RUSH: Matt Drudge has one of the funniest pictures on his home page, a picture that portrays something people my age actually had to do. The story is about the threats that have closed our embassies around the world for now a week, not just a day yesterday, but the whole week. The picture is a black and white from the fifties that shows a bunch of schoolkids under their desks to protect themselves in the event of a nuclear attack.
Which, of course, wouldn’t have mattered a hill of beans if the Soviets had launched a nuclear attack. There’s no desk in a school that’s gonna protect anybody. But we all had those drills. I think that picture is a little bit of a goose, ’cause what do we have here? Every report on this says that there was a specific threat, and this threat was more precise and more ominous than even the chatter prior to 9/11.
You’ve got people from both parties out talking about this dire terrorist threat. It is huge. We’re closing embassies everywhere, not just for a day, but for a week. It’s twenty-one embassies and consulates in Allah knows how many countries. That doesn’t sound specific to me. They say it’s a specific threat, but closing 21 embassies doesn’t sound too specific to me. Every report says it was a specific threat and we had to close down 21 embassies and consulates.
“This is the worst threat the country has faced since 9/11,” folks. So, naturally, Obama went off to Camp David for the weekend to celebrate his birthday and play golf for seven hours. That was the day 11 top officials at the White House met with Susan Rice to decide what to do about this horrible, specific, worst threat since 9/11. Now, if we’re closing down our embassies in the Middle East, doesn’t it mean the terrorists have won?
Let’s go to the audio sound bites. I’m really wondering. I hate to, but I’m really cynical. I know there are Republicans who I know that agree. Michael McCaul from Texas, member of the House, is out there saying the same thing Obama’s saying. “It’s the biggest threat!” How many times have we been here? (The financial crisis?) “Everything’s gonna come to a screeching halt 24 hours if we don’t do X!” Go back to October 11th, 2012, in Miami during a campaign event.
Here is the president…
OBAMA: I said we’d end the war in Afghanistan, and we are!
FOLLOWERS: (cheers and applause)
OBAMA: I said we’d refocus on the people who actually attacked us on 9/11, and today Al-Qaeda’s on the run and Osama Bin Laden is dead.
FOLLOWERS: (cheers and applause)
RUSH: I don’t know, folks. It sounds like we’re on the run. Seriously. It doesn’t sound like Al-Qaeda is on the run. It sounds like we are. It sounds like we’re the ones scared to death. We’re the ones who shut down 21 embassies, not just for a day but for a week because of a specific threat — more credible, more ominous than anything since 9/11. Here’s Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) on Meet the Press yesterday.
David Gregory said, “Senator Chambliss, Congressman Peter King said this Al-Qaeda threat is the most significant threat that we’ve seen in years. What have you been told about it?”
CHAMBLISS: There’s an awful lot of chatter out there. Chatter means conversation among terrorists about the planning that’s going on, very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11. We’re hearing some kind of that same chatter, David, that we heard pre-11 leading up to anecdotes like that taking place by the terrorists.
RUSH: Okay, “leading up to anecdotes like taking place by the terrorists.” I don’t even know what that means. But I think I know what he’s saying here. What he’s saying is — and he’s on the committee, I think he’s on the intelligence committee. He’s saying, “Hey, these threats are real! These threats are huge. These threats, they’re big, they’re specific, and they’re as big as all that chatter we were hearing pre-9/11,” which we didn’t listen to, by the way.
Up next on Meet the Press, Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois. David Gregory says, “Senator Durbin, is this a big deal, or a big overreaction?”
DURBIN: No, it’s a big deal! Vice President Biden gave us a classified briefing this last week. We need to know and realize we’re living in an increasingly dangerous world, and this specific threat that we’ve been briefed on over and over again has reached a new level.
RUSH: And on ABC’s This Week, Peter King, congressman from New York…
KING: You know, we can’t criticize them for doing too little with Benghazi and now criticize them for doing too much. I’m giving them credit for saying they learned from Benghazi, and that’s why they’re firming up the embassies. But also, as far as this worldwide alert, I think it’s absolutely warranted in this situation.
RUSH: All right, there. See?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: A quick question, folks. How come nobody is blaming — there’s an anti-Obama YouTube video out there. It’s by a belly dancer in Egypt. It’s anti-Obama. You look at all of the things. You got the NSA scandal. You got Benghazi, the phony Benghazi scandal, and we’re learning so much about the efforts the regime made to keep that thing buttoned up and buttoned down, make sure nobody found out what that was really all about. And the guy who was blamed for that, the filmmaker on that, still in jail without bail somewhere.
So you’ve got two things. You’ve got a little bit of a backlash against the NSA. The Russians granting Edward Snowden asylum, so he finally was able to leave the Moscow airport, and then this Benghazi thing — and again whatever backlash there is against Obamacare. Then all of a sudden here comes this monstrous terror threat that originally was gonna close our embassies on Sunday, but then it was so bad, and it was so anecdotal, and it was so credible, and it was — I mean, nothing compares to this until you go back to the same kind of chatter that we were hearing before 9/11, so we gotta close the embassy for the whole week. It’s just easy to not believe it anymore. It’s just too easy to be cynical.
Now, there is a YouTube video. There’s an anti-Obama YouTube video made by a belly dancer in Egypt. You haven’t heard about it? It’s gone viral. It attacks Obama for helping the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, why doesn’t somebody blame that video for the fact that we have to close 21 embassies for a week? And it’s a specific threat, so specific that we have to close 21 embassies and consulates to be prepared for it.
Julie in Dayton, Ohio. I’m glad you called. Welcome to the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi. How are you?
RUSH: I’m fine. Thank you very much.
CALLER: Good. Good. Hey, I just wanted to let you know, it is so refreshing to listen to you today, and I knew deep in my heart that you would open up with this conversation regarding the closing of the embassies, because my friends and I were talking about it over the weekend when the news —
RUSH: Well, it was either that or A-Rod.
CALLER: (laughing) Well, let’s not go there.
RUSH: No, I am gonna go there. They told us over the weekend they were gonna announce the suspension at noon, right when this program started. They haven’t announced. This is one of those moments — there’s a phrase for this that I cannot utter on this program, but it involves the bathroom and doing something and getting out. You know, the country can’t handle this pins and needles stuff, the Yankees can’t handle it. Anyway, you wanted to talk about the terror threat. Please. I didn’t mean to distract you.
CALLER: No, that’s fine, because I’m a Reds fan, you know, and I don’t care about A-Rod. But, no, what my friends and I were talking about was that right away we just thought that this was all phony, to be honest with you, that —
RUSH: Why? Why did you and your friends think it was all phony?
CALLER: Well, I think it’s to distract the cover-up for Benghazi and to show that, “Oh, now, you know, we’ve learned from this, and we’re taking firmer action and Obama’s doing things.” It’s trying to make him look presidential and that he is doing something.
RUSH: Look, I understand that somebody might think this could make him look presidential. Now, to those of us that remember, Obama was such a munificent munificence that this kind of thing was never going to happen once he was president. There weren’t gonna be terrorists. And I’m not exaggerating. Obama was gonna show the people that hated us that there was no longer a reason to hate America, because Obama’s election would have meant, or did mean that America had gotten rid of all of its mean guys, gotten rid of all of its mean people, gotten rid of the people that are cowboys and sending the military around to plunder and rape and pillage and steal.
We had a guy who is gonna apologize for all of that past behavior on the part of the United States of America. We had a guy, they told us, he told us, Democrat Party told us, the media told us, we had a guy that was gonna unify the world. He was gonna unify the United States ’cause he was gonna be the first black president, that meant there would be no racism in America, it would be postracial. We had a guy who was so wonderful, so munificent that he was gonna end all arguments in America, was gonna end all disagreements, gonna end all partisanship, and the parties were gonna unite and get along and everything that was going to happen was going to happen in America’s best interests, and there was not gonna be any more friction, all kinds of people in both directions crossing the aisle, we were gonna be postpartisan.
The world was going to love us because all of our bad people had been defeated and sent away, and Obama, this new person of the world, unlike anyone we had ever seen, all of this was stated, folks. Everything I’m telling you is what some people in this country thought, this that I’m telling you is the impression that was given. No more racism, no more partisanship, total unity, Obama was going to make the world love us again. We’re gonna close all of the terrorist prisons. We were going to stop torturing people. We weren’t gonna have any enemies anymore, and that Obama was going, and did, to apologize for all of the past transgressions.
Finally, after 200 and some odd years, America had finally gotten it right, and there weren’t gonna be any terrorists. There was not gonna be any need to look at the United States as an enemy. And even after he was inaugurated Obama then goes to Cairo and makes a big speech in the Middle East basically telling his audience in Cairo and in the Middle East all of this. And then there was the Arab Spring, which Obama tried to capture and take control of and make it look like it was an outgrowth of his own campaign and his own presidency.
People in Egypt decided to get rid of their George W. Bush, Hosni Mubarak, they threw him out of there, had all these rallies in Tahrir Square. CNN sent Nic Robertson over there to ask the protestors how much they loved President Obama and how much they were willing to praise Obama for making it happen, how much Obama was responsible for their new freedom and their new economy and all their new jobs. This is it, folks. This is how this man was presented to us. This is how this man, Obama, was presented to the world. It’s how he presented himself.
And so how can this be happening? How could what happened in Benghazi happen? There wasn’t supposed to be any more terrorism. There weren’t supposed to be any people looking at us as the enemy. We were supposed to be loved again. We were supposed to be respected again and really loved and respected once we had a decent secretary of state out there, Hillary Clinton followed by John Kerry. The American media and the Democrat Party told us that they were the solution and the answer to everything. And they certainly gave off the impression that the terrorists were not gonna be mad at us anymore, that they would not have any reason to attack us. And yet terrorism continued, Obama expanded wars, this country supposedly loved and adored because Obama was president, isn’t. Terrorism’s ramping up.
Obama says, after he kills bin Laden, that Al-Qaeda’s on the run. It’s the United States on the run. It’s the United States closing 21 embassies. This is an absolute embarrassment, if you ask me, what this country bought. What the voters of this country bought and fell for and elected is an absolute embarrassment. It’s a common-sense embarrassment. We actually had people telling us that all that I just described to you wasn’t going to happen because of the almost messianic-like existence and aura of Barack Obama. So how come none of it’s played out the way Obama said? How come it’s gotten worse?
How can this closing of 21 embassies, how can it even be happening? I mean, we’re out there, and we brought freedom to Egypt, the Arab Spring, and we did it. It was Obama’s campaign that inspired Egyptians and the Muslim Brotherhood to get rid of that SOB, Mubarak. It doesn’t seem like it’s worked out. The people of Egypt, “You know what? We don’t like this guy, Morsi,” threw him out, the military threw him out. Obama was trying to take credit for all of this.
The cynicism? Let me tell you something about this. The cynicism is easy. But, folks, this is really bad. This is really, really dangerous. The United States is a great nation at risk in a dangerous world. We always have been. I cringe. Look at what has happened to the foreign policy establishment of this country. Look at the Justice Department, what has happened and what it’s doing.
You may not know this. This is an ancillary issue, and I know you’re gonna get mad when I mention the magic word Apple, but you may not know this. Apple just lost a trial against the Justice Department on their e-book store. As a result of this, the Justice Department has demanded — they have submitted a motion to a judge — that they be allowed to supervise and run Apple’s App Store and iTunes for 10 years, because Apple has so cheated and screwed people.
What Apple has done is not pay a lot of lobbyists. What Apple has done is not pay a lot of politicians. What Apple has done is not sent a lot of money to Washington. Microsoft didn’t, but Microsoft never faced what Apple is facing. The Justice Department’s gone to court and has literally demanded the right to oversee every aspect of Apple’s operations on the assumption that they are cheating and screwing everybody.
That’s another story. It just happened to pop into my mind. My focus here is that we have a bunch of rank amateur leftists who have no practical experience in the real world. Their life experience is the faculty lounge, sitting around sipping cocktails, theorizing with each other about what great utopian lives they could create if they were in power. All of their prejudices and biases are against capitalism, against liberty, against freedom.
That’s what they blame for the problems in the world.
That’s what they blame for the problems in this country: Freedom, liberty, capitalism, and free markets. Then they create these-half-baked lies that this country’s hated and despised, while people around the world are still willing to die for the chance to live here. So they set Obama up as this great utopian leader, this great guy with all the answers, and the world is going to practically melt at his feet in love and adoration! So how can any of this be happening?
But there’s another aspect of this that’s dangerous.
The very fact that there are so many people who are cynical about this, the very fact that there are so many Americans who think they’re being lied to about a terror threat, is a really dangerous thing. It is an unhealthy thing for the country. It is the surest sign of the wanton lack of respect for this country that has swept all across this country. This threat may be real. Everything we’re being told could be real. We could be facing something somewhere as bad or worse than 9/11 — and I dare say, the majority of Americans think it’s a lie.
What does that tell you that what most Americans think of the people who are telling them about this threat?
They’re liars, too.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Douglas, somewhere Pennsylvania. This is the trucker, and I’m really glad that you waited, Douglas. Hi.
CALLER: (garbled cell connection) Hi, how you doing? Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: I can’t say that I’m a long-time listener, but from what I have heard, I’m definitely a fan already.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. If you could, could you speak a little slower? I’m having trouble understanding you. You’re on a cell phone, and it’s tougher for me to comprehend speech there.
CALLER: Well, I apologize about that.
RUSH: No, it’s not your problem, it’s mine. But if you just slow down, it will help.
CALLER: All right, well, here’s my issue with today’s conversation. You say that… I lost you there. Oh, here we go. You say that you have a problem with closing of the embassies because they’re following after these terrorist threats that you believe are or are not real. Yet in the same thought you say that the terrorist threats that we were getting prior to 911 we didn’t follow and that the nation is angry about that. Now, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Either you’re angry that they’re following up on these threats or you’re not angry.
RUSH: I think what you’re asking me — or maybe, maybe you’re even going whole hog and accusing me of being a hypocrite.
CALLER: Well, in a way I would accuse you of not being a hypocrite, but also having… Obviously, I know that from listening that you’re a hypocrite. But, I mean, if these terrorist threats are real, then you would think that those individuals that are —
RUSH: Okay, let me explain this. This is gonna be a teachable moment here. Your call and your question are good. You probably have a Samsung phone which is why it’s not good, the call, but the question is good. (See, I can play the game, too. I can do my tech biases just like those clowns do.) Ahem. Now, here’s what Douglas the trucker is saying. He’s saying that I’m being a little skeptical.
When the regime says that they’ve got this threat, specific threat that closed down 21 embassies and consulates, and it’s worse than anything that we’ve had since 911, he thinks that I’m pooh-poohing it. Yet he thinks I’ve also gotten on government for not doing enough with what they knew before 9/11 to prevent it from happening. So he is suggesting that I ought to be supporting what I’m hearing.
Because the government this time is telling us in advance, and they’re taking action to stop it or deal with it, which didn’t happen before 9/11 — and, as such, I’m being a little hypocritical about this. Now, to put this in perspective, I’m not saying anything. I’m reacting to what I’m being told by people in our government, and it’s not isolated. We’re being told things by a regime which has told us things in the past.
This regime is engaged in a number of policies that are opening up the privacy of Americans to any kind of penetrative ability the government has. This administration has shown a desire and a knack for distracting people away from things that might be harmful or damaging to them politically. This administration, when the last terror attack happened, did not take it seriously.
They tried to blame it on a guy making a phantom video that nobody ever saw, and now the guy who tells us — the president who tells us — this the worst threat since 9/11, went out and played golf that day for seven hours, and left a bunch of underlings in charge here. What I’m trying to express here, Thomas, is a way to explain why people might not trust the government — and believe me, there are a lot of cynics who don’t believe this.
In the first place, this is a “specific” threat. If it’s specific, why are you closing 21 embassies? If it’s specific… I mean, specific means specific. You’ve got it nail down. Specific means you know where, you know who, you know what. At least that’s the assumption that people make. The first note was, “We’re gonna close the embassies for a day,” yesterday, Sunday. Now all of a sudden it’s all week.
Now we got people from both parties going on TV and saying, “Well, the chatter here is about like what we had before 9/11. It’s maybe the most credible stuff and the most dangerous stuff since 9/11,” and it comes at a time where this administration is trying to cover up what happened in Benghazi. So it’s not happening in a vacuum — and the people telling us this, Thomas, are not clean and pure as the wind-driven snow.
I’m simply putting all this in a flow, in a contextual flow to explain why there is a lot of cynicism, because it’s not good. It’s not good to have people doubting the warnings, ’cause this could be real. This threat could be exactly as we’re being told, it could be dire, and we got people out thinking the government’s lying to them about it. It’s because of things that have happened.
This administration has told people who they are now.
This administration has behavior patterns and objectives. This is an administration which has done everything to distance itself from everything that’s happened that’s gone wrong in this country, Thomas. We have a president who to this day, after 4-1/2 years, still isn’t accountable. He still isn’t responsible. He is still on the campaign trail, still trying to make people think that nothing that’s happened is his fault, that nothing that’s happened he’s got anything to do with.
So we have a president whose distant and removed and not responsible for anything and not accountable, who was in charge of when a terrible terrorist incident happened. Four Americans died. For three weeks, he and everybody in his regime blamed it on a filmmaker. The NSA is in the process here of trying to penetrate virtual every citizen and have access, and there’s a lot of push-back on that.
So there are a lot of things happening that the regime would like to distract people’s attention away from. This is also the same bunch of people that told us in 2008 that we had a financial crisis so bad that if we didn’t with it in 24 hours — if we didn’t bail out all these financial interests in 24 hours — the world economy was gonna collapse. So, Thomas, my point is that at least once a week the government of this country tells us, the population, that we have an imminent crisis.
We have a life-changing crisis facing us.
We have something that could be a matter of life or death!
We have something that could mean the end of the US economy. We have something that could mean the end of the country, maybe the end of the world. I mean, this is how they approach us every week, Thomas. Every week! It’s a political strategy of the Democrat Party to create never-ending crises after crisis after crisis after crisis. The American people are a ball of nerves.
Or they simply refuse to believe it because they don’t have a large enough emotional reservoir to stay that worried for that long. So they get cynical. They say, “We don’t believe it,” because 90% of what this government tells us is gonna happen doesn’t happen. Jobs don’t get created, health care costs don’t come down, the economy doesn’t grow. None of what this administration tells us actually happens — and the things that do happen, they deny.
So my only point in all this was to try to explain to people why there’s so much distrust and so much cynicism and how that isn’t good. This is a great nation at risk in a really dangerous world, and we have people playing games with that. It’s really unfortunate ’cause this could be real. It could be real, and most Americans are simply laughing and thinking that it’s nothing more than another political move by the administration to distract everybody’s attention away from things that are going wrong.