RUSH: I mean, it’s so old, it’s actually not news anymore, and it’s really pathetic of these people on the left. It all started with me being blamed for the Oklahoma City bombing by Bill Clinton, and it’s just ratcheted up from there.
It’s all an attempt to suppress political speech the left doesn’t want to hear, and now even though the gunman at the synagogue on Saturday in Pittsburgh was a guy who hated Trump, the Drive-Bys are trying to claim that Trump and me and Mark Levin and Breitbart “radicalized” him. We are responsible for this guy shooting up the synagogue! They’re actually out there running with this, and they’re saying it as though they believe it.
It’s infantile. It’s juvenile. It’s irresponsible and pathetic, and it’s all they’ve got, and they just keep at it. Even, you know, when trying to blame me for Timothy McVeigh shooting up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City — and back then, by the way, I was alone. I mean, that was it. That was during the Clinton administration. There was no Fox News. The conservative websites and blogs had not yet sprung to life, and it was… I’ll admit it: I was livid!
Of course, as a lone voice at the time, I was a little alarmed. “Can they make this stick?” Of course, they weren’t able to, and even now certain members of the Drive-By caution everybody. They remind people, “Clinton tried it.” When Clinton was called on it, by the way, Clinton said (impression), “Hey! (chuckling) I wasn’t talking about Limbaugh! Ha-ha! I was talking about the (chuckles) Michigan Militia Shortwave Radio Network!” Right. The Michigan Militia Shortwave Radio Network. That’s what they said they were talking about.
So it blew up in their faces, and this continues to too.
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RUSH: We’ll start with Dave in Pittsburgh. It’s great that you waited, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Hey, I’m in Pittsburgh, and something’s really bothering and upsetting me about the local news here, our local leaders. They seem to be blaming us, the people of Pittsburgh, for the shooting that happened in the synagogue. The local leaders are saying that we must come together and stop the hate. We must stop the violence. We must stop the anti-Semitism.
RUSH: Isn’t that interesting? This is a great observation you were making. This is classic. You have one guy who’s responsible for this. He’s mentally not right, clearly off balance. He does what he does, and now all of you in Pittsburgh — everybody — is told, “We must come together,” as though everybody living their lives caused this guy to lose it and go do what he did. The rabbi of that synagogue is saying some of the most intelligent stuff of anybody, particularly in this heated, passionate moment. But, yeah, you’re exactly right. Is local media doing the same?
CALLER: Our local media is doing the same. Some of the national media. Some of the local leaders are doing it. We didn’t shoot anybody. The guy who did it, who shot ’em, they’re not saying anything about that guy. We need to change? I don’t like being blamed for it.
RUSH: Well, what do you think you need to do, Dave, in order to prevent this from happening again? What do you, Dave in Pittsburgh, need to do to make sure some other lunatic doesn’t act like this?
CALLER: Well, I used to be an armed-security officer many years ago, so —
RUSH: No, no. No, no. The quick answer: You need to renounce Trump. You need to renounce your support for Trump. That’s what they’re trying to get you to do. Don’t do it! That’s what they’re trying to get you to do.
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RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites. I mentioned these earlier, and some people I’m not even gonna acknowledge the things they’re saying today because they’re just totally off the rails. But it’s as predictable as the sun coming up. It started… Well, I can’t say it started with me because I’m sure this had instances of occurring long before my show came along. But when the Oklahoma City Bombing took place…
WOLF BLITZER: What are we learning about how the Pittsburgh suspect was radicalized?
BRIAN STELTER: These men appear to have been radicalized.
CRAIG MELVIN: These men appear to have been radicalized.
SYMONE SANDERS: Radicalized people see what the president and his supporters and folks are saying…
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: (crosstalk) Whether it’s Sarah Huckabee or Donald Trump, the half-truthing leads to people getting radicalized.
MAX BOOT: Who is radicalizing people in America? Donald Trump certainly bears responsibility.
DAVID FRENCH: The bomber was radicalized into sort of this Trump super-fan community.
JULIA IOFFE: This president has radicalized so many more people (dramatic pause) than ISIS ever did.
RUSH: Julia Ioffe there. She is with… I guess it’s Ioffe (she pronounces it Ioffe) and she’s GQ, and I think she has apologized. Yes! GQ writer Julia Ioffe: Trump “has radicalized so many more people than ISIS.” She said it while as a guest on CNN and then she apologized for claiming Trump has “radicalized more people than ISIS.” She “apologized Monday shortly after claiming on the air that Trump ‘has radicalized more people than ISIS.'”
Twitter blew up after she made the comment. See, that’s another thing. It used to be when Twitter blew up, it was all liberal. It was all leftists. You know, Twitter is blowing up at leftists all over the place now. Here’s the next one: CNN Tonight with Don Lemon speaking with the former Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, Mike Shields, and Washington Post columnist Max Boot about the links between Trump’s comments and the actions of the bomber and the synagogue shooter.
SHIELDS: … in 1995, when Bill Clinton blamed Rush Limbaugh and talk radio, uh, for the Oklahoma City bombing. You have to be very careful that you don’t start to tell people that their political speech isn’t allowed anymore because there’s a direct connection between political speech and violence. That’s a very serious thing to do.
BOOT: Okay, a jihadist terrorist lone wolf carries out an attack, we always ask, “What radicalized them? What inspired him to go to violence?” We have to ask the same thing about right-wing terrorists, of whom there are a lot more in this country right now than there are Islamist terrorists. You cannot divorce the actions of these sick individuals from the sick rhetoric that you’re hearing.
So what he’s talking about is you have a jihadi who walked into a mosque one day and was a perfectly innocent young guy, had no ill intent toward anybody. He walks into a mosque, starts listening to the imam preaching, and comes out of there Osama Bin Laden Jr. And he’s saying that’s exactly what’s happening in the United States. So somebody, Donald Trump is radicalizing people? Donald Trump is encouraging this? The imams are telling people what to do and how to do it!
They’re being taught how to make bombs, how to explode themselves with bombs, they’re being… Nobody on our side is doing this. This is ridiculous! Just the comparison alone. And it comes from Never Trumpers who are frustrated that they have been unable to diffuse Trump. They’ve been unable to dispatch Trump. And it’s always a one-way street. We never heard about Bernie Sanders radicalizing the guy has shot up the Republican baseball practice.
We never hear about whoever it was that radicalized any of these leftists at Hillary Clinton rallies. It’s always this one-way street. Always! You know what it’s rooted in, folks? It’s rooted in the belief that not a single conservative can make up his or her mind about anything. One of the first criticisms of this program dating back to 1988 was that you are a bunch of mind-numbed robots and I am your Svengali, and I am telling you what to think every day because you’re too stupid to make up your mind on your own.
I’m telling you what to think.
I’m telling you what to do.
I’m telling you how to vote.
I’m telling you where to go.
That has been the criticism, and what is that rooted in? It’s rooted in the presumption of superior intellect of people on the left and the belief that you are literal idiots who cannot make up your mind on anything. What they never understood and they made no effort to understand it — and the fact that they make no effort to understand it or understand Trump and his voters is what’s largely doing them in. They never understood that you already believe what you believed.
You already thought what you thought when I came along. All I did was repeat what all of you had been saying to each other. But you were not hearing it anywhere in national media. What you believed was always laughed at or criticized, made fun of, mocked. But you were never given any respect whatsoever. Then this program came along, and it reflected what you think and what you say, what you were talking about with your friends.
That’s why you glommed on to it. Not because you were sitting out there in your relative ignorance day in and day out, and all of a sudden started learning things. So the presumption is that you’re so stupid and you’re so mindless that Svengalis can tell you how to think or tell you they don’t go start blowing things up or when to start shooting people. Now we’ve even got Never Trumper conservatives who are out saying this kind of thing! And it all boils down…
You know what I keep…? The essence of things, it keeps hitting me: Where is their real anger directed at? You think it’s Trump (and it is), but the real anger is for you who voted for him. That is where they are fed up beyond their ability to express, and the fact that they can’t talk you out of supporting Trump. They’re fit to be tied! You’re the reason that this is all going on, ’cause you had the stupidity of voting for the guy, and now you’re blowing things up and you’re shooting people. It’s just deeply, darkly insulting. It’s not promoting civility. It’s not promoting unity.
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