RUSH: We’re gonna get to the gorilla business.  That’s easily explained, too. Folks, you remember when the two fish, what kind of fish were they, I keep thinking dolphins or porpoises, way back in the nineties, a couple of them got caught in sea ice, way far north of where they should have been, and the whole country became captivated with, will they find their way out?  What can we do? Can we cut holes in the ice so that the porpoise, the dolphins, whatever they were, can we guide them out? Can we do something? Can we save them?  Everybody became captivated. 

Same thing here, the same principles are involved, except now there was politics in this Cincinnati Zoo thing because there’s politics in everything.  Can’t take it out.  Can’t escape it.  Can’t avoid it.  And I’m gonna explain that also as the program unfolds. 

To show you how silly it got.  For a time Black Lives Matter even got upset about this because they originally thought the parents and the boy were white.  Then when they found out that the parents and boy were black, then all hell broke loose and they had to back off and take a different tack on this.  (interruption)  What are you laughing at?  That’s exactly what happened.  You denying that?  You didn’t know that? 

You didn’t know Black Lives Matter got involved?  (laughing)  It was Black Lives Matter versus gorilla lives matter versus do any life matter, human life versus animal life, what matters most.  Easily explainable in our really screwed-up culture and society today.  I can make it understandable from top to bottom, which I will do, 

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To Harambe, the gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo.  A 400 pound wild animal born in captivity, but gorillas are not domesticated, contrary to what the feminists think.  Don’t most feminists that are married think they’re married to gorillas anyway?  It’s like dragons, folks.  You can’t tame ’em.  You’ve seen Game of Thrones.  You can’t tame a dragon.  These are not pets.  But we name them.  This one’s name was Harambe.  And I assume we think that he knew his name.  And we assume that he probably liked his name. 

So a four-year-old child happens to plunge into the gorilla pen at the Cincinnati Zoo before anybody notices it.  And in order to save his life, the zoo people made the decision to kill the gorilla.  Now, I am totally aware of why so many people think that the zoo made the wrong decision.  I totally understand American pop culture today.  I understand our society.  I understand where it is. 

I understand that, in our culture today, that gorilla, compared to any human being, is the essence of innocence, even a four-year-old child.  In fact, many on the left, don’t doubt me on this, you’re gonna think this is funny or crazy, but I’m dead serious.  Many on the left compare that gorilla in the zoo with unfair imprisonment of human beings.  That zoo is the equivalent of a prison, and of course those kinds of people think that we have too many people in jail in this country. That they are in jail because they’ve been railroaded, not because they’ve committed any crimes.  That’s the first thing. 

It may not be something that they consciously voice, but it is in their subconscious the way they look at this. I’m talking particularly about leftists.  The whole zoo thing is unfair. The whole zoo thing is an example of human bigotry, racism, whatever else, mean-spiritedness, extremism, humans are the cause of global warming.  Humans are the cause of climate change.  Humans are the cause of animal suffering.  Humans are the cause of everything going wrong on earth. 

By definition, these people cannot be familiar with Genesis, and if they were, they would dissociate themselves from it.  They have absolutely no such training, foundation, or awareness of the primacy of humanity on planet Earth as created by God.  Such a mind-set does not exist with them.  It’s the exact opposite.  Humanity is the problem.  Humanity is not the solution. 

So a young child falls in.  There are stages of video that are produced by people that were there, and the first video is always the one that makes the impression, “Looky, that gorilla was trying to save that boy.  He was trying to pull his pants up, even, so he wasn’t ashamed, nude, in that moat.  This gorilla was trying to protect that boy.  That gorilla, he was a new playmate.” 

Don’t forget, America’s most prominent exposure to gorillas is with Koko.  Koko is a female gorilla who picks NFL games every Friday.  Koko uses sign language.  Koko has become a human.  We humanize all animals, particularly those that we can go watch, maybe even pet, get close to.  And we attend to associate — some of us do, some people transfer their own traits to animals and think that there’s no difference other than maybe intelligence or what have you. 

But as I looked at it, it took me one thing to see.  That gorilla is 400 pounds, and when that gorilla scooped that kid up and ran at breakneck speed through that moat, dragging the kid behind him, the gorilla doesn’t know from protecting the little guy boy’s head from banging against the wall.  The gorilla doesn’t know from drowning.  The gorilla doesn’t know from anything.  But most people don’t want to assume that.  They want to assign protector status to the gorilla, as you’ll hear in an audio sound bite. 

The thing is, nobody was gonna get that boy out of that gorilla’s hands.  Nobody was gonna be able to walk, no, there and say, “Hey, Harambe, hey, bud, hey, you know, we need to take that little toy that you just got, we need to take it away from you.”  Right.  It was not going to happen. 

Harambe was not gonna deliver the boy somewhere to a zoo keeper to take it back to its mother.  I know he was holding the boy’s hand.  Sat him up.  I know.  I know how the pictures look.  He was his friend, he was protecting him, was a new buddy down there, understand all that.  Harambe wasn’t gonna hurt him.  Harambe was loving and caring and so forth, probably a better parent than many humans are.  Probably treating that boy better than maybe his own family does.  You just never know.  You just never know, right?  That gorilla could have been teaching us all a lesson on how to deal with kids.

I mean, folks, look at social media, you’ll find all kinds of explanations.  Social media has just become such a sewer that even Fakebook, Google, and all the others are promising to clean it up every 24 hours, hate speech gone in 24 hours.  You want to bet?  Certain hate speech is gonna be applauded, it’s gonna be strategically placed, that against conservatives.  Media lies about conservatives/Republicans will still be featured prominently in trending, you name it. 

But, anyway, I just don’t think there was any way that boy was gonna get out of there alive short of what happened. And I think the people that are being forgotten in all this are the zoo people that had to do it.  I think in all the agony that’s out there today, the people that run that zoo that had to do this are probably feeling the worst of anybody, ’cause that gorilla was part of their lives. The gorilla had a handler, somebody fed the gorilla.

The gorilla’s born in captivity, so the gorilla had a lot of contact with people at this zoo, and to have to take the gorilla out to save the boy, they’re gonna be distressed over this for a long, long time, the people that run that zoo and had to make the decision, whatever, to pull the trigger.  But it comes down to, what do you value here?  Should the boy lose his life because the mother was irresponsible, let him plunge in the first place? 

Should the gorilla’s life take primacy? It was the gorilla’s home. The gorilla wasn’t doing anything to anybody. The gorilla was minding its own business, all of a sudden this four-year-old kid falls in there, it’s the gorilla’s fault?  We gotta kill the gorilla?  Depends on how you value human life versus all other life on the planet.  And even, you know, folks, so sad, it even had a racial component. 

Originally when it was not known what race the child and the parents were, you should have seen some of the comments then.  And then it was Black Lives Matter getting involved in all this.  And then they found out, no, wait, can’t go there, had to back off and go elsewhere.  The way people on the left look at things is just continually itself insufferable and insulting. 

I mentioned earlier the two, I think they were dolphins or porpoises, that somehow strayed way north of their natural — (interruption) was it New Jersey?  No, no.  There was ice — no, no.  No, no, no.  I mean way north.  We’re talking Canada here.  They were mammals.  They had to surface to be able to breathe.  And we were cutting holes in the ice for them to do so, and we were trying to cut holes in the ice in a way that would steer them to safety, if they follow the holes.

I remember back then, this is in the nineties sometime, I remember taking calls from people on, “Why are we wasting all this money?  It’s a couple of fish, for crying out loud, they got lost, big deal.”  And I recall the incident, the same thing had happened to a blue whale or something, happened Sacramento Delta. The thing had gotten screwed up and it swam up from the San Francisco Bay all the way up the Sacramento Delta area and was running out of saltwater and they were all worried about what to do with it. They were trying to figure out a way to turn it around and go back to where it should be. 

I remember defending the fish. I remember on this program telling people, “Look, you have to understand why so many people are concerned about this.  They’ve done nothing wrong.  They maybe got lost, went a different way, but these animals, compared to all else going on, they’re innocent. They’re struggling on their own. They’re trying to live.  It’s not like they’re a bunch of welfare recipients taking the day off out there.  They are doing everything they can to survive.” 

So us helping them makes all the sense in the world to me.  But, I’m telling you, folks, 20 years ago when that happened, the vast majority of sentiment was not for those dolphin or porpoises, whatever they were.  It was people asking, “Why are we spending so much money?”  Military helicopters, we were spending a lot of money breaking the ice, drilling holes, trying to get ’em out of there.  And people thought it was a waste of money.  “Hey, it happens, it’s nature. They went the wrong place, pay the consequences.”  No, no, I said, people have to understand, they’re the essence of innocence, they’re trying to save themselves, and we’re trying to help them do that. 

This situation, here you have a gorilla minding its own business in its own home not bothering anybody.  It had never bothered anybody.  And then some mother looks the other way for a while and her kid plunges into the gorilla pen, and while the gorilla is holding her baby and dragging the baby along and so forth, the mother, “Mommy’s here! Mommy’s here!” And people say, “Mommy’s where?  Why isn’t Mommy down there trying to get the kid back?  Most mommies would be doing what they can instead of shouting ‘Mommy’s here! Mommy’s here!'” 

Nobody was gonna get the kid back.  And you’ve heard they didn’t want to use tranquilizer. That would have just made the gorilla mad. It would have taken a long time to go into effect, to take effect, and who knows what the gorilla would have done had he gotten mad. So it’s an unfortunate circumstance, but they didn’t have any other choice.  If they wanted to save that child, that was the only way they were gonna do it. 

I know a lot of people want to believe that whoever Harambe’s friends were on the zoo staff could have walked in there, you know, with a plate of food or what have you, or just with good vibes, “Hey, Harambe, how are you?  You know that thing you have, that’s not supposed to be here.  Hand him over,” whatever they were gonna do to get the gorilla to hand over his toy. 

Go to the audio sound bites.  Not much here, but I want to illustrate.  We have, who is this, where is this?  What did I do with it?  Oh, here it is, number 15, Ashley Byrne.  This was yesterday on CNN’s Newsroom in the morning, Carol Costello, this is PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, senior campaigner Ashley Byrne.  Question:  “Do you agree that zoo officials had to kill the gorilla because they say they couldn’t take a chance the gorilla would react badly if they shot him with a tranquilizer dart?”

BYRNE:  In many circumstances gorillas have shown that they can be protective of children or small beings.  Frankly, the fact that this gorilla was innocent in the first place, that’s the first place that this situation went wrong because even under the best circumstances captivity is never adequate for gorillas and other primates. And in cases like this we see that it’s even deadly. And this tragedy is exactly why PETA urges families to stay away from any facility, zoos, circuses, or otherwise, that displays animals as a sideshow for humans to gawk at.

RUSH:  Animals… (sigh) This woman obviously has not read Genesis and even if she did, it wouldn’t have any impact on her.  But human beings travel all over the world to gawk at animals precisely because they’re unusual! They’re interesting. Some are cute, some are deadly, some… There’s no way human beings are gonna not be interested in animals.  Gawking at them out on safari, hunting them or what have you.  By the way, you know there’s another factor in this, Snerdley?  A lot of people think that all of us used to be apes. 

Don’t doubt me on this.  A lot of people think that all of us used to be gorillas, and they’re looking for the missing link out there.  The evolution crowd.  They think we were originally apes.  I’ve always had a question: If we were the original apes, then how come Harambe is still an ape, and how come he didn’t become one of us?  “Well, that’s why they’re all missing link, Mr. Limbaugh.  Your question is absurd.”  Here’s one more from Ashley Byrne from PETA.  “You know, the gorilla’s endangered, he was 17 years old.  They’ve had him for quite a long time.”

BYRNE:  He was 17 years old and r-reports say that he had a young baby of his own — who, of course, is now without a father.  So, y-you know, again (snickers), I think this shows us the tragic side of keeping animals in zoos for our entertainment. But it can go horribly wrong, and that the zoo failed Harambe by taking the risk that something like this would happen.

RUSH:  So Harambe’s child is now without a father, one of the many unfortunate aspects of this.  So another busted gorilla home at the Cincinnati Zoo.  And you know what happens.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  If something had happened to that four-year-old boy in the gorilla pen, you know what the catcalls would be.  “Why didn’t you shoot the gorilla? Why did you wait?”  So the zoo people, they’re not gonna win no matter what. But my guess is they feel worse than anybody about this, the people that had to do it.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to take at least one more call right now, maybe two.  We go to Chicago. This is Dannette.  I’m glad you called.  Hi.

CALLER:  I love you, I love you, I love you, but I have to say: You really make me angry when you start making fun of animal lovers.

RUSH:  I don’t make fun of animal lovers.

CALLER:  Okay, just now when you were talking about that gal from PETA, you were making fun of what she was saying.

RUSH:  She’s a liberal! She is not an animal lover.  She’s a leftist who is interested in the advancement of the liberal agenda by her —

CALLER:  Okay, but —

RUSH:  — attitude toward humanity and its insignificance and its cruelty and so forth.  Believe me, PETA is a left-wing, liberal organization using animal rights — just like feminism is a bunch of liberals using “women’s issues” — to advance the leftist agenda.

CALLER:  Okay, but Rush, I am not a liberal by any means. I’m a big Trump fan, and I’m a big animal lover. I’ve got my own pet —

RUSH:  So am I!  I’m the biggest animal lover you ever met.

CALLER:  Okay, but… Okay, this gorilla got killed because of why?  Human error. No matter how you look at it, human error.  I don’t humanize animals.  Um, but you know what?  Someone’s gotta stick up for them, and someone does have to give them rights.

RUSH:  I just did.  I just did.  I pointed out the gorilla was bothering nobody, the gorilla was doing what gorillas do.  It was minding its own business, it was in its home, and all of a sudden, a human four-year-old drops in there.

CALLER:  Absolutely.  And, okay, now, what’s gonna be the question? The zoo wasn’t taking precautions enough. There wasn’t a high enough wall.  This is such bullcrap with these children going on —

RUSH:  Wait. Wait a minute.  You may not have heard, but the Cincinnati police are looking into criminal charges against the zoo.

CALLER:  And on Fox News this morning they said there were not gonna be any charges, the parents were going to be cleared.  You know what?  It’s —

RUSH:  No, no!  No, no!  Wait!  Not against the parents.  The zoo, precisely because the four-year-old was able to fall in there.

CALLER:  Okay, see, and that’s what I mean.  When is it gonna be the parents’ responsibility?  I don’t know what the frick the mother was doing —

RUSH:  Forget that.  That’s never… No.  That isn’t gonna happen.

CALLER:  This is why the generation of kids is ending up to be the generation of what they are.  Because it’s never their fault, it’s never the parents’ fault — and again, I am so much for animals.  I felt so bad for this gorilla. Like you said, he was just doing his own thing, and I’m one of those animal-crazy people where if there’s a person on the side of the road that’s injured, and there’s an animal on the side of the road that’s injured, the person is screwed with me. That’s all there is to it, because I just think people make their own decisions and a lot of times, Rush, they’re very evil. They’re very evil.  And with this gorilla I just felt really, really —

RUSH:  You’re making my point.  What you’re doing here is understandable.  You’re looking at the animal. In your example, you got an injured animal on the side of the road, we don’t know how it got there, and we’ve got an injured human being on the side of the road. Your automatic, your default position is to go check out the animal.  You know why?  Because it’s the essence of innocence.  The human being had a choice, whether or not to get in an accident and be on the side of the road.  The animal is just along for the ride and it’s not its fault no matter what, and it can’t take care of itself so you’ve gotta go help it.

CALLER:  Absolutely.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER:  And I feel very strong about that. So if people want to call me crazy, so be it. But I feel… I hold no bones about that. All my clients even know who I am and how I am with animals.

RUSH:  Nobody’s calling you crazy!

CALLER:  Well —

RUSH:  It’s just that in the —

CALLER:  I’m sure, you’re gonna get phone calls on this. You know this.

RUSH:  Well, maybe.  I can handle that.  Phone calls.

CALLER:  But, you know what?  I love you.  I told Mr. Snerdley, I love you to death; so I really, really do.

RUSH:  Well, you can rest assured that there’s no bigger animal lover than me.  I have three dogs and I’ve got this little cat.

CALLER: (giggles)

RUSH: But even aside from that, the reason I know how you feel about animals is I feel the same way about them. But when it comes down in the gorilla case, situation, it’s just one of these unfortunate things. There was no way that anybody was gonna get that gorilla to hand over the baby.  I guess you, in that circumstance, value the gorilla’s life more than the baby’s because the parents are the ultimate responsibility.

CALLER: That’s right.

RUSH: “The kid wouldn’t have fallen in there if the parents had been paying attention, so the parents need to pay the price; the gorilla doesn’t.”  That’s your view.

CALLER:  Well, this is how I feel.  You heard the mother on the tape, “Mommy’s here! Mommy’s here!”  Where the good frick was Mommy two minutes ago before the kid fell in? 

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: Where was Mommy?

RUSH:  Mommy was with the cotton candy vendor.  I don’t know what she was doing.

CALLER:  And, you know… And again, that’s just my view.  I love you, Rush, but you know, animals are my world, and sometimes I just feel you’re condescending to animal lovers.  So…

RUSH:  I am not condescending to animal lovers.  I am condescending to PETA.  I am condescending to people who use people’s natural love for animals as a way to advance the liberal agenda.  Look, if you want to understand me, if you’re ever confused with what I say, what I mean, understand: It’s always my belief that there’s politics in everything, and I am opposed to liberalism.  And I am opposed to the seductive ways that liberalism corrupts people — innocent people — into assuming positions that are detrimental to American society and the culture and the country the large. 

And the left has got all these disparate groups. They’ve got animal rights groups, they got PETA, they got environmentalist wackos, they’ve got feminists. This is how they do it.  Every one of these groups ends up… You notice who’s to blame for all this? It’s always humanity, usually conservative human beings or Republican human beings. It’s human beings destroying the planet when I don’t think we have the ability to.  We don’t have the ability to destroy the environment.

If a president ordered the world’s most intelligent scientists to destroy the ozone, they couldn’t do it.  If a president or the pope ordered the smartest scientists in the world to destroy the climate of the earth, they could not do it.  They wouldn’t know where to begin.  And yet we’re told every day that we’re doing it and we’re the cause.  By what?  Advancing and progress in our lives.  And it’s BS.  It is utter, total BS, and it’s one of the many webs of deceit that has been woven into the fabric of our society by the American and international left to advance their agenda of big government control over all people.

Because people don’t know what’s best, people don’t know what’s important, people don’t know what’s important, or other things: People are selfish, people are this, people are that. And I resent the heck out of it.  I do not “make fun of animal lovers.”  I understand them.  I try to protect them from getting lassoed into some liberal agenda that they don’t understand and end up promoting and advancing while they’re not even aware that they’re doing it.  And it’s just… It gets absurd sometimes.  But I have a reverence for animals. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about it here because it just never comes up. 

But I do not “make fun of animal lovers.”  I am one.  I make fun of and I try to expose liberalism everywhere it is lurking.  And it lurks.  It’s always behind the scenes and underneath the surface.  It’s never, ever out in the open.  It couldn’t survive if it were.  So never forget that.  Next time you hear me ripping into or making fun of what you think is an “animal lover,” stop and think for a moment:  “What is Rush really saying here?” and take it beyond what you think it is.  Understand that there’s always going to be a political component because politics is part of everything. Whether people like it or not, want to admit it or not, that’s the truth.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Police originally said there weren’t gonna be any charges.  Authorities are now taking a second look at the possibility of criminal charges in the incident after the police initially said that no one would be charged.  And what they’re looking at, apparently the incident at the Cincinnati Zoo involved the young child who fell into the gorilla enclosure, the incident under investigation by the Cincinnati Police Department.  Once the investigation’s concluded, they’ll confer with the DA’s office, the prosecutor’s office on possible criminal charges. 

This will be against the zoo I don’t think for killing the gorilla.  I think it’s gonna be about the enclosure and whether or not it was sufficient to prevent something like this from happening.  Now, witnesses said that the child had expressed a desire to get into the enclosure and climbed over a three-foot barrier and then fell 15 feet into a moat.  His mother on Facebook said he suffered a concussion and scrapes but was otherwise fine. 

I will guarantee you that all of this commentary, if you will, on social media is driving the cops to change their mind on perhaps pursuing a criminal investigation here.  But you go talk to any lawyer you want, and the lawyer will tell you that charges against the parents in something like this will never happen.  They’ll never be able to prove criminal child endangerment or anything of the sort.  They won’t even go there.  That if there are charges, it’ll be against the zoo, and it’ll be in relationship to the enclosure where people are standing, observing the gorillas.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Mark in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey.  Great to have you with us.  You’re next.  Hello.

CALLER:  Hello, Rush.  Pleasure talking with you, sir.

RUSH:  Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER:  Regarding the gorilla shooting. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in the Twilight Zone. Are we actually having a discussion between choosing the life of a gorilla over a boy?  I mean, this is outrageous.  I’m thinking about it.

RUSH:  I cannot hear a word you’re saying.  I’m having to read what you’re saying.  So you find it outrageous that people even think there’s a question over whether to shoot the gorilla or not and save the boy?

CALLER:  Correct.  To get to my bigger point, I mean, in America, we slaughter cows and pigs by the truckload on a daily basis.  There’s no outrage about that.  I mean, I’m just trying to make sort of a funny point over this.  Maybe the media is the one —

RUSH:  Yes.  But, look, when you run over a possum, when you run over any other road kill animal or when we go to the slaughterhouse to slaughter a bunch of steers and stuff, it isn’t on television, and there aren’t little children in the area that are being held by the hand of the animal about to be slaughtered.  And those animals have not had movies made about them, nor are there storybooks about them.  I mean, when’s the last slaughterhouse comic book you read?

CALLER:  Yeah, you’re right about that.

RUSH:  I mean, once the effort has been made to humanize pets, animals, it is thought that all animals could end up being pets if we just had the right circumstances.  But this is — you know, the fact that it’s on TV and the fact that the first — never forget, the first video did not appear to show the child threatened at all.  Why, Harambe was holding the boy out of the water.  Harambe appeared to be keeping the child dressed, his pants up, was holding his hand.  That’s the first video that was released.  And the person that shot the video, another person who shot some videos saw that and said, “Wait a minute, that’s not the whole story.” 

Then we got another video which showed Harambe grabbing the kid by the hand and darting under the water. The kid was being dragged through that moat under the tree as we lost sight of the kid for a while.  It was at breakneck speed, and people, “Oh, my God, the kid’s gonna have a broken neck. The kid’s arm is gonna be ripped off. Oh, my God, he’s gonna slam the kid’s head against the wall.”  But that was the second video seen, not the first.  And the first video showed a polite, even fatherly Harambe protecting the child from an irresponsible human parent. 

Social media gets in gear and Harambe was not threatening anybody, was in his own home, he didn’t cause any of this, bammo, he gets shot.  There’s a lot of affection for animals out there, particularly animals that are in captivity and haven’t done anything to anybody. 

Look, if you really stop, you’ll be able to understand all of those emotional reactions.  Where it does get interesting is your point, when you reduce the question to its bare essence, save the boy, save the gorilla, that’s what you’re having trouble understanding how there can be any debate. The fact that people could be saying, “Well, hey, it’s not the gorilla’s fault. The parents ought to pay a price for their negligence here.” 

“Wait, you’re saying that boy should –“

“Well, it’s not the gorilla’s fault.” 

I can give you another example.  I probably shouldn’t.  I can give you another example.  Let me think about this other.  ‘Cause there’s another example that illustrates this dilemma where human life loses when the question’s asked.  Makes you very uncomfortable to hear it.  But in this case there are people who think that gorilla’s life mattered more.  In a country with whatever million number of abortions every year, I mean, you can’t factor that out in understanding how people would have problems placing value on which life counts most here.