RUSH: Now, I want to say some things here about Freddie Gray, but you run a risk in doing so. Some people might interpret as attacking victim, and I want to assure everybody it’s not the case, and I want to remind everybody what I do here. You know, I’m a harmless, lovable, little fuzzball. I do not have an attack mentality. I’m not even offering this in any kind of a defensive posture. I just want people to understand what happens here. I go through the day, every day, and I consume news.
It’s one of my hobbies. It’s my habit, and it’s also my job. Therefore, it doesn’t seem like work. That’s the best thing that a job can be, actually, when it doesn’t seem like work. When you love it, it never will be work. But I care about a lot of things deeply, passionately, profoundly, and I am very sure what I know. I am very confident what I know is right is right. I’m not a person that runs around with ambivalence just to avoid offending people, and I don’t soft-pedal what I think needs to be said so as not to offend people.
I just think what I think and I’m very confident of it, and I don’t mind if it sounds that I’m sure of myself. But at the same time, I do not collect all of this news and do all of the show prep for the express purpose of coming here and attacking things or attacking people. Nor do any of us on the right. We’re too busy in defense, which is essentially what I do. In the course of all of this show prep, I see things that I believe in under assault. I see traditions, institutions, people, issues, principles, ideas under constant assault by the left and the Democrat Party.
And because I’m confident and just certain they’re wrong, I use the opportunity I have in this radio program to come here every day and correct it. So there are no attacks here. What goes on on this program is a defense of the things I hold dear, which are under constant assault. No, I want to go back… It might have been yesterday. The days run together. When Mrs. Clinton gave her most recent speech, when she spoke out about what’s going on in Baltimore.
It was one of the most reserved, laid back, less energetic speeches that she’s ever given, and people are commenting on that. But one of the points that Mrs. Clinton made, both directly and indirectly, was that this country has a lot of innocent African-Americans in jail simply because they’re African-Americans, and this has got to stop. I’ve been hearing this my whole life. I’ve been hearing it from the civil rights community. I’ve been hearing it from people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, you name it.
But not just them. Leftist politicians, Democrat Party politicians, they all run around and make this claim. They cite these percentages that show African-American incarceration rates so much dramatically higher than whites, and they automatically conclude that it’s solely because of racism, and for that to be, what they are implying is that most of the African-Americans in jail are innocent.
They never say that. They don’t dare say that. What they hope to convey is the idea that this country’s majority is so racist and so bigoted that it’s just putting black people, black men in jail because it can, whether they’re guilty or not. That’s what they’re trying to create. That thought, that attitude, that reality. And, of course, it’s not true. It’s a totally bogus charge. Now, I’m not suggesting law enforcement’s never wrong. It is, of course. There are people now and then who have been falsely convicted, wrongly convicted, wrongly imprisoned.
When we find out about it, we try to correct it as fast as we can, but it is not the normal. It is not standard operating procedure to convict innocents. In many of these cases, it is juries of peers that have done it and so forth. My point here is that Mrs. Clinton carried this theme again yesterday where and she’s strictly pandering to the African-American vote and the minority community vote all over this country by winking and nodding at them and letting them know that she agrees that there’s all kinds of unjust imprisonment of innocent African-Americans.
And it’s gotta stop — and by God, when she’s president, it is gonna stop!
The fact is, we’ve elected Democrat president, Democrat president, Democrat mayor, Democrat states attorney, and it hasn’t changed, has it? The complaint, like everything else in the civil rights community, is 50 years old. It never changes. The complaint never changes, no matter what the facts are in prison. And even if they did change… Just like this argument that women only make 73¢ for every $1 men make. That isn’t true anymore, except in a few places, like in Barack Obama’s executive office and Hillary Clinton’s Senate office.
It was true, and in a number of these places, they don’t even pay their interns. I don’t want to get sidetracked, but that’s an example. They harp on this 73¢ for every $1 men make as though it’s just been discovered last year and we’re still working on changing it. That’s 30 years old, and that never changes. So Mrs. Clinton goes out yesterday and gives this speech, which is being lauded, and it was nothing more than a wink and a nod to the African-American community.
Now, it’s in that light and within that framework that I want to give you some details about Freddie Gray, because the impression they want you to believe — just like it was the case with the Gentle Giant, they want you to think — it was an innocent, totally innocent young man happened to be African-American, and for that reason alone was a target, and on this particular day it got out of hand and the cops killed the guy. Mrs. Clinton comes up and gives her speech, and she doesn’t say that in so many words.
But she lets the people who believe it — wrongly. She leads them to believe that she agrees with them, without ever saying it. That’s the wink and a nod. But the question is how can Hillary and Obama (he says the same stuff) and the rest of the radical left complain about people being over-incarcerated with people like Freddie Gray walking around free? There is an example of someone…
If he would have been in jail, he might have been alive today. That’s a sad reality. But if there’s anybody that should have, based on his record, been incarcerated, it is Freddie Gray, and he’s not. He wasn’t. He sold heroin. He was a junkie. He was a drug dealer. There’s nothing redeeming about this poor guy. He’d been arrested more than 20 times. I ask myself, “Whatever happened to three strikes and you’re out?”
(interruption)
No, I’ve not forgotten about Madam Secretary. Just hang tough. That’s why we’re three hours here.
Now, there’s a Washington Post article from last Friday that says that Freddie Gray’s mother was disabled and addicted to heroin. She couldn’t read. Given the numbers that we know in the Freddie Gray neighborhood — 60% dropout rate, 50% eighth grade reading level, over 50% don’t have a job — it looked like Freddie couldn’t read very well? His mother couldn’t. Freddie was four grades behind in reading, according to the family who were seeking a cash settlement for lead paint poisoning.
They got $18,000, lead paint poisoning. That’s the court case that some people mistook as his spinal injury. Freddie Gray “had two pending drug cases when he died. In one, he was charged with a felony, accused of selling heroin by police who said they had witnessed hand-to-hand exchanges and found drugs in a small potato chip bag hidden in a drainpipe. Last year, he faced a charge that could have put him away for several years, but prosecutors agreed not to pursue the case in exchange for Gray serving 100 hours of community service.
They didn’t want to put him in jail.
Now, you might be shouting, “Yeah, Rush, because there’s no room! We’ve put so many African-Americans in jail that there’s no room.” It’s just part of the narrative of all of this. We only know of Freddie Gray’s record since he was of age, since 18. He died at age 24. We don’t know what he was involved in before he was 18. This rap sheet of his is for six years. Now, I’m not saying anything to attack him, this poor guy Freddie Gray. As I say, the purpose of this is to offer a little perspective.
It’s necessary because we know how they lied and created a false narrative about the Gentle Giant in Ferguson, and we know the damage that false is still doing. Because of the irresponsibility and the abject lying of many in the civil rights community, how many African-American citizens still to this day believe that the Gentle Giant put his hands up, tried to surrender, and got shot in back? It didn’t happen. Yet it is still portrayed that way. The same thing with Eric Garner in New York.
The young man that was supposedly chokeholded to death. He wasn’t chokeholded to death. He died of a heart attack in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. What was this guy doing? Selling individual illegal cigarettes. Individual illegal cigarettes. That was his job, because cigarettes are so expensive in New York because the taxes. So we have a circumstance here… Now, the mayor. We add all this to it. The mayor purposely gave protesters room to roam, told the cops to stand back.
We’ve got eyewitness accounts, ear-witness accounts to people who’ve heard the mayor tell the cops and other authorities to stand back, stand down. We have the mayor’s comment that, unfortunately, that order led to people who wanted to destroy, having the space to do it. But they still didn’t move in to stop those people, either. Then they cancel, they throw a baseball game yesterday with no fans in it. No fans allowed. It just all of this is just mind-boggling.
In the midst of much all of it, we hear the president of the United States go on television and blame Republicans for improperly funding inner cities! So, once again, folks, what’s happening here on this program by telling you the truth about Freddie Gray, is nothing more than an effort to get the truth out to you in an onslaught of lies and misstatements and false narratives put forth by the joint Drive-By Media.
It’s simply an effort to defend the institutions and traditions that promote citizenship, peace, tranquility, greatness, you name it. All of ’em are under assault, or a great number of them are. The left makes heroes out of people that do not deserve to be heroes, and they are not heroic. And when a genuine hero on the left emerges, that person is then set upon, if that person — as with the mother who happened to engage in activity to stop her kid from rioting. The left is now attacking her for child abuse, “beating” her child in public.
Now we’ve got the report on Freddie Gray which the Washington Post story said that a prisoner in the police van said that it looked like he was trying to injure himself (obviously, if that’s true) so it could be blamed on the cops. Whatever has been learned is not gonna be released as promised on Friday because it’s obvious that the people running the show in Baltimore and in Washington want to milk as much of this incident as they can for the furtherance of their own political agenda.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Well, looky what I have here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. Our old buddy Tavis Smiley, who has his own radio talk show on PBS. He has an anti-poverty initiative with Cornel West, and I have praised these guys’ efforts. I think they actually have tried to do some things that improve the situation. I don’t know how much success they’ve had, but nevertheless I have singled them out here, just so you know who they are.
Tavis Smiley has an essay in TIME Magazine where he says, “Protests and Riots Could Become the New Normal,” because of racism and poverty. Racism, ongoing, never-ending racism, ongoing, never-ending poverty, will possibly lead to ongoing riots and uprisings, and they could become the new norm. I’m just summarizing the piece. I haven’t read you any details of it yet.
Under the headline of milking it for all it’s worth, the Reverend Sharpton has spoken up. Al Sharpton has met with the Baltimore mayor, and the PJ Tatler website says that the mayor of Baltimore and Reverend Sharpton are planning a two-day March from Baltimore to Washington, DC. Sharpton is quoted as saying, “‘It is concerning to me that a deadline that the police themselves had set and announced they have now conveniently changed.’ Therefore, he decided to come to Baltimore to meet with local leaders and ‘to schedule a two-day march in May from Baltimore to Washington.’
“‘The march will bring the case of Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Eric Harris to the new attorney general, Loretta Lynch. Ms. Lynch, in her new role that we all supported, must look and intervene in these cases. Justice delayed is justice denied.'” Notice the name Gentle Giant is not here in the list of names that the Reverend Sharpton cites. We’re going to “bring the case of Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Eric Harris…”
These are some unresolved cases of police brutality and violence against African-Americans. He’s gonna march from Charm City all the way to Washington over two days and take these cases to Loretta Lynch and gonna demand — since we supported her becoming a new attorney general — that she got involved and do some justice for us. Obama will be there welcoming them to town. I’m sure the White House will be advising these two on how to get this done. Well, I say, “I’m sure.” I better be a little bit more guarded.
I should probably say that there will be guidance and assistance offered from the office of the president to both the Baltimore mayor and Reverend Sharpton on how to make this two-day march in May as effective as it can be and what that would be defined as, how do you define as effective as it could be. Then you couple that with Tavis Smiley and TIME magazine column: “Protests and Riots Could Become the New Normal.” Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Welcome to the new America, folks. Hope and change! Yeah, seven years, 6-/12 years after the first African-American president’s inaugurated, we have all this rage and anger and promises of a new normal.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Tim in Pittsburgh. We have about a minute, a little bit more. I wanted to get to you before we had to go. Hello.
CALLER: How are you doing, Rush?
RUSH: Good. Thank you.
CALLER: Good. Good. I appreciate you taking this call and everything you do. I just want to express that nobody’s talking about the Vietnam vet who stood up there and said, “I am an American, not a black man. Don’t look at me like that.” That’s the way I took it, and he was trying to stop the rioters.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: He was probably the first one I’ve seen try to go up there and try to stop the rioters.
RUSH: Yeah, see, he’s a problem for them, the people that are milking this and the people profiting from it. You always have to ask who benefits with something like this. You always do.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: And the people benefiting from this will not benefit if African-Americans are not seen to be involved and supportive. That’s why the person you talk about is being ignored. I’ll bet you most people don’t even know what you’re referring to and haven’t seen it, precisely for that reason. It cuts against the grain. Look, I’m gonna ask Ali, Tim, if we can get your number and call you back and continue this tomorrow on Open Line Friday. It’s totally up to you.