RUSH: This I predicted. I’ll give you an example here last night. For those of you who weren’t here yesterday, I want to validate that I predicted this. This is what I said on yesterday’s program.
RUSH ARCHIVE: So we’ll watch the Drive-By Media tonight do their best to spin this into an act of courage, something that’s worthwhile of the Kennedy School of Government’s award for the Profile in Courage. You know, every year Caroline Kennedy awards a Profile in Courage Award to a great political operative. The Kennedys have endorsed this guy, right? The Kennedys have endorsed this guy. So this is going to be spun as an act of political courage today.
RUSH: We have put together, ladies and gentlemen, a montage of the Drive-By Media the last 24 hours. We have here the Reverend Al Sharpton, former president Jimmy Carter, Democrat analyst Tanya Acker, the Reverend Eugene Rivers, Pat Buchanan, Chris Wallace of Fox, David Mattingly at CNN all talk about Barack Obama’s courage.
SHARPTON: Barack Obama showed a real profile in courage.
CARTER: I think it’s very wise and courageous.
ACKER: He did something politically courageous.
RIVERS: He was very courageous and is to be commended for the courage he exhibited.
BUCHANAN: You feel sort of anguish for Barack Obama.
WALLACE: You could feel his personal anguish.
MATTINGLY: A very private anguish.
RUSH: Whereas the reaction on this program was precisely the right reaction. The Drive-By Media, left and right, you heard Pat Buchanan in there, the left and the right talking about how this was courageous. This is a classic illustration. I know these people like every square inch of my glorious naked body, ladies and gentlemen, predicted this right down the path. Newspaper stories, our old friend Carla Marinucci in the San Francisco Chronicle: ‘Obama Praised for Rebuking His Pastor.’ Here’s a quote from James Taylor, who teaches politics and black history at the University of San Francisco. ‘Wright ‘seems to have gone on a path that might actually benefit Obama in a twisted way,’ Taylor said. ‘Now, instead of being associated with him, we see a break — so now it’s Barack Obama versus Jeremiah Wright. And that’s more to (Obama’s) advantage.’ … But his handling of the Wright controversy, many political observers said, appeared to be effective. Barbara O’Connor, professor of political communication at California State University, Sacramento, ‘He satisfied the concerns of those willing to be satisfied. … He’s being intellectually honest.”
Professor O’Connor, he was everything but intellectually honest in this speech. In fact, we have learned, ladies and gentlemen, that the primary reason why he did the speech was that he did polling the night before to find out where he stood on this. That’s why he waited all that time from Friday when Wright appeared on Bill Moyers, then did the press club thing on Monday. Obama reacts yesterday. He was polling it. I’ll have the details coming up. The New York Times: ”Mr. Obama and Reverend Wright.’ It was the most forthright repudiation of an out-of-control supporter that we can remember. We would like to say that it will finally take the racial charge out of this campaign. We’re not that naive.’ And then they go on to say that McCain ought to now stop the North Carolina GOP ad and let’s have a real discussion on race. I kid you not. I predicted this, folks. Boston Globe today, Peter S. Canellos, ‘Candidate Faces Down his Former Pastor, but What Took So Long?’ Obama did disinvite Wright back in 2007, and we’re going to get into the details of this, ladies and gentlemen, because the Drive-Bys, we knew what they would do. They would do everything they could to paper over the fact that this was a damaging speech that Obama did, the little press conference yesterday. Let me make a brief observation.
Let me give you the poll data first because I’m sure you want to know this. This is from Ace of Spades, which is a blog. ‘The word on the street is that Barack Obama did not repudiate or further ‘distance’ himself from Wright last night, but rather waited until today, because he was polling on whether he should make the move all night. That’s the word on the street. The word from Mary Katharine Ham’s dad confirms that, as he, a North Carolina resident, did receive just such a poll,’ on Monday night. So Obama was polling what to do. Everything about this man is straight down the line average, typical, run-of-the-mill cookie-cutter politician. He just happens to be an extreme left-wing radical. Another question I would have, ladies and gentlemen, for you. Is it likely that we know Barack Obama’s preacher better than Barack Obama does? Well, that is what it is being made to sound like. I think this is a crucial point, my friends, because we are being told here that Barack Obama didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t know what his preacher was saying.
The story is now coming out, Barack wasn’t even in church that much, and that’s why he didn’t hear some of these things. So we knew Wright better than Obama. Does that make any sense? Obama chose the guy. This guy is his preacher, and yet Barack has to go out, ‘I didn’t know any of this.’ The dirty little secret here is that Obama didn’t give a rat’s rear end what Wright was saying until Wright went after him. When Wright was going after America and ripping America to shreds with his hate America rhetoric that was fine with Obama. But when he went after Obama, that made it personal, and he hides behind the notion that Wright was amplifying all of this beyond the sermons and beyond the pulpit. Everybody’s been smoked here. The people on the left, the Obama supporters want to be smoked. They bent over forward and grabbed the ankles and say ‘have at me’ and do whatever it takes. The story is out today that the congressional superdelegates, ‘It’s over.’ They have chosen Obama, not officially but somebody has done a head count. The congressional superdelegates have chosen Obama.
It’s in The Politico today. ‘Obama May Win Hill Superdelegate Fight.’ Superdelegates are not moving. They’re just waiting to announce for Obama. They’ve already decided. There’s a majority of them in Congress just waiting to announce and so forth. But I want to go back to this business that we supposedly know Jeremiah Wright better than Obama does. He went to the Million Man March, and who was the speaker at the Million Man March? Louis Farrakhan. That’s where he got this big speech on the number 19. This Wright guy I think is probably Nation of Islam. His bodyguards at the National Press Club are Nation of Islam. He knows everything Wright stands for. Obama’s church gave Farrakhan the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award, did you know that? Obama’s church gave Farrakhan the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., Trumpeter Award. It is absurd, ladies and gentlemen, to believe that Obama knew less about this man than we do, but that’s what he’s asking us to believe, is it not?
Much more straight ahead. Lots to do on the program today, not through with the Obama stuff because there’s some stories in the press that contradict, most notably the New York Post here today with Fred Dicker, what this is all about with Obama and his preacher.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You remember Barack Obama complained that George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson in the Philadelphia debate — and Mrs. Clinton, of course — were dwelling on distractions by going after Obama and Reverend Wright. They were just distractions. ‘Can’t we get back to the issues?’ Well, a question, ladies and gentlemen. If that’s true, why has Obama acceded now and decided to dwell in the distractions himself? Which is what he did yesterday. Barack Obama launched an entire news cycle over this very issue that just days ago he condemned as a distraction. Nothing has changed about Wright’s message. As I so keenly, brilliantly pointed out yesterday: There’s nothing Wright said over the past four days that he hasn’t said in the last 20 years. What apparently miffs Obama is that he’s amplifying it from beyond the pulpit and that he’s taking it out on Obama personally. But Obama’s acting like, ‘This stuff is offensive. I can’t deal with this stuff.’
I refuse to believe that Obama did not know this. I refuse to believe that I, El Rushbo, and you, the audience in this program, know more about Reverend Wright than Senator Obama does. I refuse to believe that. Yet that is what we are being asked to believe. The only thing that’s changed is that Obama’s no longer able to duck and deny this. So now, because of Obama’s own choosing, it is a major germane issue. It’s not a distraction any longer. So was he telling the truth then or is he telling the truth now? As we have learned, polls are driving his reconsideration to address Wright’s message. It is simply impossible to believe that he could have been unaware of it; even if he attended infrequently, which is the latest attempt they are making: ‘Well, he didn’t go that much.’ Black liberation theology is racially oriented. It’s the opposite of what Obama claims to stand for. He chose a church espousing liberation theology.
Yet he’s running on a completely different ideology. So he chooses one thing for his private life — and that would be spiritual nourishment from a racist anti-American divisive pastor — claims on the other hand that he will lead the country to unity in his public life. To me, this is typical liberalism, promoting the lie that he can divorce his private self from his public one. Barack Obama has fully exposed himself as a con-summate fraud. And, by the way, some of you might say, ‘Con-summate? It’s consum-mate!’ No. Well, it is. It’s both. Back in the old days, in the glory days of radio, before there was television; if you wanted to go to work for NBC you had to go in and do a live audition, and they gave you sentences, and one of the words that they gave you was ‘consummate,’ and if you didn’t pronounce it con-summate, you couldn’t pass the audition. I kid you not. It has since evolved to consum-mate, but the original pronunciation in the official annals of NBC — back in the old days when there really were broadcast standards — con-summate was the way that it was pronounced.
That’s just a little aside. Now, Barack Obama said yesterday, ”I am outraged by the comments that were made. I am saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday.’ The candidate said that after watching Wright’s appearance Monday, ‘What became clear to me was that he was presenting a worldview that contradicts what I am and what I stand for.” When did that become clear, Obama? None of this, none of this washes. The sycophantic treatment and reaction to this in the Drive-By Media is precisely why there is a New Media. That was journalistic malpractice the way this was reacted to last night and the way that it was reported. And I want to go through a couple sound bites here to illustrate some of the contradictions. Now, remember, Barack Obama did his best to distance himself from Jeremiah Wright. But before Obama spoke — and this is key — when Wright was on Moyers and when Wright appeared at the Press Club, the Drive-By Media, both nights, tried to sanitize Wright.
They all said, ‘Oh, what a great speech this was! What marvelous, marvelous intelligence this man has!’ They did everything they could to spin and recast the actual words and intentions of Jeremiah Wright. So after the Drive-By Media, which is in the tank for Obama, goes out and spins Wright as, ‘Hey, that was really great. That was good,’ Obama then goes out and says, ‘I can’t handle this. I’m not going to listen to this. I am disowning this man.’ But the Drive-Bys are so far in the tank, Obama contradicts his own backers in the Drive-By Media, and yet they sweep it under the rug. Now, what we’ve done here is I’ve put together some examples of the audience applauding various things that Wright said at the National Press Club. Some of the applause is tepid, but some of it is not. We’ve left the applause in so you can get an idea how the audience reacted to the words of Jeremiah Wright.
WRIGHT: This most recent attack on the black church — it is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It is an attack on the black church. (wild applause)
RUSH: Right on, right on, right on! Keep in mind, Obama has disavowed all of this. Here’s the next one.
OBAMA: I do not subscribe to the views that he expressed. I believe they are wrong. I think they are destructive.
RUSH: So the media and everybody in the audience is applauding what Wright said, and Obama is denouncing.
WRIGHT: You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic, divisive principles. (applause)
RUSH: Right on, right on, right on, right on. Some of the tepid applause. Here’s Obama.
OBAMA: When he equates the United States’ wartime efforts with terrorism, uh, then, uh, there are no excuses. Uh, they offend me. Uh, they rightly offend all Americans, uh, and, uh, they should be denounced.
RUSH: See, but he’s just learning this? He’s just learning this? We’re dealing with a typical liberal here, folks. He’s tried every which way. He’s tried as hard as he could to keep Jeremiah Wright in the close circle. Finally, it got to the point where he couldn’t because he was polling it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: It was reported yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, that Barack Obama was angry; seething, in fact. I didn’t see this, but I saw somebody slinking, shoulder slumped. I saw somebody defensive and quiet, a little bit sad; maybe, depressed. I didn’t see this anger. But a lot of people said that Obama was very mad about this yesterday. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, was on the Scarborough program today on MSNBC; and he asked her, ‘What do you think of the Obama statement yesterday? Was it enough to finally put this behind him?’
MITCHELL: I should point out that, quite to my surprise, when he was out on the stump last night; once again, Obama was kind of trivializing it, saying, ‘Well, my opponents are making fun of me,’ and, ‘They say that I don’t put my hand over my heart,’ and, ‘They talk about my, you know, former pastor’s crazy statements.’ So he was trying to blame it on McCain, Hillary, whoever; rather than on what he earlier said in a very in a, you know, specific and dramatic way.
SCARBOROUGH: Wow, that’s interesting.
MITCHELL: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: So he’s downplaying it again as silly?
MITCHELL: Well, out there on the stump he was. Only hours after this, as I say, very public divorce.
RUSH: All right. So right after the very big public divorce, the big press conference where he was angry and hurt, Obama is back to calling Wright’s controversy silly. In other words, the press conference was an act. The press conference was staged for the Drive-Bys. When Obama gets back out and is talking to the peeps and the voters, he’s not continuing. ‘I was mad. I was hurt.’ No, no, no. It’s all back to silly. This whole thing was a show yesterday, and the Drive-Bys fell for it, as typified… Now, Scarborough is not a Drive-By, but he asked a question here that a lot of the Drive-Bys were asking of each other last night: ‘Do you think he put it behind him? Do you think now we put it behind him? Gosh, I hope…’ They’re not analyzing it substantively. ‘Do you think he put it behind him? Do you think this is all it took? Can we get this behind him, now?’ That’s what they want, and that’s of course going to be up to the Reverend Wright.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To Gainesville, Florida, Alan, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. This is Alan from Gainesville, Florida.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I want to tell you that you’re a very important part of our family. We listen to you every day. I have a couple homeschooled boys at home, my wife and I, and we listen to you every single day.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: A very personal relationship. You know, when we listen to you on the radio, we really feel that you’re part of our family. We even call you Uncle Rush. But the reason I called is to tell you about my father-in-law in Maryland. He’s a mechanic, a lifelong Democrat, all his friends are lifelong Democrats. I was talking to him about Operation Chaos. He told me that he is part of Operation Chaos, but he did not change his registration. What he did is vote for Clinton in the Maryland primary, all his pals voted for Clinton, all their wives voted for Clinton, all their relatives voted for Clinton. They were all registered Democrats. The reason they wanted to vote for Clinton, to, you know, corrupt the — not corrupt, but, you know, change the outcome in Maryland ’cause Obama was very popular in Maryland.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: But then they told me, ‘Well, what we’re going to do, we’re going to vote for Clinton and then we’re vote for McCain in the general election.’
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: Without changing the registration.
RUSH: Yes, this sadly doesn’t surprise me. This is something that we haven’t discussed much. It’s a phenomena that we know exists, Operation Chaos operatives who are already Democrats. This is something that the Drive-Bys — and I haven’t wanted to talk about this, ’cause this would alert the Drive-Bys and the Democrat voter registrars to look at their own voters rather than Operation Chaos operatives, and you can’t have a better stealth operative than somebody who’s already a Democrat, who is following orders issued by me, C-in-C USOC, the Commander-in-Chief US, Operation Chaos. But now we’re near the end of the process. I think we can readily acknowledge and let it be known here just as you’ve done here that there are plenty of Operation Chaos operatives who have already registered Democrats because they are Democrats.
CALLER: You have Operation Chaos members embedded in the university faculty here. They come to my office, they close the door, and they say, ‘Operation Chaos.’
RUSH: In Gainesville? No kidding. Gainesville. Well, now this is something. You are alerting me to troop levels that I was unaware of.
CALLER: We’re here.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. Alan, thanks so much for the call.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush.
RUSH: Appreciate it. Faculty members at the University of Florida come to his office and close the door and say, ‘Operation Chaos.’ (laughing)
Brad in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s a real pleasure.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Oh, you’re welcome. I listened to the business yesterday with Obama denouncing Reverend Wright, and I thought I’d listen to how Chris Matthews and the Hardball people dealt with it. They had a roundtable and Andrea Mitchell was there and another fellow and some female reporter. And it was going about as one might imagine with those folks —
RUSH: Let me —
CALLER: — female reporter says, ‘This might be to Obama’s advantage.’ And she alluded to Hillary in New Hampshire breaking down and getting sort of the sympathy vote.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And she then said, ‘Obama is having trouble with the white women voters,’ and she said how they then might feel sorry for him, so they played the victim card a couple of hours after this announcement, and I thought to myself, ‘Isn’t Rush just going to love this.’
RUSH: We predicted it. We predicted sympathy, that they would be sympathetic, and that they would say it was courageous. Now, a question, because I saw a little bit of Hardball yesterday afternoon. Is the female reporter you’re talking about Tamron Hall? Was she from Chicago?
CALLER: Yes. Yes, she was because she attended that church of Reverend Wright’s.
RUSH: I watched this and I was fascinated by it because she’s an anchor! She’s a news anchor at PMSNBC, and they had her on offering commentary because she’s from Chicago, and so she was the south side of Chicago expert in the roundtable yesterday.
CALLER: Hm-hm. Yes. That’s correct.
RUSH: That’s who it was. All right.
CALLER: That was she, hm-hm.
RUSH: Look, I appreciate the call out there, Brad. Thanks very much. Yeah, it was a sympathy play, and ‘Is this going to be it? Can we get this behind him now?’ They so want this to be over, because they are in the tank for Barack Obama.