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RUSH: Then of course there is the Ray Rice situation with the NFL and the announcement by Harvey Levin, who is the new Walter Cronkite in this country. You know who Harvey Levin is, Mr. Snerdley? He’s the founder and the CEO of TMZ. He’s the new Walter Cronkite. Trust me. He has replaced Jon Stewart as the official supplier of news with credibility for the low-information crowd.


They released the video of Ray Rice decking his fiancee in that elevator, and last night Harvey Levin said we’re gonna post tomorrow morning, meaning today, evidence that we believe shows the NFL knew of this video inside the elevator and tried to cover it up. They knew of it. They had seen it and so forth.

The sports media are swarming on Roger Goodell. Some of them have even stated up front that Goodell needs to resign in disgrace over the way this whole thing has been handled. Jonathan Capehart in the Washington Post today said the only thing that can save the National Football League is Condoleezza Rice being named commissioner. The only thing that can save the NFL.

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The Drive-By Media. Oh, yeah. I’m gonna double back to the Ray Rice stuff ’cause we have a whole audio sound bite roster full of stuff. I mean, you wouldn’t believe it. They’re really dumping on Goodell. He’s gotta go, they’re saying. ESPN has some people saying he’s gotta go, ’cause everybody thinks the NFL knew.

Here’s the thing about it, one thing before we get to this other stuff. It’s fascinating to me in a way. Everybody knew what Ray Rice did in that elevator. But without seeing it, it didn’t have hardly any impact. A two-game suspension, well, all right, but it should have been more. Everybody knew what went on. He hit his wife. He beat his wife. Everybody knew. She’s unconscious and he’s dragging her around.

But nobody actually saw the punch being thrown. When they saw that, it totally changed everything, 100%, totally. It’s a demonstration of the power of pictures. And can I share with you another observation very quick? ‘Cause this does have a political connection. Do you remember? We even talked about it here on the EIB Network.


Remember how the Baltimore fans, the Ravens fans cheered Ray Rice and showed up in his jersey and women fans in pink jerseys with Ray Rice’s number at their training camp, summer training camped when he showed up? There was overwhelming ovations and cheers. Why? ‘Cause he was on their team. Their team. You overlook whatever. It’s their team. Okay, how about Bill Clinton? Juanita Broaddrick?

There’s no tape of it. All there is is a story and her busted lip. We have all the other Clinton transgressions, but none of them mattered a whit because Clinton was the leader of their team, the Democrats — and the media, as well. So people will support reprobates and derelicts and thugs if those people help their team win, be it in sports or politics. But when the picture, the video finally came out..

By the way, the AP found even more video of inside the elevator, and they’ve shown it to law enforcement. Well, no. Law enforcement is showing it to AP and it’s leading to more conjecture about what did the NFL know, what did they not know, and did they try to cover up what they knew, and how in the world did they expect nobody would ever see it if they knew it existed?

There’s all kinds of big problems here for a host of people not named Ray Rice.

The long knives are out for a lot of people on this.

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RUSH: This is James in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Great to have you, sir. Thank you for waiting. You’re on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. FairTax dittos to you. My comment is about the Ray Rice situation. The Democrat Party is pretty much always telling us how men and women are equal. You know, women should be on the front lines for the infantry. Hillary Clinton dodging bullets in Bosnia, make any SEAL team proud. I don’t see what the big deal is with him cold cocking her. I mean, if she had cold cocked him, we wouldn’t have even heard about it. So I just don’t get it. I’m confused.

RUSH: Now, James, James, clearly you are being facetious here to illustrate a point. You clearly don’t support —

CALLER: I’m surprised you haven’t come up with that one yet.

RUSH: You clearly don’t support Ray Rice or anybody else knocking a woman out? I mean, even if she spat on him as is reputed to have happened.

CALLER: I’m just confused. Maybe I’m a low-information voter. I mean, look, I’m being told that men and women are equal.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: Women should be on the firing lines. You know, look, Hillary Clinton —

RUSH: Hillary Clinton dodging sniper fire.

CALLER: Exactly. What about that soldier that was caught in Iraq? She held off a whole platoon of Iraqis.

RUSH: Right, right, put ’em in foxholes out there, exactly right. Train them to be cops and firefighters and so forth.

CALLER: Look at all the TV shows that you watch. You got a female hot looking chick detective. You got some goofball male detective.

RUSH: Now that is an interesting point. I can’t tell you the number of TV shows I watch where these five-foot-four-inch models overpower 300-pound bodyguards. It is routine out there now. It’s routine in TV shows, where this happens.

CALLER: It’s ridiculous. I mean, we’re being —

RUSH: James, what this illustrates is what I’ve always said about feminism. It’s artificial. It isn’t real because men and women aren’t equal. If feminism was actually what they are portraying it to be, there wouldn’t be this kind of outrage and shock. If they really meant men and women are equal, if they really meant what’s good for the goose, good for the gander, if they really meant all that. But they don’t. Because the outrage that’s occurred here is natural, as it should be, and it points out the differences that exist by nature between men and women, that they can’t change.

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RUSH: Now, swerving into the Ray Rice NFL circumstance, it’s kind of amazing out there. It seems, ladies and gentlemen, that it is uniformly negative toward the NFL and Roger Goodell right now. The conclusion in the Drive-Bys — and this is not just the sports Drive-Bys — the conclusion in the Drive-Bys and the media, they don’t believe the NFL didn’t know that video existed, the video inside the elevator. It was there. I mean, the elevator video was there. Somebody had it. TMZ got it. The new Walter Cronkite of American media, Harvey Levin at TMZ, got it.

So people are drawing conclusions. Well, the NFL, why didn’t they request it? But beyond that, as I said earlier in today’s busy broadcast, everybody knows what had to have happened in there. The two people involved admitted it. And strangely, both apologized for it. But if the elevator doors open and here’s Ray Rice dragging his unconscious fiancee out of there, everybody knows what went on. But it’s fascinating. It wasn’t until anybody saw it that the two-game suspension was judged to be insufficient and now he’s banned indefinitely from the NFL and fired by the Baltimore Ravens.

And now all these people are charging cover-up. The NFL had to know it. What did they know, when did they know it? Why did they try to make it so this guy could continue to play despite all they do to promote women being involved in the league. The NFL, ladies and gentlemen, is not accustomed to this kind of negative attention. Some ESPN people have been vicious toward Goodell. A lot of this has been brought on by Harvey Levin himself who said last night that TMZ said that they had proof the NFL knew about the Ray Rice video inside the elevator and that they were going to release additional information on that today.

They said that the NFL, specifically the commissioner, Roger Goodell, may have some serious questions to answer today because TMZ plans to release additional information on the fiasco. Well, the information they released was that law enforcement had the video. The NFL said, “We didn’t know it existed.” So everybody said, “Well, why didn’t you ask for it?” This is a casino. There isn’t anything in a casino that is not videotaped.

This is a casino. Everything that happens in a casino is monitored by somebody somewhere. There are cameras everywhere. Certainly the public areas, the elevators, the casinos, the hallways where guest rooms are. There are cameras everywhere and therefore there’s videotape or video evidence of it. And yet there didn’t seem to be any interest in getting it.

Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Harvey Levin last night on Fox Eyeball News 5 in Washington, the question, “The NFL claims they didn’t know about this particular video before today. Well, what do you know, Harvey?”

LEVIN: I now believe they actually turned a blind eye to it. And it’s a shameful story, that the NFL knew that this surveillance video existed. They knew that this casino had surveillance video. I know they knew that. They didn’t do anything to look at this video. The prosecutors had this. The police had this. I know other people had this video, too. And it was no secret that she was pulled out of an elevator unconscious. And the NFL, it almost feels like they didn’t want to know, and that’s really bad.

RUSH: Remember now, this is TMZ, and to the low-information viewer, this, along with The Daily Show, is gospel. This is gospel. Bill Rhoden, who is a columnist at the New York Times, was on CBS This Morning today. They’re talking about all of this and here’s what Bill Rhoden said.

RHODEN: If we find out that Roger Goodell knew about this video and saw it, you really have to start thinking about impeachment, because this is completely unacceptable. I mean, it’s beyond unacceptable.

RUSH: Oh, no, now there it is, the dreaded I-word, impeachment of the commissioner, Roger Goodell, mentioned now by William Rhoden of the New York Times. The sports media is getting revved up here to impeach Goodell. They all love Bill Clinton, keep in mind. They love Bill Clinton. They love Al Sharpton. The love the Reverend Jackson. And Goodell didn’t do anything! Ray Rice is the guy that did something, but, boy, if he knew it and tried to cover it up, oh, boy. I’ll tell you, they’re not gonna stop ’til they get to the bottom of this.

Here’s Howard Kurtz on America’s Newsroom this morning on Fox. Martha MacCallum talking to him said, “The idea’s been put out there that maybe Condoleezza Rice is a person for the job, commissioner of the NFL. She somewhat jokingly said in the past that she didn’t want to run for office, but that would be her favorite job. Big football fan.”

KURTZ: If the job were to become vacant, which is a possibility, I think Condi Rice would be an interesting choice, because she not only brings the credibility of having been a high government official, but, as a woman, you can be assured that she would not take this lightly.

RUSH: So if we had a female commissioner of the NFL, none of this would have gotten as far as it’s gotten, according to Howard Kurtz. If we had a female commissioner in there, you can be assured she would not take this lightly. I don’t think anybody is taking this lightly now. Remember at the beginning of this, the NFL fell back on the notion that we don’t have a policy for spousal abuse. We got a policy for performance enhancing drugs, and we got a policy for substance abuse, and we have a policy for driving under the influence, and we have a policy for all these other things. By the way, folks, we’ve had now an opening weekend of the National Football League. Is anybody talking about the games?

They aren’t, are they? They’re talking about wife beating, spousal abuse, suspensions. And the media’s gleeful, by the way, in reporting this stuff. Yeah, there’s a member of the San Francisco 49ers who is now accused of wife beating or spousal abuse. And you’ve got all the DUIs and all the other suspensions galore. The media simply relishes this.

There were some pretty good athletic performances, pretty good game performances over the weekend, and very little of that is being discussed. But the NFL said they didn’t have a policy for this. So they were flying blind two games for Ray Rice, despite everybody knowing what happened in the elevator. And there was an immediate outrage, “Two weeks, that’s not nearly enough for beating up a woman, no, no, no.” Then they saw the video and now he’s gone, never to return, more than likely.

John Harbaugh, the coach of the Ravens, after practice last night held a press conference. Reporter said: “Coach Harbaugh, what was it like to see that video” of Ray Rice decking his fiancee?


HARBAUGH: You know, it’s, uh… It’s something we saw for the first time today, you know, all of us, and, um, it changed things, of course. You know, it made things a little bit different.

RUSH: And a lot of people ask, “Why? You had to know what went on in there. You had to know what happened in there. She didn’t get drunk and fall over. Everybody knew he beat her up. He said so. So why does seeing it matter? Why did that change things?” This is what people are asking. Another reporter said, “Coach Harbaugh, you came into the league as a head coach when Ray [Rice] came in the NFL. You had a strong relationship [with Ray Rice]. This has to be personally kind of devastating to you.”

HARBAUGH: When someone that you care about does wrong, you know, and — and is faced with the consequences of doing w-wrong, and rightfully so, uh, it is — it is tough, it is hurtful. My pain is for both of them as a couple, you know, and — and going forward my hope is that they can make it work. I hope they can weather this part of it, too. And I’ll be praying for that, you know, and — and if I could help in any way — you know, my wife and I could help in any way — we will.

RUSH: And he wasn’t the only one. Coach Ditka on ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown, Trey Wingo said, “Coach, what do you need to hear from the organization? What do you need to hear from them?”

DITKA: It’s a tough call. I want to say one thing: I don’t know Ray at all. I’m sure he’s not a bad guy, but he made a bad mistake. Hey, two lives are ruined. I mean, these two lives are ruined, basically. His earning power is destroyed. That’s an important thing.

RUSH: Uh-oh! Ditka is skating close to the edge again. He’s skating close to the edge again. He’s getting a little too close to the truth out there. He’s gonna have to back off. Sympathy for the couple? Not yet called for. The media collective is not yet ready for sympathy for the couple. Coach Harbaugh went there, and now Coach Ditka. There’s one other person to hear from on this, and that is Ray Lewis.

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RUSH: Ray Lewis, Monday Night Countdown, ESPN. Suzy Kolber. “You were longtime teammates with Ray Rice you were a mentor to Ray Rice. When you saw the video, when you saw it for the first time today, what was your reaction, Ray Lewis?”

LEWIS: I’m disappointed, you know? This is personal for me. So I — I’m torn because, you know, this is a guy, a young man that I — I — I really took up under my wing and tried to mentor to make sure that he had a successful career and stayed away from things like this. But seeing this video, let me be very clear with going through this myself, personally: A man should never, ever put his hands on a woman. Bottom line. There’s no comparison of me and Ray Rice! It’s night and day. It’s night and day of anything we’ve ever been through, and that’s why both situations are totally different.

RUSH: Well, now, what Ray is referring to there is he was charged with murder in an Atlanta in a nightclub, and he plea bargained that down to obstruction of justice, and he’s saying, “Hey, don’t confuse those! Hey, hey, don’t confuse me with what happened here. You know, being accused of murder and wife beating are two totally different things.” By the way, Ray, if it were me, I wouldn’t…

Well, the mentoring obviously, depending your perspective, did work or didn’t.

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RUSH: Janay Rice is the woman who was decked with the left hook in the elevator at the Revel Casino in Atlantic City by then-fiance Ray Rice. She banged her head on the railing inside the elevator, was knocked cold, and then she was dragged out of the elevator by the fiance, Ray Rice, who has now been fired by the Baltimore Ravens and suspended indefinitely with the NFL. She is standing by Ray Rice during what she calls “this horrible nightmare.” Via the Baltimore Sun, she posted the following message to her private Instagram account.

Quote, “I woke up this morning feeling like I had a horrible nightmare, feeling like I’m mourning the death of my closest friend. But to have to accept the fact that it’s reality is a nightmare in itself. No one knows the pain that [the] media and unwanted opinions from the public has caused my family.”

No one knows the pain that the media and unwanted opinions from the public has caused my family.

“To make us relive a moment in our lives that we regret every day is a horrible thing. To take something away from the man I love that he has worked his ass off for all his life just to gain ratings is horrific. THIS IS OUR LIFE! What don’t you all get. If your intentions were to hurt us, embarrass us, make us feel alone, take all happiness away, you’ve succeeded on so many levels. Just know we will continue to grow and show the world what real love is! Ravensnation we love you!”

Now, I am by no means, ladies and gentlemen, equipped to deal with the psychology of this, but there’s a cautionary tale here for everybody that’s on social media that so desperately wants fame and is vomiting everything about themselves on all of these social media sites, desperate to get on a reality show, desperate to have TMZ call them. “No one knows the pain that the media and unwanted opinions from the public has caused my family. To make us relive a moment in our lives that we regret every day is a horrible thing. To take something away from the man I love that he’s worked his ass off for all his life just to gain ratings is horrific.”

So she thinks this was all done to get ratings. She thinks the media is using them for ratings and so forth. I’m reminded it was I guess the week before last. Remember when the NFL, due to public pressure at the original Ray Rice suspension only being two games, there was an outrage, I mean, outrage. It was in the media primarily, and so the NFL, “Okay, okay, okay, you may have a point. All right, new policy, first occurrence of wife beating is a six-game suspension. And then the next occurrence of wife beating is you’re gone for a year.”

And a woman called here and said that is not going to work because these women marry these guys for the paycheck. They marry these guys for the lifestyle. And if now they are going to be responsible for penalizing the paycheck and ending the lifestyle, they’re not gonna report it, if that’s what it means. And so I look at Janay Rice standing by her man here, at least today, last night, yesterday, and it kind of makes the point that the woman made when she reached us on the phones.

There are a couple more audio sound bites I want to get through. First off, Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots was on with I guess Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning, and Charlie Rose said, “Some are looking at this and saying that, in fact, this is a tough defining moment for the NFL, and Robert, I mean, you’re part of the NFL.”


KRAFT: Anyone that witnessed that video yesterday has to be outraged and really disgusted to see someone associated with us doing something like that. Anyone who’s a real man doesn’t hit a woman. I know our commissioner has taken some heat, and I spoke with him yesterday when this came out. He had no knowledge of this video, and, you know, the way he’s handled this situation himself, coming out with the mea culpa in his statement a couple weeks ago or 10 days ago and setting a very clear policy, how we conduct ourselves in the NFL, I thought was excellent.

RUSH: Looks like the owners are gonna be standing by commissioner Goodell here, and the media will jump on and demand impeachment. A couple people at ESPN have demanded that about six or seven people involved here, the owner of the Ravens should be forced to sell the team. Ozzie Newsome should resign. He’s the general manager of the Ravens. Coach Harbaugh should resign. Goodell should resign. I mean, ESPN’s all over this with all the people that ought to quit and skedaddle. Then Gayle King, friend of Oprah and cohost of CBS This Morning said to Robert Kraft, “Right now he’s suspended indefinitely. What would ‘indefinitely’ mean to you?”

KRAFT: Well, I don’t think he’ll play another NFL game. I’ll be shocked if some team would pick him up, but that’s not my —

KING: But you wouldn’t pick him up?

KRAFT: No.

RUSH: No. He’d be shocked if any other team did. Now, may I mention a name, ladies and gentlemen? That name would be Michael Vick. Now, somebody needs to refresh my memory on something here, before I get too far out on this. Michael Vick, as you know, was caught running a dogfighting ring. It was reported that the dogs in the dogfighting ring that lost the dogfights were put to death. It was so outrageous and so horrible that Michael Vick went to jail over all this.

He went to jail, came out, immediately began a rehabilitation campaign, and eventually found his way back in the league some three years later with the Philadelphia Eagles. And he has stayed aboveboard. He’s played well enough that he’s still in the league. He’s now backing up the starting quarterback for the New York Jets. Now, here’s what I don’t remember. Were there any pictures, because a lot of people say, “Hey, hey, Rush, if Vick can come back, and he was killing dogs and treating them inhumanely and doing all that dogfighting stuff, running gambling rings and stuff, if Vick can come back, why can’t Ray Rice?”

And my answer was, “Were there any pictures of Michael Vick mistreating the dogs?”

I don’t remember. (interruption) There were no pictures of the dogs’ necks being broken? No pictures of dogs being shot, no pictures of that? (interruption) Not with Michael Vick himself, but other people in his group were seen doing it, but he wasn’t? (interruption) Well, I saw pictures of the dogs. I mean, the dogs were scrawny and they were Pit Bulls. It was not pretty. But I just don’t remember.

The reason I ask is the difference here is there are pictures, there is video of what Ray Rice did. Look, it’s not profound, but it is interesting. Everybody knew what went on in that elevator, but without seeing it, two-game suspension. Everybody knew he knocked her unconscious, but there weren’t any pictures.

So knowing but with no pictures, two-game suspension. Then the video, then the pictures, and he’s fired and he’s out of the league indefinitely. Now, Vick came back and is with the Jets after two or three years with the Eagles, but I don’t recall there were any pictures. If there were no pictures of what Vick did, then it’s not as difficult to overcome, if there were no pictures.

Do you remember why we went into Somalia, folks, that led to Black Hawk Down? Do you remember why we went into Somalia? (interruption) No, it was the New York Times newspaper. There was a front page, black-and-white still shot above the fold in the New York Times of a starving black Somalian kid, with insects flying around.

The picture accompanied the news of how the warlords in Somalia were mistreating the general population, stealing all the food, starving everybody and so forth. Nothing happened. The news reports were out there for weeks and weeks about what was going on and nobody said anything. But then the picture hit.

George H. W. Bush was forced to send an invading army to the beaches of Somalia to try to apprehend and get Mohammed Farrah Aideed Sahib Skyhook, who was the warlord committing all these atrocities. Just that one picture. If it weren’t for that picture we’d have never gone into Somalia. That was 1992 or whatever, George H. W. Bush. So I’m just asking.

I don’t know if Rice can overcome this. That picture is never gonna go away. The picture is there. I mean, if Ray Rice years from now, whatever… I think it’s unlikely because he plays running back, and there’s a surplus of running backs in the NFL. There’s more than you need. They’re everywhere out there. You know, he’s 26 now, and he didn’t have a good year last year.

After he’s out of the game for however long, by the time he comes back (at least minimum one year of inactivity), tries to come back into a league where running backs are plentiful — and you add the fact that this picture, this video is gonna trail him as long as he’s in public life. No matter what amends he makes, no matter what steps he takes, these pictures inside that elevator are gonna be following him everywhere he goes.

I don’t know how he comes back from that.

I don’t know how that video is ever subordinated to irrelevancy. I don’t know that if there were pictures of Michael Vick of actually whatever happened to those dogs. I don’t know that he would have come back. I don’t know. I’m just speculating. But in Ray Rice’s case just the football facts of this, in terms of a comeback, make it a little bit challenging and problematic.

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RUSH: Well, Nike has just fired Ray Rice and Ravens fans and stores are dumping Ray Rice jerseys out of the retail outlets. Ravens are offering jersey exchanges to people that have a Ray Rice jersey. Come in and dump it and get a replacement. Get a Terrell Suggs jersey instead of Ray Rice. If you don’t like that, get a Ray Lewis memorial jersey. (Ahem.) And then Nike has let Ray Rice go.

This is gonna be bad

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