RUSH: WCBS Channel 2 Eyeball News in New York, headline: ‘Suspect Should Have Been On Watch List.’ Man, this regime really knows what they’re doing. I mean they’ve got their enemies really pinpointed.
Welcome back. It’s Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. As always, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair. Telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
HOLDER: I want to commend them for their results in this case and their unwavering commitment to their jobs. We owe them our gratitude and our respect.
RUSH: Right on, right on.
NAPOLITANO: I want to express my gratitude to all of the federal, state, local law enforcement personnel. I’d like to thank the dedicated men and women at the Department of Homeland Security. I’d also like to give special thanks to the alert citizens in New York City.
RUSH: The T-shirt guy, yeah.
NAPOLITANO: If anybody ever had any doubt about it, this failed bombing attempt clearly shows the value of the saying, if you see something, say something. Thank you —
RUSH: Except if you’re in Arizona. She keeps forgetting to add that. If you see something, say something, except in Arizona. So then they went to the reporters for a question. The first one: ‘Secretary Napolitano, why can the guy still get on the plane and have the plane depart from the gate when he was placed on a no-fly list?’
NAPOLITANO: I don’t want to get into details of timing at no-fly, but the way he was apprehended was that particularly since Christmas, CBP has been instituting a number of rules that enable us to further check against new data or information that is provided, even very recent information against passenger manifests on planes, and they have been working, as you might imagine, around the clock, and so as new data was supplied over the course of the investigation yesterday, they were able to match it once the plane manifest was complete, go on the plane and arrest him.
RUSH: That’s not answering the question. The question was how did the guy get on the plane? You know, they took two other guys off the plane with this guy, and he’s apparently still yapping away. Another reporter, ‘Madam Secretary, are you saying if this had happened before Christmas that plane might have taken off?’
NAPOLITANO: No, I’m not saying that, Mike. What I’m saying is that in this particular case some of the new rules were particularly useful in allowing us to arrest him before the plane took off.
RUSH: Let’s not forget. Folks, you know, it is what it is. The guy is on the way to the airport and calls Emirate Airlines and buys the ticket, says hold the ticket for him, buys it in cash or maybe he bought it earlier in cash, he was on the way. We looked it up. A first-class ticket from New York to Dubai on Emirate Airlines is over eight grand. It’s something like $800 if you go coach. I don’t know which ticket he bought. He shouldn’t have any money because he was foreclosed on. Nevertheless, he got on the plane, he got through security. You grandmothers, you gotta strip down to your panties and your bra before you get on a airplane, this guy somehow gets right through the security checkpoint, gets on the airplane, they push back, and the airline is who called the authorities. I wonder if the airline called the T-shirt vendor and the T-shirt vendor then called the authorities. No, I’m not putting down the authorities. Folks, we have a bunch of incompetents here at the federal level of this regime, and they’re patting themselves on the back here for something that was pure luck.
They are incompetent. They don’t even look at this guy as an enemy. He should have been on a no-fly list. TIME Magazine knows he was attending training camps. And we know, folks, that there are not yet training camps the Taliban puts on for Americans who have been foreclosed on for people angry at the Arizona immigration law. So it’s dumb luck, it appears here. This regime doesn’t even look at guys like this Faisal Shahzad as a potential threat. We are the threat, the tea party is the threat they’re worried about, that’s the one they’re warning everybody about, talk radio and all that. So that’s the sum total of the press conference. Now, Snerdley says he’s figured out why Faisal Shahzad was foreclosed on. They wanted him to blend in with typical Americans in the Obama economy is the reason given here from my own staff as to why they might have foreclosed on the guy. So you just blend in with average Americans. Yeah, whatever.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Folks, a crawl here on one of the Drive-By news networks, reporting that four suspects have been arrested in Pakistan in relationship to this bomb at Times Square. There’s no word on whether the four suspects were from Connecticut. We’re still waiting to hear whether these Pakistanis actually were from Connecticut. This afternoon at a press conference, Eric Holder, the attorney general, spoke about Faisal Shahzad, said this.
HOLDER: Shahzad has provided useful information to authorities. We anticipate charging him with an act of terrorism, transcending national borders, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, use of a destructive device during the commission of another crime, as well as assorted explosives charges.