RUSH: Level check, test, one two — hey, you know what, this may be working, bring the mix minus up just a little bit. We’re in Los Angeles today, folks. The first day is always a work in progress, have to test it on the air. Bring the audio up just a little bit. Right there we go. My gosh, we did this in 30 seconds. The only thing not working is the clock, so be patient. We’ve got a digital clock but I never use digital. Likely you won’t even know the difference, folks. It’s great to be here from Los Angeles, as I say, although as long as I’m here, it doesn’t matter where “here” is. It’s Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network. Here’s the telephone number if you want to be on the program: 800-282-2882. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.
Under normal circumstances, I would not mention this because the rule of thumb is, you don’t talk about nattering nabobs that don’t matter a hill of beans. But in this case, we may be, I may be — you’re not — I’m going through one of the greatest smears of my career, and, believe me, folks, there have been many smears. (interruption) You think I’m wrong to talk about this? Good, ’cause it doesn’t matter even if you did think I’m wrong, I’m gonna bring this up.
‘Cause this smear is — well, I was gonna say harmless. It’s not harmless to me. But this is all over the place that I told people there is no storm. That I told people you don’t have to run away from Florida, you do not have to evacuate, because I said the storm isn’t coming. I did not say that. I did not say the storm is not big. I didn’t say the storm is gonna go somewhere else. They did. I didn’t say anything. There is not a thing that I said about this that anybody can prove I was wrong about, not a single thing.
Now, why is this happening? I’ve had a lot of people send me emails: “Rush, I don’t understand. I heard what you said.” Let me explain this, folks, as best I can. We in the United States — and this is a recently evolved theory of mine — that we in the United States are actually living 1984, the novel by Orwell, in a number of ways. And what has taken over is the concept of groupthink.
I am one of the last remaining powerful, influential members of the media that does not participate in it. I do not participate in consensus. In fact, I run away from it. Consensus is what everybody else thinks, such as the consensus of scientists on global warming. You cannot have consensus in science. Science is not up for a vote. It doesn’t matter that 90% of scientists think anything. That doesn’t make anything so, and it doesn’t make anything scientifically unassailable. Scientists use various theories to establish credibility of theorems and various other ideas that they have, and it’s constantly tested. It’s not up to somebody’s opinion and it’s not up to somebody’s vote.
But the whole notion of groupthink and consensus — and this is another way of saying what the media does. Let me illustrate it this way. I’ve made the point over the years, recent number of years, that when the media reports a story, they have this knack of making it appear that everybody thinks this. So if you’re an outlier or if you don’t think that, you’re in a tiny little minority, and then you become castigated and regarded as a kook or whatever.
It’s nothing more than groupthink and consensus. And it exists because the people who believe in groupthink or consensus are simply people who doesn’t wish, cannot accept, cannot accept or cannot deal with a challenged worldview or an alternative idea about anything, because they have developed this little safety of a cocoon in which they live, and they congregate together.
It doesn’t matter if it’s climate change or any other issue, if anybody comes along and doesn’t comport and doesn’t go along with it, that person has to be stigmatized, destroyed, and cast out. And what happens when everybody falls pray to groupthink or consensus, that’s the end of truth. That is the end of inquiry, it’s the end of curiosity, and it’s the end of suspicion.
Now, in our era here, you know, somebody has to define groupthink, somebody has to be the, quote, unquote, leader of it. Global warming or climate change is one of the most convenient ways to illustrate this. But almost all of these groupthink or consensus beliefs originate on the left, and that’s why everything in America is becoming politicized.
I played golf on Saturday with a noted Hollywood actor. Not gonna mention his name because of course I did not seek his permission to share details of discussions. One of the things when people talk to me, I assure them it’s all off the record, and we were talking about Hollywood’s bad box office. And I said, “What do you think of the theory Hollywood believes it’s Rotten Tomatoes is the reason why the box office is down?”
He said, “What?”
I said, “Rotten Tomatoes, you know, the crowd-sourced public review and opinions of movies.”
He said, “No. That’s not what it is. How long has Rotten Tomatoes been around?”
I said, “A long time.”
He said, “Right, so why now is Hollywood having a –” cut to the chase. He believes that Hollywood’s politicization of their entertainment medium is now starting to catch up to them. Look at the National Football League. The National Football League opening game Thursday night, Tom Brady, biggest marquee star in the NFL against Kansas City Chiefs, nothing else going on except the hurricane forecasting, and their ratings were down 17%. I mean, it was a huge decline.
People said, “Well, it was the hurricane.” Yeah, except the U.S. Open being televised the next night was up 36% while the hurricane coverage was even more intense. That’s not what it is. It is the politicization of everything. And especially now our entertainment venues, entertainment options, everything’s becoming politicized. You can’t escape it. They’re forcing it on you. And there are however many people voted for Trump, 60 million, whatever the number is, there are that many people who are, at one stage or another, resisting all of this.
They’re either not going to the movies. They’re not watching the Drive-By Media. They’re not watching the NFL. It is a slow creep that is happening, and of course the leaders of these industries trying to figure this out because of groupthink and because of consensus, cannot be honest with themselves about what their problems are, which means they’re never gonna be able to fix them. You look, ESPN’s numbers and subscribers are way, way down, I mean, hellishly so, and that’s bringing down Disney.
There’s something in common with all of this, and that is the politicization. At the Steelers-Browns game yesterday, I don’t know how many people know this, they had a problem, one of the preseason games, a number of Browns players sat down for the national anthem or otherwise protested it. And so the Browns players decided to do something different.
They recorded a 30-second video that was played in the stadium on the scoreboard, and it featured several African-American Browns players listing their grievances, their social justice grievances. And they demanded that the owner and his wife be part of this, which the owner and his wife did. And in exchange for that, the players linked hands and didn’t sit down, I don’t believe, for the national anthem.
Now, I guarantee you… I don’t know if the networks played the video or not. I watched the game, but I caught it late. (You know, we’ve been going through some interesting travel logistics here.) I don’t know that the network played it, but I guarantee you the people in the stands, if they saw it, that’s not why they’re there. It’s not why they’re paying these exorbitant prices. And so this little… This creeping consensus or groupthink or liberalism — I mean, whatever you want to call it — is creeping into virtually every aspect of life.
I’ll give you an example. Eric Bolling. You all know who Eric Bolling is. He was an up-and-coming anchor and personality at Fox News. He’s a very conservative man who was a former commodities trader. He was hired by Roger Ailes at Fox and he ended up having his own show at five p.m. called The Specialists and then came the sexual “haris-ment” or “harass-ment” complaints. They took Eric off the air while they investigated. Then last week they announced that his suspension was permanent. He was to be fired. The investigation, I guess, had determined that he had engaged in this.
The next day, his 19-year-old son died, and they think it was a drug overdose. Social media overflowed with human debris celebrating the death of Eric Bolling’s son, claiming Eric Bolling deserved to have his son die because of all the horrible things Eric Bolling has said about African-Americans and women. Now, I don’t know a single thing Eric Bolling has said about African-Americans and women, and I don’t know the details of Eric Bolling’s circumstances after having been accused, alleged to have engaged in sexual harassment. But that’s pure pond scum, and that’s infesting social media, and it’s growing — and it’s sponsored. It’s promoted. And this encroaching degratory…
I mean, these are the people that talk about, “We need to bring out the better versions of ourselves.” These people are corrupting everything! They are anonymous. They get to say whatever they want to say. But I guarantee you people that go on social media and read this stuff, it cannot help but affect you when you’re inundated by it, when you can’t escape it. Imagine — and it only works one way. If a leftist TV or movie personality’s son had died and noted conservatives went on social media and celebrated and said the leftist celebrity deserved it, the Drive-By Media would find out who did it and make it the lead story of the nightly news.
And it would be a subject for the whole week, about how mean-spirited all of this conservatism is, while liberalism and its associated activities are literally destroying the fabric of our society in terms of morality and decency and behavior — while demanding that everybody behave and talk as they do or else! So here comes Hurricane Irma, and when Hurricane Irma starts, I’m observing something that is phenomenal to me. The original forecast tracks of Hurricane Irma… Let me… We’ve got Dittocam here, right? Let me find this for you. I want to find the original tracks.
I want you to look at these original tracks here. (shows image) You see that? Now, if you look at the state of Florida, on your right of the state of Florida is where everybody thought this hurricane was gonna go for a week. A week! Before they changed their minds. See, all of those models taking this hurricane, Hurricane Irma, out to the Atlantic Ocean, maybe up to North Carolina and South Carolina? Those are the original tracks, and it was during those forecasts that, in south Florida, wa run on bottled water began to the point that there was no bottled water in south Florida while the forecast track looks as you see to the right or east of Florida there.
Well, now, I’m a social commentator as well as a political commentator and I found that fascinating. “How can there be a run on water with a hurricane forecast that’s not even expected to hit us?” Now, granted, these are long range, but there’s a lot of them. The vast majority of… Look at it again. The vast majority of those models — and included in there is the NHC, the real track. You can dig it out there. I can’t get close here, but you can dig it out, the real track that went up the west coast of Florida. By the way, it didn’t hit Tampa.
All night last night it was gonna wreck Tampa, was gonna ruin Tampa. I was watching it. It wasn’t gonna go to Tampa. It did go to Marco Island and Naples. Anyway, during all of this, there’s a run on bottled water to the point that in West Palm Beach a semitrailer delivery of bottled water to a grocery store had to be protected by local police for fear that people would show up and try to rob or steal. I’m saying, “Why is this happening when this hurricane isn’t even gonna hit here, at least according to these forecasts?”
So I explained how the world works. I explained how local media seeks to hype these storms ’cause it’s good for ratings, and it’s also good for grocery stores and advertisers that sell things you need during a hurricane. Meanwhile, the forecast tracks don’t have it anywhere near. They got closer and closer and closer during the 10 days, or maybe it was a week, and then I suggested, “Folks, there’s no reason to panic. You have water in your house right now. It’s called a faucet. All you have to do is go get some empty bottles and fill ’em up, and there’s your water.
“And in many cases it’s the same stuff that you’re gonna buy in the bottles, and it’s gonna be a lot cheaper. So you can get some Ziploc bags, fill ’em 75% full, put them in the freezer as a standby.” It’s smart advice, reasonable advice, economical advice. Never did I say the hurricane wasn’t gonna hit, because nobody knows. Never did I say the hurricane was not a bad one. Never did I say you should ignore the forecast. Never!
Nothing that is out there that I supposed said on social media is true — and I defy any of you SJWs to call here and run by anything you’ve heard that I said, and let me explain the truth to you. 800-282-2882. This is a series of lies and misstatements, and this is because I do not heel. I do not join everybody in the conventional wisdom, the consensus and the groupthink. I did not join in the panic. I did not join in helpless wailing and, “Oh, woe is me!” I did not join in any of the things — and I specifically didn’t join the idea that global warming or climate change was causing this.
I also pointed out that whenever a storm like this happens, you can’t avoid it; in the media people are gonna say it’s happening because of climate change. It’s stronger than ever because of climate change. This is the seventh largest hurricane to hit Florida. The hurricane in 1935, Labor Day, was much stronger than Hurricane Irma. That’s before anybody knew about CO2 and the greenhouse effect and climate change.
Shouldn’t the hurricanes today be far worse than ever if what they’re saying is true? You’re not supposed to think this way, folks, and you’re not supposed to ask that question. You’re not supposed to give people an alternative way of looking at something outside the groupthink. If you do, they’re gonna come after you and try to destroy your credibility and smear you, because they have an agenda that they seek to advance using every public event they can.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, ladies and gentlemen, this smear (chuckles) of me… This smear is unlike most of the previous attempts that the left has made, because there isn’t even a misunderstood joke to base this on. There’s no insult to anybody to base this on. This has been based on a complete fabrication and intentional misrepresentation of what I said. I never said the hurricane was fake news. I never said it wasn’t gonna be big. I never said to ignore the forecast.
I never said anything that you have heard Al Roker or anybody else in the Drive-By Media saying. But because I don’t subscribe to the groupthink, because I don’t subscribe to the consensus, they think I don’t care — and when you don’t care, why, that’s the greatest sin of all, and that’s what they think is going on, which gives them the justification. But I wanted to deal with this, folks, because this is the worth example of a smear that I have experienced yet.
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RUSH: You know what is stunning, folks? The degree to which lies and disinformation have become commonplace in the Drive-By Media. It’s stunning to me how many people actually believe that hurricanes are a recent phenomenon brought about by man-made climate change. If you’re a Millennial or an iGen — if you’re under 34 — it is shocking what you don’t know. It’s shocking the lies that you have been taught and the lies that you see as factual news each and every day. It’s stunning, folks. Literally stunning.
I read a piece today on Florida because it got hit by the hurricane. Nobody knows how many hurricanes have hit Florida. Florida was uninhabitable at the time this nation was discovered. Zachary Taylor, a United States president, went down there once fighting the Seminole Indians, and he said (summarized), “You know what? This place is hell. This place is absolute hell. I wouldn’t trade you a square mile of Michigan for the entire state of Florida.” It wasn’t until recently, in national terms, that Florida was even settled.
And it was actually begun by a man named Henry Flagler. He built a railroad down there, and it wasn’t until we had advanced with the ability to move a lot of earth but manage water. Florida wasn’t just the Everglades; the whole state was a swamp. It was nothing but mosquitoes and humidity, and it was so hot that was uninhabitable. Long before climate change ever became some dream in the scientists’ brain — long before anybody knew anything about fossil fuels and CO2 — it was uninhabitable. Nobody knows how many hurricanes have hit Florida.
But I’ll tell you what they do know, that the hurricane on Labor Day 1935 is the strongest and the worst. Irma is number seven. There is no way that climate change made this hurricane or Katrina or Wilma (which hit in 2000), any of these, worse than what’s come before it. Everything about the weather, if related to climate change, is largely exaggerated, untrue, or politicized. And yet that’s what a growing percentage of Americans believe. And you can’t blame them; that’s all they’ve been taught, and that’s all they’ve been told.
It’s just mind-boggling when you realize it, and that’s just one topic. You know, climate change and weather? You know, when that gets politicized… You have to realize when the NFL gets politicized, movies have been politicized for a while — everything is — then you have to understand, “Okay, well, who’s doing the politicizing and why?” And the answers are inescapable. I happen to have answers and I happen to explain them, and I happen to do it effectively, and so I am a target, because I don’t go with the groupthink — and many of you don’t.
That’s why Donald Trump’s elected. Donald Trump is elected by people who refuse to go along with the consensus, with the groupthink, with “the” way of thinking. It’s an amazing thing. I literally can tell you now that — and I think most of you know this — the odds are, if you are going — if you see anything written or broadcast about me in the mainstream media, the odds are most of it or all of it is untrue. That has to be your default position now when reading it. And it’s not just me. I mean, by no means is it just me.
But I happen to be the Mister Big of the vast right-wing conspiracy, and so taking out me they think can take out a lot of the way of thinking. Now, look at this. TheHill.com. Joe Concha. Joe Concha I always thought was a good guy. I mean, I have seen Joe Concha on Fox News, and Joe Concha, when my name has come up, has been accurate in reporting on me. Look at this. TheHill.com. This is from September the 8th. What’s the day today? This is the 11th. This is three days it ago. So that’d be Friday, right?
“Limbaugh to Evacuate After Calling Irma Climate Change Ploy.” I did not call Irma a climate change ploy. “Rush Limbaugh will be evacuating his home in Palm Beach, Fla., just days after stating that creating panic around hurricanes helps advance a climate change agenda.” Somebody tell me what’s not true in that paragraph? I did evacuate. I got out of there. You know why? If we lose power and phones, we can’t do the show out of there. I would love to stay.
I would love you to experience one of these things, but I am forced by my broadcast partners to get out of there ’cause there’s a business to run. But I would love to stay! We are fine, by the way. I am reluctant to say so because so many people aren’t, but people have been asking. Do you have any doubt? “Rush Limbaugh will be evacuating his home in Palm Beach, Fla., just days after stating that creating panic around hurricanes helps advance a climate change agenda.” It does! I have a story here — let’s see — it’s from Breitbart.
“Irma at Landfall Comes in Seventh Behind 1935 Labor Day Storm.” What they’ve done is they’ve published all the links of one Google search on climate change and hurricane, and it just goes on and on and on. Everybody in the Drive-By Media linked climate change to this. And some of them in the Drive-By Media got mad that it wasn’t being done enough! Some guy named Ali Velshi (who I think use to be at CNN and now is over at PMSNBC) spent the whole afternoon Saturday worrying that not enough people in the media were linking Hurricane Irma to climate change. (snorts)
By virtue of doing that, he was linking Hurricane Irma to climate change! Nothing I said was wrong. The next paragraph. “May as well announce this. I’m not going to get into details because of the security nature of things, but it turns out that we will not be able to do the program here tomorrow.” I said this on Thursday meaning Friday. “We’ll be on the air next week…” What does that prove? What in the world does it prove?
Because I never said the hurricane wasn’t coming. I never said it wasn’t gonna be a Category 4. I never called it fake news. I never did. All I did was tell the truth about it. I explained how the world works — and this is intolerable, in the groupthink sphere. It’s intolerable in the consensus sphere. Don’t forget, these are the people who claim to be the tolerant ones. These are the people claiming to be for fairness and equality and sameness and all this. But, boy, you don’t say what they want to hear and they will bust your head.
“Controversy swirled around Limbaugh throughout the week after the 66-year-old said that while he’s ‘not a meteorologist…'” I did point this out because I didn’t want people to take what I was saying as in any way official. That was a smart thing to do. (chuckles) This is just beyond my ability to comprehend, especially coming from Concha. “Controversy swirled around Limbaugh throughout the week after [he] said that while he’s ‘not a meteorologist,’ and nothing he says ‘should be considered to be a forecast or a prediction…'” Right! He’s quoting me.
I didn’t predict anything, didn’t forecast anything, didn’t call it fake news, didn’t tell anybody to behave according to what I think you should do. I never went there. Limbaugh “believes that hurricanes are often hyped to help increase ratings on the media side while driving sales for retailers who offer storm supplies.” Prove to me that that isn’t true. You’re just not supposed to say it. That’s the offense. Where are the fact checks to prove that media outlets never use storms to increase ratings? If I’m so wrong about this, where is the fact check? Where is the evidence that this doesn’t happen in the media?
“There is a desire…” He quotes me again. “”There is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it,” and he goes on to quote me saying, “You don’t need a hurricane…” And, by the way, let me come back to these. You don’t even need the hurricane to hit. Panic was created when all of those models that you see to the east of Florida. This was a week before the hurricane hit. That’s where they thought it was gonna go, and yet they were creating a run on plywood and other supplies, batteries and stuff and water, a week out.
When the forecast wasn’t even including Florida. How’d they do that? They create fear, create panic. Why? It advances the agenda. They didn’t even need this hurricane to hit anywhere in order to advance the agenda with fear and panic. Just the thought that it might, and that it’s bigger than ever. And then they got on me for pointing out how they create these graphics on TV, these giant red blobs trying to make you think the whole storm — And I pointed out that the giant red blob is not the whole storm and what that mostly indicates is the altitude of the highest clouds where the opportunity for convection, i.e., rainfall, is the greatest.
But the whole storm is not where the max winds are. In this case, the eye was a 35-mile-wide diameter. That was where the biggest one — it’s big. All I did was point out things that are demonstrably true. And for that the smear began, and all of it was made up. I know we gotta go to a break, but grab audio sound bite number 1. I just want give you an example of how this manifests itself. This is Friday in Washington at FEMA, Emergency Management Agency. The administrator, Brock Long, held a press conference. And get this question from an unidentified reporter.
REPORTER: There’s even some prominent voices like conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh who’s saying this is fake news, the threat is overblown. What would you like to tell those people right now?
LONG: Nobody in Florida that I know has ever experienced a Category 4 or 5 storm making landfall. I can guarantee you that I don’t know anybody in Florida that’s ever experienced what’s about to hit south Florida.
RUSH: Well, in the first place I never said that it was fake news, and I never said the threat was overblown. What I said was that all those early days out they’re creating the fear and advancing the climate change agenda. The evidence is by virtue of the fact that a run on stores happened a week out. Anyway, he doesn’t know anybody in Florida who’s ever experience aid Category 4 or 5 storm making landfall. Well, there may not be anybody alive that was alive in 1935 now, but it’s happened, is the point. It’s happened. This was not the first time.
But my argument’s not with the FEMA guy. The FEMA guy has to say what he has to say. But this Drive-By journalist here, I don’t know who it was, there’s no curiosity among journalists. They read that I say something, automatically accept it, they’re not even curious. “Really? Somebody actually said that?” And they don’t run it down or check ’cause they don’t want it to not be true. They want it to be true, so they just pretend that it is and use it.
That’s an example of how this manifests itself and metastasizes all over the place. And these are the people that end up spreading disinformation. These are the people that end up causing real damage because they are the people telling people things that aren’t true.
Anyway, I gotta take a break. I’m up against it again on the clock. We’ll be back and continue. That’s about it for this, folks. There are other examples of this, but this is the biggest attempt these people have made yet. And there’s not even a bad joke or even a controversial thing I said about it. It’s just that I zeroed in on their agenda. I’m not playing along, I’m not going along, and so that’s unacceptable. That can’t be stopped, that can’t be tolerated, so they behave as they do.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number 2. Let’s go to this Friday. NPR — National Public Radio — and it’s a program called On the Media with the NPR host named Bob Garfield. This is how you speak if you are on NPR, you see. And they were talking about this program and my comments with the hyping of hurricanes by the left to advance the climate change agenda. I’ve just now got the transcript here. Let’s see what this says.
GARFIELD: The worldwide media and their audiences have gaped in horror at the raw power of these storms. And why? Because of our transparent catastrophe bias.
RUSH ARCHIVE: There haven’t been more hurricanes and they’re no more dangerous than any others in previous years. But it doesn’t matter. Because the bias is built in. There is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it.
GARFIELD: That was Rush Limbaugh, who, along with much of the right-wing media, is constitutionally incapable of processing the news without seeing a liberal plot.
RUSH: Ha. Yeah, we can’t look at the news without seeing liberalism. That’s because it’s there, Bob. I wish we could miss it. I wish it wasn’t there, Bob. But it’s there. I’m sorry, I wish it wasn’t there be with Bob. But it is. And we discuss it as we see it here on the EIB Network. Yeah. Lovely.
“Right-wing media is constitutionally incapable of processing the news without seeing a liberal plot.” So you see, you don’t subscribe to the groupthink, you don’t subscribe to the belief, “Oh, yeah, these hurricanes are worse than ever, and climate change is causing them.” Why? Well, after hurricane Hurricane Katrina, Algore had his famous movie and book and he assured everybody that Katrina was just the beginning and they’re all gonna be worse and they’re gonna be more frequent.
But what happened? We went 12 years without a major hurricane striking land in the United States. What happened? Do you think anybody looks back in the Drive-By Media and says Algore blew it? Algore got it wrong? No. No. They just wait for the next storm, and the hype the hell out of it and they start making their point, as though the 12 years didn’t happen. But then when an expert is asked about it, like Katy Tur, whose mother is now a man, by the way, or whose father is now a woman, I forget. She’s an NBC infobabe.
She was interviewing Sam Champion, and I think we have this in the sound bites, but anyway, she mentioned to him (paraphrasing), “Look, Sam, I don’t mean to put you on the spot here, Sam, but there were 12 years that went by without a major –” and Champion was befuddled. Sam Champion, big global warming/climate change believer, and he didn’t know how to answer the question. And she was just reluctant as she could be to even ask it. She was just having all kinds of problems. “I don’t mean to put you on the spot.” Even when they’re asked the question about it, they hem and haw and come up with convenient answers for it.
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RUSH: Yeah, I knew this gonna happen, so I checked email, “Are you gonna do the whole show on the huricane?” No. No. It’s not about me, folks. This is about much more than me. I mean, the human debris on social media, the amount of lies and disinformation and smearing of people, it’s happening to many, many more than just me out there, and this is a great teachable moment to illustrate it.
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RUSH: Everybody thinks that Hurricane Irma is the worst storm ever. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Well, Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was a Category 5. The FEMA director said he didn’t know anybody in Florida that had ever experienced a Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane. He may not know any, but there’s a lot of people that did. Hurricane Andrew, 1992, Category 5. It was 145 knots. Somebody do the quick daybreak what is the mile per hour conversion? Just asking. (interruption) Okay. So it’s about 160 miles an hour, 145… (interruption)
Hang on. Let me just ask Siri. “Convert 145 knots to miles per hour.” Ah, I didn’t get it on. Anyway, it’s around 160 miles an hour. Hurricane Charley in 2004, a Category 4, hit Florida, 2004, 13 years ago. And then there’s Hurricane Irma this past weekend, 115 knots, 130 miles an hour, or 125. I think it was 130 at the center. It was a weak Category 4 when it hit Marco Island. So there are two stronger. Before 25 years ago, hurricanes at least as strong as Irma hit Florida in 1960, 1950, 1949, 1948, 1947, 1945, 1935 (which was the big one), 1928, 1926, 19… Let me add that up. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight…
Ten hurricanes before these three that I mentioned hit Florida that were at least as strong, if not stronger, that Hurricane Irma. Now, this is not to mitigate the damage that Hurricane Irma did. That’s not my point here. We’re talking about truth. We’re talking about honesty in media. We’re talking about people that are lying and making things up in order to create an emotional reaction that promotes groupthink and consensus and the acceptance of this agenda, when the facts clearly indicate that what they’re saying isn’t true.
That’s the big problem I have is not going along with the groupthink or the consensus and pointing all this stuff out, so it has to get mischaracterized. There’s also a story here. This was at The Intercept. Now, this is a website that Glenn Greenwald works at. This Intercept website is where they spent a lot of time on Edward Snowden. Snowden was a participant, a collaborator with this website. I don’t have an opinion on that pro or con. I’m just identifying for you the website. It’s liberal and left-wing, and there’s a piece here by somebody named Naomi Klein.
“Irma Won’t ‘Wake Up’ Climate Change-Denying Republicans. Their Whole Ideology Is on the Line.” See, it’s the exact opposite. It is liberalism’s ideology that’s on the line. Who is it that’s making all this stuff up? We’re not. We’re just living our lives and every day we wake up and the left is telling us something else is gonna kill us, that something else is gonna damage us, that something else is the reason why government needs to grow.
That something else is the reason why taxes need to go up, that something else is the reason why people — certain people — need to be shut up. Every day we’re hit with after. We cannot… All we do is spend our time defending things we believe in, which are under constant assault from these people. Now including even the weather and the climate. It’s not us trying to scare people. It’s not us trying to do that. We’re just minding our own business.
They are the people that make all these things up for the express purpose of advancing their agenda, and it is their agenda that depends on as many people as possible believing BS. And if you look at the end result of this, the political point in all of this is bigger government, global government — but bigger and more powerful government — that punishes people who doesn’t behave accordingly. The climate change thing has been especially brilliant because what they’ve done is blame you, your barbecue pit, your SUV, your very way of life, particularly if your standard of living is increasing.
If you are participating in progress, you are the problem. You’re causing more CO2, you’re causing more climate change, you’re causing greenhouse gasses. But you can be saved! You can be redeemed if you admit and then join others in condemning the very things that you’ve done, and then you agree that those people should be punished. And they can be redeemed if they go out and buy an electric car or if they vote for the next Democrat candidate or if they support massive government growth in anything, particularly in science.
Who wants to be blamed for destroying the planet? I mean, nobody wants to be thought of as doing that. Who wants to be blamed for ruining the climate? So you’re eager for absolution, and they offer it to you if you simply join them and vote the way they want for the people they want you to vote for and agree to a massive expansion of government, which includes more government control of everything — ’cause, of course, government will protect us.
I actually think the media bias deniers are a lot more obvious and dangerous than climate change deniers. The people that deny media bias, the people that say there isn’t any pose a far greater threat than people denying climate change. Here, grab sound bite number three. Same guy from NPR, Bob Garfield. This is Friday, and I want you to listen how the misrepresentation of things that I never said, ends up being exaggerated and then spread way, way out there.
GARFIELD: So desperate was he to find a conspiracy, the world’s loudest Republican managed to find fault with commerce!
RUSH ARCHIVE: You have these various retail outlets who spend a lot of advertising dollars with the local media. The local media, in turn, reports in such a way as to create the panic way far out, which sends people into these stores to fill up with water and to fill up with batteries, and it becomes a never-ending, repeated cycle.
GARFIELD: (bouncy music) Never mind the deaths, the ruined lives, the shattered economies, and the hundreds of billions of dollars of storm damage. It’s all rigged, and you are all naive fools. Just so’s you know.
RUSH: And, of course, none of that did I ever say. I simply told you how the world works, and I showed you those hurricane model forecasts where they weren’t gonna hit Florida, and yet they created panic and a run on water and other things in Florida with just the forecast. And, by the way, even two days before and three days, they thought the East Coast of Florida was gonna get it, and it went up the West Coast. But I was not criticizing commerce. I was explaining to people how things happen. He thought he had a big news item, “A big conservative, big pro-business guy criticizing commerce!
“That’s how crazy they are to make their point.” Of course, he doesn’t have the capacity ’cause his mind isn’t open enough to understand. They don’t even listen if somebody other than what they think speaks, it’s automatically rejected. It isn’t even considered. It’s not factored; it just is automatically rejected and then ridiculed. And whoever says whatever they don’t want to hear ends up the subject of an attempt to destroy, smear, or what have you. So that’s essentially it, in a nutshell.
Again, I’m really reluctant… I asked a bunch of people what they thought about doing this, and I decided to go ahead and do it because I don’t read social media and I don’t spend any time on it. As you know, as a policy, I ignore all of the stuff for 30 years that people have said about me, but I had so many people say, “Rush, this is the biggest smear yet. I mean, they’re literally making up things that you didn’t say and putting it out there and then people are commenting on it, and it’s feeding off of itself.”
Now, I don’t expect this to change anything about that. I just wanted you to know. You know, you people in this audience are very important to me, and it’s important that you know the truth about these things so that, should you find yourself in a position to, you can accurately and confidently respond and defend some of the garbage that these people are spewing. But, again, it’s not just about me.
These people are destroying so many other elements of our lives and of our country by politicizing virtually everything, including those things which have always provided an escape for three or four hours from the humdrum and the daily back-and-forth of things that matter, such as sports and such as movies and such as entertainment.