RUSH: You know, folks, I was at dinner last night, and I was telling some people about the Chris Cuomo quote that I played earlier in the week, and they didn’t believe me. They said, “Rush, surely you misunderstood that.” No, I didn’t. So I want you to hear this again. This is Chris Cuomo. He is the son of Mario “The Pious” as you know. And he is a member of the media now. He’s morning show host over at CNN. The show’s called New Day. On Monday everybody’s celebrating Obama’s trip to Cuba, and Alisyn Camerota notices a shirt that Chris Cuomo’s wearing. She says, “Chris, I can’t help but notice your shirt here. Tell us the history of that shirt.” Now, listen carefully, because in this sound bite is what Chris Cuomo thinks communism is.
CUOMO: My guayabera? This shirt belonged to my father. It was given to him by Fidel Castro. It marked conversations going on decades ago that were the same as those today. The concern was the freedom of the people. What is the point of this communist regime if it is not to truly make everyone equal, not at the lowest level, not by demoralizing everyone, but lifting everyone up. My father, generations of politicians have been fighting this. So I wear this shirt as a reminder of that.
RUSH: You know, that was one of the most teachable moments I’ve ever had. All my life I have been asking myself why so many leftists are supportive of communism when everybody knows — I thought everybody knows communism kills, communism denies liberty and freedom, communism equals poverty, communism equals political prisons, communism builds walls that keep people in because everybody wants to leave.
And in that context I’ve always said, “How come so many of them, many in the media and most of them in the Democrat Party, how do they wax so eloquently of communism?” What was it about Gorbachev, Cuba, Che Guevara? And then it all became clear when Chris Cuomo defined it. He has been taught what’s the point of this 50-year Regime down there, he said, if it’s not to make everybody equal by lifting everybody up. My father’s been fighting this for 50 years. So these people are waiting for the great communist payoff of upward mobility, liberty and freedom, and wealth for everybody. Well, it’s no wonder.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’m not kidding. This Chris Cuomo sound bite… I was at dinner last night with some friends, and I couldn’t… Even when quoted him accurately, verbatim, they somehow didn’t get it. Maybe they just didn’t think it was that big a deal. As somebody who came of age, if you will, in this entire arena of politics, with anti-communism being one of the animating aspects of my political education… Because it was the antithesis of freedom and liberty, and it shaped the world of my parents and grandparents.
My grandparents, when Nikita Khrushchev shows up at the UN and pounds his shoe and says, “We will bury you,” we will do whatever to your grandchildren, they had no choice but than to believe it. They took the threat seriously. So my political education, if you will, was focused on the evils of communism and the failures worldwide. And during this entire period, as I would grow older and become even more informed about it — more educated — I couldn’t escape seeing your average news anchor here or news reporter or New York Times writer there speak and write just fawningly of individual communists, leaders, practitioners, and countries.
It never made any sense, knowing what I knew about communism. “How in the world can these people not see the inherent evil?” In fact, as journalists, what is it that made them oblivious to the fact that if we ever did fall prey to communists, they’d be the first people put in jail? They’d be the first people shut up. There’s no such thing as freedom of the press. State-Run Media here, State-Run Media there. Which many would argue we already have here, in a lighthearted way. But then I heard this Chris Cuomo, who as I say, grew up in the home of Mario Cuomo and was surrounded by liberal Democrats his whole life, and look what he thinks communism is!
Cuba is still in the middle of its 50 year struggle to make everybody equal. Not at the lowest level, not by demoralizing everybody, but lifting everybody up. In whose world is that what communism is? Well, obviously in a lot of liberals’ minds, that’s what it is. Communism is about equality and prosperity and happiness and no competition and everybody’s the same. So communism is the road or the route to utopia? It has to be. And all these years I thought I’ve been up against people who knew what it was, but for some reason didn’t want to believe it.
I didn’t know until Monday of this week that I was up against people who don’t even know what it is, who have a totally skewed definition of it, who think it is vastly superior to capitalism in the United States, ’cause it holds so much more promise, you see. “There’s no poverty in communism, if it’s done right. There’s no suffering in communism, if it’s done right.” They’re all waiting for that. At some point, it’s gonna pay off. It hasn’t ever anywhere in the world, but the promise is there. I guess if you’ve been taught that, it’s all you know. Anyway, it was just an eye-opening thing for me.
I don’t mean to beat a dead horse with it, but I think it’s so instructive in informing us what these people think about other domestic political issues in this country, why they so hate capitalism, why they so love big government, why they so love command-and-control economies. It’s all there. Communism is utopia. Communism. And they’re just waiting for the right people. What is, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama’s slogan? What does it mean? “We’re the guys who are finally going to make it happen,” and of course, it can’t work. Intellectually, economically, it’s impossible. The evidence is all over the world, and yet that’s denied, because the hope and the desire overwhelms the real.