I don’t have to paraphrase. Now, what Cafferty said here, it’s far more insulting and far more inaccurate than what he said about the ChiComs. They are thugs. They’re communists! They are thugs, and some of their stuff is junk. You ever heard of lead toys? But CNN rolling over for the ChiComs because the ChiComs, nobody plays around with the ChiComs. If the ChiComs come after you, ‘Okay, okay, okay.’ You know, the ChiComs are not a paper tiger. We are. We’re so concerned what the world thinks. The ChiComs couldn’t care less what anybody thinks of them. All they care about is the world fearing them, and they’ve pulled that off, same thing with the old Soviet Union. Here’s what Cafferty said yesterday. Jeff Toobin starts this out.
TOOBIN: Hillary Clinton is clearly distorting what Obama said. And, by the way, what Obama said is factually accurate. It’s been true throughout history that people who have economic problems lash out against various others. I mean, I just think it is — it is embarrassing for the Clinton campaign to hang on to this as if it’s some sort of gaffe.
CAFFERTY: Look, Jeff’s right, they call it the Rust Belt for a reason. The great jobs and the economic prosperity left that part of the country two or three decades ago. The people are frustrated. The people have no economic opportunity. What happens to folks like that in the Middle East, you ask? Well, take a look. They go to places like Al-Qaeda training camps. I mean, there’s nothing new here.
RUSH: You know how everybody talks about the crazy uncle you have downstairs in the basement? That’s Cafferty. Cafferty is every family’s number one embarrassment, except CNN’s put him on the air. Your crazy uncle has a commentary position on CNN. So he calls the ChiComs goons and thugs and says their products are junk. Isn’t it amazing how communist nations control our Drive-Bys? I mean, the ChiComs call up CNN or issue some statement, and they’re probably peeing in their pants over there down in Atlanta, and probably arming up the security detail, first thing they do, head out there and make a statement, ‘Sorry, sorry, we’re not talking about your people. We were talking about your leaders, terribly sorry.’ That’s going to make ’em even madder. The ChiComs wouldn’t care if you called their people goons and thugs. You call the leaders goons and thugs, those are fighting words. In the meantime, when Cafferty said this business about middle-class America and the Rust Belt, comparing them to economic distress in the Middle East and they turn to Al-Qaeda training camps, I’m sure nobody at CNN thought there was anything strange about it. And, of course, the difference is that nobody in these small towns is going to demand that CNN apologize. Not that I’ve heard. And even if they did, they wouldn’t.
Now, here’s what Cafferty said that angered the ChiCom leaders. ‘We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.’ And they had to go out and say, ‘I was talking about the Chinese government, not the Chinese people.’ What’s also very strange about this, ladies and gentlemen, is, when’s the last time you heard anybody at CNN, anybody criticize the communist government? To show you how unusual that is, look at how quickly CNN snapped to here when the ChiComs expressed their anger and how mad they were about this.
Not enough is being made, ladies and gentlemen, about the victory in Italy of Silvio Berlusconi. Silvio Berlusconi ran as a conservative. Sarkozy ran as a conservative. Angela Merkel in Germany did not run on an anti-American ticket. Berlusconi’s opponent ran as the Italian Obama. He lost by 11 points. The point here is that while the liberals and Democrats keep telling you that we’re hated around the world, that our image is horrible, all these pro-American leaders, candidates, in Europe are winning elections in landslides.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, Jack Cafferty is the guy wearing the raincoat, the dirty raincoat in the city corner. He hasn’t shaved or showered in three weeks, he’s yelling obscenities at the people that walk by on the street corner, but in his case he does it on CNN and is paid for it. Just amazing.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Brian in Kansas City, Missouri, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh, dittos from the Rust Belt. I was listening to your comments —
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. I wouldn’t exactly call Kansas City the Rust Belt.
CALLER: Well, flyover country, I figured that’s what they were referring to when they called this the Rust Belt.
RUSH: All right, well if that’s what it means to you, we’ll stick with it for this example.
CALLER: All right. Well, thank you. In reference to Mr. Cafferty, I believe saying that, you know, when people don’t have any jobs and nowhere to turn to, they go to camps like they do over in the Middle East in Al-Qaeda, well, I think something like that happened back in the beginning of this country where we were taxed too much and had no recourse, and that’s what ended up founding this country. I beg your pardon, Mr. Limbaugh, I’m so nervous.
RUSH: That’s what happens when you talk to me, I understand that. You’ve done a massively good job for somebody from Kansas City on that score, by the way.
CALLER: Thank you, sir.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I believe Mr. Jefferson made a comment that the country needs a good revolt every 20 years or so, and if Mr. Cafferty thinks of the rest of the country as not as equals, but only as himself as elitist and whatnot, this Rust Belt will rise up and wrap the Rust Belt around their necks.
RUSH: Well, I don’t think it’s anywhere near that. I understand what you’re talking about with what Thomas Jefferson said and all that, but the real news here is not the people in the small towns. The circumstances for people in these small towns, is not nearly as dire as it’s being portrayed either by Obama or by Jack Cafferty. This is just the liberal version of America, the view of America — we’re all in soup lines, we’re all but a paycheck away from being homeless. This is the image they want you to have of your own country. The point of this is, folks, when they look out across the country, I don’t care, any part of flyover country, the Rust Belt, the south, wherever they see things that embarrass them. They think everybody’s low educated, uneducated, they talk funny, and that they’re churchgoing. They’re basically shallow. They look at them with contempt and arrogant condescension, and they think that people in these small towns have been in dire economic circumstances for 30 years and when it gets that bad for that long — there’s another myth here, too, and I would be remiss if I didn’t point this out. The idea that Islamic terrorists join Al-Qaeda because they’re economically poor is the exact opposite! Economics has nothing to do with it, and it’s not that they resent our economic prosperity here.
They resent freedom. We’re infidels. We don’t believe in their religion. It has nothing to do with anything else. These young men, young boys who are born and raised to be terrorists are in that circumstance from the moment they’re born with their mothers. They go to the mosques, the right mosques with the right radical imams and so forth, and they’re raised this way. It has nothing to do with the fact that they’re lashing out because they’re poor. Bin Laden is a billionaire, his family was a billionaire. Zawahiri was a doctor. These people are not poor, and their recruits are not poor. This is not why they’re doing it. So not only is it an insulting reference to the people of the middle part of this country and small towns, but it’s factually inaccurate and represents a total ignorance of who the Al-Qaeda movement are and why they exist. Because if you take Cafferty and the rest of the left’s theory on why Al-Qaeda terrorists become terrorists, because they’ve got no economic circumstances, no economic hope, no economic future, then you have to then say, ‘Why?’ Well, because we’re taking all the world’s resources, it’s our fault. It’s our fault they’re so poor, and yet they’re the ones that live in the oil producing nations. These people are senseless. They’re ignorant. Despite being highly educated and supposedly the best and the brightest the networks can find to do the news and commentary, their ignorance is striking.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT