RUSH: This is Donna in Frederick, Maryland. I’m glad you called. You’re up first and it’s great to have you here. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Thanks for having me on. You know, we’ve been hearing a lot about the theme “black lives matter.” But the sad reality is that the African-American community, if you take a good look at their progressive representatives who choose their party over their own citizens, and I feel that, to a certain degree, the mayor allowed too much time to pass, which allowed the situation to escalate —

RUSH: Now —

CALLER: — and they’re gonna try and pin it —

RUSH: That is what I wanted you to say. The mayor allowed too much time. I want to ask you a question about that.

CALLER: Sure.

RUSH: Do you think the mayor allowed too much time ’cause she’s incompetent?

CALLER: No. I just think that perhaps she was maybe not as on top of it as she could have been.

RUSH: I think she was totally on top of it. You want to hear why?

CALLER: Yes, I do. ‘Cause I’m trying to process that thought.

RUSH: One of the great unspoken things that’s happening in police departments all over the country, in Ferguson, in Detroit, everywhere, the Obama administration is essentially taking over and rewriting police procedural manuals under the philosophies that Eric Holder and Obama have toward policing.

Their attitude is the police are responsible for this. The police, particularly if they happen to be militarized in the way they look, their uniforms and the vehicles they drive around town. If it looks like a military operation, that’s really bad. There’s an unseen, an underreported effort by the Obama administration to totally take over local police departments.

To illustrate, Obama — you were gonna mention, I know you were gonna mention ’cause Snerdley says here she was eventually gonna say that the theory she holds is that the governor of Maryland, who’s white, is ultimately gonna be blamed for this. End up blaming the governor for not acting fast enough. That’s a logical, by the way, thing to think, given the Obama administration, given the media, and given that’s the closest Republican you can find is in the state capital. So blame him.

Now, why was his response delayed? Because the mayor didn’t call him and ask for the National Guard. The mayor waited. Why did the mayor not institute the curfew until tonight, while everything was going to hell yesterday? Why did she not institute the curfew until tonight instead of last night? Now she’s out trying to explain what she meant when she said that we had to give the protesters space to destroy. She’s acting like, how could anybody have really thought that she actually meant that? She’s trying to walk it back. I have that coming up, too.

I think what’s actually going on here — there are many things going on. I don’t mean to focus on one thing as the key that unlocks every answer here. But this circumstance in Baltimore will and is providing yet another opportunity for Obama, who’s not even there and doesn’t even appear to care about it, doesn’t even appear to be talking about it, his brand-new attorney general to take over the Baltimore police department. I happen to know, I have a news story here that says Obama called the governor, and he’s urged the governor to exercise restraint against the protesters.

What that means is: You keep control of your cops. Your cops will make this worse because your cops are the reason for this.

It doesn’t matter if they’re black cops. It doesn’t matter if they’re white cops. The police force is the means of oppression. That’s the message. The police force is how the oppressors keep the oppressed oppressed. Now, in Baltimore they can’t make the case that it’s racial or racist, because it isn’t. So what they have to do in Baltimore is just make — this is a tough one for them because these are big government people. They believe in big government. Now they have to be seen criticizing it. It’s very delicate for them. I’m talking about Obama and Loretta Lynch and all these other libs who really want to rein in police departments.

Ferguson’s been neutered, for all intents and purposes, and it’s gonna happen to the Baltimore police department. I think it’s 18 or 19 police departments now since Obama has been president that new federal guidelines have been issued after problems occurred in communities where the police departments were blamed. This police department’s being blamed. The Regime is putting out the notion that the police department’s what caused this and is responsible for it simply by virtue of a presence. If you want these agitators to get even more agitated, if you want these protester to get even more protestful, then you send the cops out there.

What we must do is keep the cops away, otherwise you’re gonna provoke the protesters even more. The benefit of the doubt is given to the protesters because that’s where the sympathy is. The protesters are part of the grievance industry. The grievance industry is legitimate. They are African-Americans. They are minorities. They are oppressed. They have been oppressed since the days this country was founded. There’s a commentator, professor at Columbia, Marc Lamont Hill on CNN last night saying that that’s all this is, is an uprising. It’s not even a riot. It’s an uprising of African-Americans who finally can’t take it anymore, fed up with 230 years of oppression.

The problem for Marc Lamont Hill, again, as it is for all these people, is that the oppressors are all Democrats. The oppresses are all liberals, and many of the oppressors here are African-American. So you’ll have to forgive them for being confused and you’ll have to forgive them for maybe saying contradictory things, ’cause normally in a situation like this there’s a nearby Republican somewhere that can be blamed for all of this, who also would happen to be white. That doesn’t exist here. So they’re having to improvise and ad-lib. And that’s why I think they’re slipping up and praising this mother, when normally that kind of thing wouldn’t happen.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The president of the United States just answered a question about Baltimore during press conference that he had with the prime minister of Japan. So much of this is predictable because we’ve seen all this before. As I say, this isn’t really that different, either. I was going to say that what’s really striking about this is the absence of a genuine racial component. The most you can say, if you want to try to say there’s race involved here, is that one of the cops or a couple cops involved in the Freddie Gray thing last week were white, the cops that threw him into the van. But they still don’t know when Freddie Gray got hurt or what exactly happened.

There aren’t any whites around here, folks. There aren’t any Republicans around here, and there aren’t any conservatives around here, and therefore the usual targets can’t be blamed. So instead what they have to do is blame oppressors. And this is tricky for them because the oppressors are the government here. But these are big government people. So this is a real, real tricky thing for the left to try to manage and propagandize and manage the public relations of, because this is all happening where liberal Democrats have run the show for decades, and in Baltimore particularly, black liberal Democrats have run the show for decades.

Sixty percent of the city population is black. This is not Ferguson in any way, shape, manner, or form, yet they’re making it look like it. They’re doing everything they can to make it look like it. They’re even trying to say that some of the people protesting in Baltimore are still ticked off at what happened in Ferguson with “hands up, don’t shoot.” But as I mentioned — let me read to you from the Baltimore Sun story about what happened on Mondawmin Mall and the mayor and her curious timing on her curfew announcement.

I mean, you had all hell breaking loose late yesterday afternoon and last evening, and she announces a curfew starting today, which gave the protestors space last night to get it all out of their systems. I think what’s happening here, Baltimore is getting the Benghazi treatment in a sense because Benghazi, there wasn’t a Republican around there, either. There’s no way to blame what happened in Benghazi on a Republican, so they had to find somebody, and that was that poor sap video maker who still doesn’t know what happened to him, other than he is in jail.

Now, Catherine Herridge at Fox News just reported that a data company has confirmed the 50 social media accounts that were agitating in Ferguson are also agitating in Baltimore. So you have people who have seen an opportunity. I mean, most of the protesters in Ferguson were out of town, and you’ve even had Elijah Cummings of the Congressional Black Caucasians who said the same thing about Baltimore. Most of the protesters are actually from out of town. But a data company, data analytics company, has just confirmed the 50 social media accounts agitating in Ferguson are also agitating in Baltimore.

The Twitter sewer, folks, is agitating, and the Baltimore Sun references it this way: “Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake declared a curfew across the city starting Tuesday and for the next week, from 10 pm to 5 am.” Well, you can get a lot of destruction done by 10 pm. That’s an awful late curfew. A curfew of ten o’clock? For crying out loud. Well, I guess they gotta get people into Camden Yards. Yes, the Orioles are in town all week.

Oh, did you happen to see one of the club vice presidents, a son of the owner, John Angelos, with a statement because of what happened on Saturday, I think he had a statement in the paper on Sunday. Man. I mean, it was just think tank liberalism on parade. I’m reading it in stunned disbelief ’cause the guy, it’s exactly what somebody would write if there were a bunch of Republicans nearby to blame. But there aren’t any here.

Anyway, back to the Baltimore Sun. “Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake declared a curfew across the city starting Tuesday and for the next week, from 10 pm to 5 am for adults and 9 pm to 5 am for children aged 14 and younger.” Well, this raises a question, why was there no curfew last night when all of the mayhem was going on? Why impose it so late tonight? We can guess. Look, folks, these are liberal Democrats. I mean, that tells us a lot about these people. Whether you want to admit it or not, it does. And one of the things it tells us is that the protestors are righteous.

The protesters are legitimately aggrieved and cannot be held responsible. They are simply reacting to oppressive forces, even though they may be coming from a Democrat mayor or Democrat police chief, Democrat commissioner, Democrat-run police department, doesn’t matter. I mean, the narrative has to hold, because the true innocents here are the mayhem makers. The protesters, above all else, will always be innocent.

There will always be, when the left is in charge, a legitimate reason for this property destruction, for the fires, for the rioting, for the chaos. There’s always a legitimate reason for it in liberalism. It really doesn’t matter who’s in charge because what they want to do is use the occasion of all of these kinds of events to grow their government, federal government, and exercise and enact even more control over local communities. So circumstances like this, events like this just fall right in the palm of their hands.

Back to the Baltimore Sun story. This is the stuff that happened yesterday. “The incident stemmed from a flier that circulated widely among city school students via social media about a ‘purge’ to take place at 3 pm, starting at Mondawmin Mall and ending downtown. Such memes have been known to circulate regularly among city school students, based on the film ‘The Purge,’ about what would happen if all laws were suspended.”

You see, that is nirvana. That is utopia when the oppressors are shut down. When there is nobody around that can tell you “no;” nobody around that can’t say “don’t;” nobody around that can punish you when you do things; nobody around that can tell you you can’t do that. Whatever you want to do is fine. That was what the movie was about. And it encouraged that kind of thinking and encouraged enacting it, reenacting it.

“The flier included an image of protesters smashing the windshield of a police car Saturday during a march spurred by the death of Freddie Gray. … The confrontation near Mondawmin escalated quickly. Smoke filled the air as police responded with shields and a tactical vehicle. Demonstrators pelted officers with rocks, bricks and bottles and assaulted a photojournalist –” For those of you in Rio Linda, that’s a picture taker. “– and officers fired back with tear gas and pepper balls. Demonstrators set a police vehicle ablaze at North and Pennsylvania avenues.

“Nearby, they looted a CVS drug store, which store officials said had already closed, before it caught fire. Rioters cut the fire hose as firefighters battled the blaze. Looting spread along Howard and Centre streets as afternoon turned to evening. Another group of people was destroying property around North and Fulton avenues, police said, and a car was set on fire at North Avenue and Pulaski Street.”

Just like the flier told them to do. This didn’t have anything to do with Freddie Gray and it didn’t have anything to do with the Gentle Giant. It had nothing to do with anything other than the flier that went out and encouraged this kind of behavior. Now, recent events like Ferguson, I mean, are on everybody’s mind, but there was a trigger unrelated to Ferguson, or even Trayvon Martin. The trigger was the flier put out on social media to encourage this very thing. They even had pictures of a burning cop car from Saturday. Go do it again. Do it in real life. Go out and act like there are no laws stopping you, and that’s what happened.

“All but one gate to Oriole Park at Camden Yards was closed, with a game set to begin at 7:05 pm But team officials postponed the game less than an hour before first pitch was scheduled. About five stores in the 600 block of Eutaw Street had busted windows and were looted after rioters came through about 4 pm. … Boubacar Sall said looters destroyed his sisterÂ’s store, BenitaÂ’s. They stole hair extensions, a television set and boxes of hair products. Rishan George, who lives on the block, said, ‘you call 911 and nobody answers.'”

You don’t need a gun ’cause the cops are gonna protect you, except they’re not because the cops are being restrained. Obama calls the governor and says you need to exercise police restraint here. The sign of the police is gonna make it worse. Thereby cementing the notion that the cops are the bad guys; that cops are the problem; that cops are not the solution because the protesters are legitimate and Obama’s out there today after his press conference with the Japanese prime minister. He gets a question about Baltimore, “Hey, the protests were entirely peaceful. The violence only started when the cops showed up.” I’m paraphrasing.

That’s not true. But you see that was predictable, too. The innocents here, I mean it in plural, the innocent people here are the protesters. The innocent people are the rabble-rousers. The innocent people are those destroying storefronts, because, you see, they have a reason. They were oppressed by a wicked, mean country, founded dead set against them and all of these uprisings are just that. Marc Lamont Hill says they’re not riots, you can’t call these riots. These are strategic uprisings. These are designed for the people in the community to show they’re fed up and they’re not gonna take it anymore.

Fed up with who? Again, you cannot find a Republican or conservative anywhere that has any kind of power or any responsibility or culpability for anything that’s made these people mad. Like I say, if I were African-American, same age as I am now, been voting Democrat all my life, listening to all these promises, I would be ticked off, too. Empty promise after empty promise. And not only that, promises made to me haven’t been fulfilled. I’ve been also hearing how the people that are oppressing me are gonna be taken care of. These rich people, we’re gonna raise taxes on ’em, we’re gonna get your money back from ’em, we’re gonna punish these people.

And they just get richer, and I continue to lose what little I had to begin with. The Democrats continue to say to me, “You can’t trust the Republicans, count on us, we’ll protect you, we’ll provide for.” And it doesn’t happen. I end up getting angrier and more unhappy by the day. And if I stop and actually be rational for a moment, I realize there aren’t any Republicans around to be mad at.

I gotta take a break. If I get started I’ll just have to interrupt this so let’s take the brief, obscene profit break now, and we’ll come back and review the mayor and how she’s trying to swerve out of what she says was a misunderstood comment about giving the protestors space to destroy.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’ve got the mayor here. Here’s Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. We’re gonna go back and review what she said on Saturday, first up.

RAWLINGS-BLAKE: I’ve made it very clear that I work with the police and instructed them to do everything that they could to make sure that the protestors were able to exercise their right to free speech. It’s a very delicate balancing act because while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other, you know, things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.

RUSH: That’s perfectly clear. “We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.” So there was a media cacophony in reaction. And last night the mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, held another press conference to talk about the rioting, and she got a question: “What do you make of the criticism that your words might have encouraged some of the activity on the streets today, Mayor?”