RUSH: “BREAKING: PJM Sources Report Details of Alleged Cain Incident.” Stick with me on this. “Adding to the ongoing Herman Cain sexual harassment controversy, two sources have now confirmed to PJ Media that a female employee of the National Restaurant Association told associates she had been brought by Mr. Cain to his Crystal City, Virginia, residence where she alleged ‘he had taken advantage of me.’ Both sources claim to be politically conservative. One source, a male, told PJ Media: ‘Herman took advantage of seniority and power with a young woman. It was an abuse of power.’ Implying that coming forward with the accusations was an ordeal for the young woman, the source also said:
“‘Who do you believe, a CEO or a mid-level staffer? It was unsettling for her to make charges.'” Stick with me on this, now. “The name of the woman — who was in her early twenties at the time of the alleged incident — has been confirmed by PJ Media. We have chosen not to reveal her identity for reasons of discretion. Both sources, one male and one female, worked at the time — mid-1990s — for the governmental affairs department of the National Restaurant Association, as did the woman. According to the female [conservative] source, Mr. Cain and the woman had been with a large group for a long evening of food and drink at the Ciao Baby Cucina, a restaurant near NRA headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C.
“This was a normal routine, as the trade association worked with the food and beverage industry. Afterwards, Mr. Cain allegedly took the woman by taxi to his apartment, where she spent the night and woke up.” At least she woke up. Note the word ALLEGEDLY, here. This is “breaking” news. “This was a normal routine.” Everybody in the office went out to dinner and adult beverages. “Afterwards, Mr. Cain allegedly took the woman by taxi to his apartment, where she spent the night and woke up The female [conservative] source told PJ Media that she witnessed the woman and Herman Cain break away from the large group as part of a smaller group.
“Neither source has direct knowledge of what occurred at Mr. CainÂ’s residence…” Let me read that again: “Neither source has direct knowledge of what occurred at Mr. Cain’s residence” except that she woke up alive. “but several days after the alleged incident, the female source witnessed the woman returning to her workplace ‘distraught.’ ‘She was very upset,’ … several days after the alleged incident.” Now, again here, the “alleged incident” is the big group goes to dinner. Cain and the woman break off from the group. They go by taxi to Cain’s apartment in Crystal City, she wakes up the next morning alive. Then days later, she is distraught … allegedly. “One source told PJ Media: ‘Some people didnÂ’t believe [the accuser]’ at the time she made the allegation.”
We don’t know and this story doesn’t say what the allegation was. “The female [conservative] source recalls the woman continued working at the NRA for several weeks after the encounter; the male source recalls the woman continued working there for a few months. Both sources claim that during this period following the incident while the woman was still employed, the NRA’s human resources office held many ‘closed door meetings’ that included her. The woman’s parents retained legal counsel and arranged an undisclosed financial settlement. Today, the [Restaurant Association] is expected to meet with attorney Joel P. Bennett, who represents one of the women who have made claims against Mr. Cain.
“Bennett has stated he wants the NRA to terminate a confidentiality provision which bars his client from revealing the grounds for the settlement: ‘[The NRA] ought to waive the confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions and let the two women, if they choose to do so, come forward and tell their stories so that it can get a complete public airing.’ Mr. Cain has steadfastly denied that he harassed any female employees at the National Restaurant Association when he was president. He originally said any allegations…” Stick with me on this, folks. It’s a little dry here, but hang in there, be tough. “CORRECTIONS.”
In parentheses: “(CORRECTIONS: A previous version of this story mentioned that a source witnessed Cain and the woman entering a taxi together. This was incorrect. The previous version also mentioned that the woman awoke in Cain’s bed — the source only claimed that the woman awoke in Cain’s apartment. The previous version incorrectly attributed comments from one source to the other source.)” and one of the most interesting details of the piece is this: “‘Some people didn’t believe [her]’ at the time,” so they didn’t see them leave in a taxi. Even if they did, they didn’t see it. That’s a correction. So how do they know where the taxi took them? They also… Nobody knows what happened in Cain’s apartment, other than she woke up alive — and we know that she woke up alive because she went into the office later, and she continued to go into the office for months.
I don’t know what kind of reporting this is. Whatever did or did not happen, this is pretty shoddy still; and what’s happening now is everybody wants to be the one that gets the final details on this. Everybody’s trying to be first, everybody’s trying to be the source or the publication or the website, what have you, that finally nails all of this down. They want to be the ones to break this wide open. So we get things like this. We do not know and nobody knows things that are being reported and said. At some point, we are gonna know all of this. I am confident and convinced that the details of all this, at some point, will come out. I don’t know if this is true or not, is my point. There’s nothing in here yet that would convince me that this is true.
It’s too open-ended — and these “CORRECTIONS”? I mean, a big part of the story: Cain and the woman go into a taxi and go to his place! (stammering) Uh, uh, uh, uh, correction! No, no, no. “A previous version of this story mentioned that a source witnessed Cain and the woman entering a taxi together. This was incorrect.” Well, that’s pretty big. So if they didn’t see them entering the taxi together, then somebody doesn’t know actually know where they went. Apparently the woman’s claims about where they went are the evidence here. Now, in common parlance — common parlance in discussions like this — when the terminology “taking advantage of” is used today’s standards that means rape. Now, The Politico and the AP and the New York Times, who’ve been in touch with the lawyers would never have left this as simply sex harassment if there was rape involved here.
If they’d thought that rape had taken place, that word would popped up by now. Instead, don’t forget, in the original Politico report, there were gestures that were “not overtly sexual” that led to a sexual harassment claim. I don’t pretend to understand that. Cain has also claimed that he was cleared by the NRA’s investigation. Why isn’t the news media demanding to see their investigation? They want the confidentiality provisions lifted, but they don’t seem to be interested in seeing the results of the investigation. So we have gestures and innuendo, and (summarized), “We thought we saw him get in a cab, but, no, nobody actually saw that.” That’s a long way from “took advantage of me.”
Look, folks, don’t misunderstand me here. All I’m telling you is I don’t have the slightest idea what’s happened here, and nothing I have read anywhere has told me what happened. Am I wrong, is there somebody out there you’ve read or heard or seen something and you know what happened and I’m missing it? Do you know what happened, Snerdley? I don’t think anybody knows what happened. So I guess the fact that both sources claim to be politically conservative is supposed to add credibility to the sources. Pajamas Media is, I guess, an acknowledged conservative site. Anyway, that’s the latest. That’s the latest that we have. This is the latest that has people, “Bzz bzz bzz bzz bzz bzz!” buzzing about it. So I just wanted to share it with you. I became aware of it during the break at the top of the hour.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Kevin in Destin, Florida. Kevin, thank you for waiting. It’s great to have you on the program.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. It’s a pleasure to finally get on your show after two years of dialing, sometimes a couple hours a day. Man, thanks a lot for finally putting me on.
RUSH: I appreciate your effort. I’m impressed with your effort, and I appreciate it.
CALLER: It takes persistence that’s for sure.
RUSH: I know. I know that well. I was a caller in previous days.
CALLER: Yeah. Hey, listen. I’m calling you from Destin, Florida, up there in the Panhandle of Florida.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And I’ve gotta tell you something: There’s something I think, Rush, that the entire media — including yourself, I might add — is missing with the Herman Cain fiasco, and that’s this: Herman Cain, in my opinion, the story is not the alleged, you know, sexual, you know… Sexual, what do you call it?
RUSH: Harassment.
CALLER: Yeah, harassment. That’s not the story here. The story to me is I met Herman Cain — just to be able to say, “I met Herman Cain” — about four months ago down in Naples, Florida. I had a chance to engage him one-on-one personally, and I asked him point-blank questions, and I even put this on my blog, and I had the video of it because the local news covered it, and what was ironic about it — and I put it up on the blog if you want to see it. What I found interesting about this was the fact that when I engaged him personally, something told me right then and there, Rush, that this man lacks presidential prowess. He lacks the intellect to be the president. But that’s not the story here. The story here is what this speaks to is his inability to face what should have been nothing more than a mole-size crisis. Herman Cain himself, by allowing himself to be interrogated by Greta Van Susteren and the rest of the media pundits, all he’s doing is validating the story, and he’s demeaning himself and bringing himself down to the level, you know, of the dogs here that are who don’t —
RUSH: Well, what should he have done? Just blown ’em all off and said no interviews?
CALLER: No, Rush. He knew ten days prior, ten days prior that this could be a story. All he had to do was call a press conference and say, “Listen, here’s the deal. Here’s what happened. It was dismissed. All is said and done. I’ll give you 30-40 minutes for that matter but when this is done, this is done.” What that tells me, Rush… I’m a Herman Cain fan, but I’m rapidly losing interest in Herman Cain as our next GOP candidate as the primary guy because what this tells me is he does not have the ability to think on his feet, number one. Number two, he doesn’t know how to manage what’s really a very small crisis.
RUSH: Kevin?
CALLER: If he can’t handle this, how is he gonna handle being in the White House —
RUSH: Kevin?
CALLER: — when he has a real crisis?
RUSH Kevin?
CALLER: Yeah?
RUSH: A, he was under a confidentiality agreement. He can’t divulge anything about this. He said he didn’t remember all of the details of this. I think what we saw was a first-timer dealing with this, trying to be honest as he knew how to be. I think he was trying to use his own level of morality in answering the questions here. What you’re saying is that he’s not polished enough to do media stuff, therefore he’s not qualified to be president. What should he have done, gone out and hired somebody to attack the women? That’s what Bill Clinton did, and he’s praised and loved and thought to be totally competent. Should he have gone out and hired somebody to handle “bimbo eruptions” for other women that came forward and about it out and destroy them like Bill Clinton did? Because Bill Clinton is the acknowledged expert, Kevin, and the most qualified person ever to be president. That’s a contest with Obama. I talked about this in the first hour of the program — and there’s a way to do all this that apparently everybody approves of and says, “There’s our president!” and that’s leave some semen an blue dress and get the woman blamed for it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me step in here as an adult and try to make some sense out of all this. Because apparently that’s very difficult for others to do. We just had this last caller, “Man, he’s a dumb guy! He doesn’t have the intellectual capability. I’m still supporting him. I just don’t think he’s got the brain. Rush, he had ten days! He had ten days to prepare. The Politico gave him ten days.” That is apparently now the line that’s out there: Herman Cain had ten days. The way I see this — and I haven’t made a choice for president, and I don’t know what happens here. I am just reacting like all of you to this rat-tat-tat, machine gun-type release of news. It seems to me that Herman Cain is caught between two impossible tasks. He’s running for president, and he has to say something.
But there is a legal arrangement sealing the agreement which prevents him from knowing the details of what transpired outside of what he actually recalls. He hasn’t seen it! What would ten days have bought him? He’s not allowed to see this. The investigation was done outside his knowledge, for legal purposes. The agreement is sealed. The woman got 35 or $45,000. Now, I think if somebody’s raped, they don’t settle for 35 or $45,000 even back in the nineties. But, that’s just me. He didn’t have the agreement. The agreement’s under seal by agreement of the association and the accuser. His campaign said that they asked Politico for specifics of the allegations and more information, but Politico provided none!
We’ve played sound bites of our old buddy here, Jonathan Martin out there saying (paraphrased), “Okay, we put the story out. Now it’s up to Herman Cain to explain it.” I don’t understand that. Why isn’t it up to the accuser to explain things? So whether he had ten days or a hundred days, the information he didn’t have wouldn’t have changed, and he didn’t have it. But he is running for president, and he can’t just leave it at that. So he said what he remembered about the allegation. He added to it as he recalled more about it, which is many years ago — and people think that he didn’t actually casually remember this. They think he’s goofing up in telling people what he remembered. They think he’s trying to explain as little as he can; that isn’t working so he adds something to it every day.
When it could well be that he is remembering stuff; I doubt this was on his radar at all before this all hit on Sunday night. So now this is being universally proclaimed out there as being a demonstration of incompetence, but I don’t know what he can do when he doesn’t have the agreement and when it’s under seal and when there is a confidentiality agreement that says it can’t be discussed. So he’s out there and he sends his guy out there to attack the Perry campaign. There’s no evidence for that, and I don’t know who leaked this — and as I said when the program started, I don’t even think that matters, unless it isn’t true. If it is true, who cares in the end who leaked it? Really, folks, it’s gonna come out anyway, so what does it matter?
You might want to say, “Well, Rush, it’s the Eleventh Commandment of Reagan. Republicans don’t attack other Republicans.” Oh, give me a break. This is big leagues. This is primary season in a Republican presidential nomination process. You don’t think these guys are gonna do this kind of stuff to each other? That’s crazy. It happens intraparty all the time. Now, what he has said again is that he doesn’t have all the information. He’s legally prevented from getting it. He had recused himself from any investigation. He was not a party to the settlement, and it all happened in the mid-nineties or late nineties or something. You know every one of the presidential candidates are now getting isolated with the intention of destroying — at best their reputations — with hair trigger scrutiny.
Yet every one, every one of these candidates of ours is superior and of greater substance than the lightweight in the White House sitting there today who can barely read the return address on an envelope — and none of them have sealed their education records like he has. Herman Cain’s not trying to deny where he was educated. We got all kinds of people from Herman Cain’s past coming up, “Yeah, I knew Herman. I didn’t like Herman” or “I did like Herman.” There is nobody from Obama’s past that comes forward, “Yeah, I knew Obama.” We haven’t heard from any old girlfriends. We are witnessing here the attempt that appears to be press successful to take out every Republican candidate with this story, when you get right down to it — and that is starting to irritate me profoundly. Every one of them now is in the crosshairs.
Now, let’s talk about this attorney, this Joel Bennett who represents one of the women who claim that Herman Cain mistreated her. He doesn’t have a copy of the agreement the woman signed with the association. He said, “I haven’t seen a copy of the agreement in 12 years,” yet he’s out there blabbing off like he knows everything that happened. He hasn’t seen the agreement. He said he hopes to get a copy of the agreement from the National Restaurant Association. His client has asked him to stop giving interviews and yet he’s still giving interviews. Now, what lawyer worth his salt wouldn’t have gotten a copy of the frigging agreement by now? And this is the same tidbit the Washington Post had yesterday that they deleted from their story that was on the website.
This guy — a Clintonista, by the way — this Joel Bennett guy. Second, if his client asked him to stop giving interviews, why is he everywhere hyping the story? ‘Cause that’s what happening. Now, there’s a Forbes magazine story on this: “As for the story itself, Cain campaign officials complain PoliticoÂ’s piece was an ambush. When PoliticoÂ’s [Jonathan] Martin contacted Cain campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon on late in the day on October 19, Gordon says Martin didnÂ’t supply any details or documents that would allow the campaign to evaluate the claims,” and this goes to the ten day business. Okay, Politico says: We got you, bud! You got ten days to respond.
You got me on what?
Huh-huh! We don’t have anything. We’re not gonna show you anything but you’ve got ten days, sexual harassment.
Forbes: “There were no names, locations, or exact descriptions of what Cain is alleged to have said or done,” and there still aren’t! Does anybody, sitting here right now, know what he did? Obama had 20 years to respond to Reverend Wright and all he could come up with was, “I wasn’t listening.” Bill Ayers? “No, I didn’t start my campaign at his house. He was just some locoweed in the neighborhood.” Wrong! He started his political career in Bill Ayers’ living room. Now, this is from Forbes: The campaign spokesman “Gordon and the campaign say they couldnÂ’t respond because they had no idea what they were responding to. Gordon even begged Harris to send him copies of any documents with the names blacked out. Harris refused” to do that.
What we have here, we’ve got shoddy reporting from The Politico and this Pajamas Media. I hate saying this (I really hate saying this), but this is shoddy. They report that Cain and the woman got in the cab together and then they have to say, “Nope, nope, nope! Sorry, nobody saw that.” Well, yeah, a couple days ago later they say that, issue the correction? Cain and the woman went to Cain’s Crystal City apartment where she spent at night and woke up alive! And they originally said “in his bed,” then they had to correct that. Nobody, nobody knows what he did. We know everything Bill Clinton did, including lying about it to a grand jury!
We know everything Ted Kennedy did; we know everything John Edwards did. They are heroes. We know everything Eliot Spitzer did; he got a TV show. We don’t know what Herman Cain did, and they’re telling us (even people on our side), “He’s letting me down. I don’t think it’s presidential. He doesn’t know how to handle this.” Bill Clinton does? John Edwards does? Ted Kennedy knew how to handle it? Is that our model? We still don’t know what he did or didn’t do, and that’s the only reason I am withholding any judgment on any of this — and, gosh, I would think anybody with half a brain would be waiting to find out some specifics here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, this next is gonna get me in trouble, but what am I here for? I remember back in these heady days of the feminazis drumming up this whole sexual harassment business as a political tool, and I distinctly remember hearing there needed to be “a pattern” of powerful abuse of underlings. I don’t see a pattern here. Now, also from the Forbes piece: “The Cain campaign, and even Cain himself, begged the association to at least supply some details [and] the association refused.” Why couldn’t it be this, since nobody really knows anything…? We don’t know the names of Obama’s girlfriends. We don’t know the names of women before he met Michelle. We have a lost decade of this man’s life despite his own self-deserving autobiographies and yet nobody’s interested in any of that. We were fed a totally BS story about this guy being a messiah, hope and change and all that rotgut and look where that got us!
Meanwhile, isn’t it possible that Herman Cain is just an innocent, honest guy trying to answer these questions as best he can with the limited knowledge that he’s got? Now, I remember when this stuff all came up. We were told, “Women never lie about this stuff.” Remember that, too? “Women never lie about it,” and how many instances are there of women making it up? We were told children never lie about it, but they do, too. I remember a police officer. He was accused of abusing a 16-year-old girl, raping her, smearing feces on her. Her name was Tawana Brawley. Today, Al Sharpton — who was her agent and spreading her story — has a show on MSNBC and has a “charity” that every leftist bows down and gives money to.
I don’t think he has ever apologized for the false allegations involved, and look what happened to the cop in that case. Now, all I’m saying is we don’t know anything. In fact, everyone who’s gone on record, meaning used their name — except the pollster, this guy in Oklahoma that was on the radio in Oklahoma (Chris whatever his name is. Anderson?) Everybody who’s gone on record and used their name except that pollster have all said they couldn’t imagine Herman Cain doing such things, and then they’re saying, “Yeah, well, where’s the wife been? That’s the first telltale sign: The wife is never around!” Is that true? This is so many unanswered questions. There are so many versions of this story. How about this. Let me just throw another one out there. This makes as much sense as anybody else based on what we know.
The woman has a little too much to drink. Herman Cain’s a God-fearing Christian man. He respects her. He takes her home to his place to sleep it off. She wakes up the next day, tells people what happened, some people say, “You know, you could score some big bucks out of this.” She tries it. She gets 35 grand; gets ticked off that it’s not enough. “Rush, how can you say such thing?” How can anybody say what they’re saying? I don’t know any more than anybody else does. Why couldn’t that version be applicable here? “Well, because, Rush, women don’t lie about these things, and there was a payoff.” Talk to any lawyer who will tell you it’s much cheaper to pay somebody 35 grand than to go to litigation, and you don’t only get 35 grand if you were raped and can prove it. So my version is just as possible as anything else here. I’m not saying that’s what happened.
“I don’t know.” That’s all I’m saying.
Nobody else does, either.