RUSH: So 49 people dead, many more wounded in a terror attack in New Zealand ostensibly by — and according to Fox News, the graphic at the bottom of the Fox News page moments ago said: “A white nationalist who hates immigrants” performed the dirty deed in New Zealand.

Now, the terrorist published a manifesto. And the manifesto includes the claim from the terrorist shooter that he’s not a conservative, that he’s not a Christian, that he identifies as an eco-fascist, and he adds that he disagrees with Trump on politics. This is an amazing list of things to put in your manifesto. It indicates an awareness of how media is going to tend to report this. And of course media is reporting this, that it is precisely the fault of Donald Trump.

We go to audio sound bite number 4. Last night, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon. Trump was blamed immediately for the New Zealand shooting. Columnist for The Intercept, which is a website, Mehdi Hasan about the mosque shooting in New Zealand. Don Lemon said, “You said before that this kind of thing is personal to you and that it speaks to the violence that’s going on in our culture.”

HASAN: I think, uh, to kind of talk about the story we talked about before in terms of Trump’s rhetoric as well. Western governments for far too long have turned a blind eye to domestic terrorism — to domestic, far-right terrorism. We know from the stats here in the U.S. that there are more attacks, more casualties from domestic terrorist groups, far-right groups than there are, quote-unquote, “jihadist” or “Islamist groups.”

You have Muslim victims of terrorism tonight in New Zealand. Um, I mentioned the attack in Quebec City shortly after Trump was inaugurated. Is there someone out there tonight who’s going to hear Trump’s rhetoric and act on it? Less than six months ago we know one of his big supporters sent pipe bombs in the mail to dozens of people who Trump had personally attacked and demonized. We know that lots of far-right attackers have claimed to be Trump supporters in recent months.

RUSH: No, we don’t know that! This is all made up! We don’t know this! This is their pipe dream. The idea that there is far more crazed, right-wing terrorism in America than there is any other kind is nothing more than a media narrative manufactured out of whole cloth, and it’s just waiting for events like this to take place. And this is what happens, folks.

You probably get up and you see this news story, and, in addition to all this emotion, you have over the sheer shock, terror, and horror of it all, then you realize you’re gonna face a whole day of the politicization of it. You realize you’re gonna face a whole day of Donald Trump or you being blamed for it or things you believe in being blamed for it. And then you know there are gonna be the routine attacks on the National Rifle Association, and we can thank Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for opening that door.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out the NRA after the New Zealand shootings. “What good are your thoughts and prayers?” she said. It’s a tradition when things like this happen that you send thoughts and prayers to the families and so forth. And here she is, “What good is that? That doesn’t do anybody any good.”

“Dana Loesch, spokeswoman for the NRA, responded to the criticism from Ocasio-Cortez. She replied ‘good grief’ to a tweet that accused Ocasio-Cortez of being hypocritical for ‘attacking those who pray’ after previously putting ash on her forehead for Ash Wednesday,” which she did.

Now, folks, when a politician politicizes and mocks faith, I think that it speaks volumes about that politician. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attacked faith and prayer after people of faith who were in a house of prayer were brutally murdered, which to me is just immature, childish, shortsighted, and heartless.

And so she takes here a horrific attack in New Zealand to try to demonize the NRA, which isn’t even in New Zealand. The shooter’s objective here was to divide. And another thing that happens here when these events happen, you have all kinds of speculation that erupts. And there is an ongoing theory — Mr. Snerdley, correct me if I’m wrong about this — there’s an ongoing theory that the shooter himself may in fact be a leftist who writes the manifesto and then goes out and performs the deed purposely to smear his political enemies, knowing he’s gonna get shot in the process. You can’t immediately discount this.

The left is this insane. They are this crazy. And if that’s exactly what the guy’s trying to do now then he’s hit a home run because right there on Fox News: “The shooter is an admitted white nationalist who hates immigrants.” You try to absorb all of this to try to keep some sort of an even keel about it. And then from the manifesto again itself, the shooter says he’s not a conservative, not a Christian and that he identifies as an eco-fascist, which would make him a supporter of the Green New Deal. He adds that he disagrees with Trump on politics. And here’s more from the manifesto. This is a little section of it.

Quote: “I chose firearms for the effect it would have on social discourse, the extra media coverage they would provide and the effect it could have on the politics of United States and thereby the political situation of the world.

“The U.S. is torn into many factions by its second amendment, along state, social, cultural and, most importantly, racial lines. With enough pressure the left wing within the United states will seek to abolish the Second Amendment, and the right wing within the U.S. will see this as an attack on their very freedom and liberty.

“This attempted abolishment of rights by the left will result in a dramatic polarization of the people in the United States and eventually a fracturing of the U.S. along cultural and racial lines.”

Now, if we’re to take this at face value, the guy’s objective here — and it probably is multifaceted, but one of his objectives is to continue to roil American society because he understands the leadership role America takes in the world, both culturally, economically, and politically.

But at its base here you have a nut who shot up 49 people in a mosque. And from the moment it happened, you have politicization of the event with activists all over the place attempting to co-opt it or hijack it to advance their particular political point of view.

Now, the left is far more inclined to do this because they do it in virtually every walk of life. They corrupt pretty much everything they come in contact with via their politicization of all of these events that they engage in. And it starts to wear people out. You get so far away from what the actual event was, what happened, that you get sidetracked. And one of the things this does is serve to turn people off of politics, frustrate them, throw their hands up, pay no attention to it, which clears the decks for even more politicization and corruption by the American left.

Now, I want to look at New Zealand gun laws here for just a second ’cause I’m under the impression — I could be mistaken here — but I was under the impression that New Zealand, like Australia, has very strict gun laws.

In fact, everybody has to “have a firearms license before purchasing firearms or ammunition,” before even buying a gun in New Zealand, and you cannot use “a firearm without supervision of a license holder,” and there are categories of different kinds of licenses. “The basic license is the A-Category license. This is the first you get, and to obtain it requires attending a safety and legal requirements course (usually about two to three hours …) which covers the legalities of storage and the safety requirements. As part of the course you have a short multi-choice test.

“You must score over 90% and of the seven key safety questions you must score seven out of seven,” before you can get the license. “Once you have passed this and gotten the certificate, you need to have an interview with the local Firearms Officer from the police force, you also need to nominate two references who have known you for a number of years, and one MUST be non-family, one MUST be a current firearms license holder. The officer will also need to see where your purchased firearms will be stored to ensure that it meets the legal requirements.”

I mean, these are pretty stringent gun laws in New Zealand, wouldn’t you say? Now, those rules that I just shared with you are just for rifles and shotguns. If you want to go buy a pistol, you fall into Category B, which “is quite difficult. You must be a member of a pistol shooting club, store any pistol on the club grounds in the club-secured safe, shot a certain minimum number of times per year to remain current, and may only transport your pistol from your home club grounds to other club grounds where you have been invited to compete in a [shooting] match or tournament.”

Given all of that, given all of those requirements, how can it be possible to have a mass shooting in New Zealand? From all reports, the perp obeyed all of those rules! Now, cut me some slack. On some of this, I may not be… I tried to assemble this stuff in a hurry here today, because once the NRA’s brought into this and Cortez and the rest of the left smearing guns/the Second Amendment for something that happens in New Zealand, I wanted to find out just how difficult it is to get a gun and use one in New Zealand.

It sounds like it is an arduous task and process, and it sounds like if you follow the law there’s no way you can remain anonymous or unknown. And it sounds like more trouble than it would be worth to a whole lot of people. And yet we’re told this guy pretty much followed all the rules and regs. I don’t know how you have a mass shooting. I’m being a little facetious here, of course. That’s the point. Also, there is a senator from Queensland. His name is Fraser Anning, William Fraser Anning, and he published a statement about the New Zealand mosque shooting.

Are you ready for this? I checked this guy. I verified this. I went to a Wikipedia page to make sure, ’cause there’s so much hoax stuff out there, and I found his Wikipedia page and I found this statement referenced. “Speaking following reports of multiple shootings at two Mosques in New Zealand earlier today, Senator Fraser Anning has responded with strong condemnation. ‘I am utterly opposed to any form of violence within our community, and I totally condemn the actions of the gunman,’ he said.

“‘However, whilst this kind of violent vigilantism can never be justified, what it highlights is the growing fear within our community, both in Australia and New Zealand, of the increasing Muslim presence. As always, left-wing politicians and the media will rush to claim that the causes of today’s shootings lie with gun laws or those who hold nationalist views, but this is all cliched nonsense. The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place.'”

This is Senator Fraser Anning, Queensland. “Let us be clear,” he writes, “while Muslims may have been the victims today, usually they are the perpetrators. Worldwide, Muslims are killing people in the name of their faith on an industrial scale.” He goes on to characterize Islam as a “violent ideology of a sixth century despot masquerading as a religious leader.” He goes on to say, “The truth is that Islam is not like any other faith.

“It is the religious equivalent of fascism. … As we read in Matthew 26:52, ‘all they that take the sword, shall perish by the sword’ and those who follow a violent religion that calls on them to murder us, cannot be too surprised when someone takes them at their word and responds in kind.” This probably, if it circulates, is going to create all kinds of outraged backlash.

But he covers his bases by condemning the act and talking about how rotten it is. At any rate, the full-fledged politicization of this is underway, blaming President Trump for it. Here is… One more before we go to the break. Joe Lockhart was on CNN Newsroom this morning with Alisyn Camerota who said, “Joe, you were so struck by what the president said that you’ve written an op-ed about it. What are your thoughts when you hear President Trump say that?”

LOCKHART: The insidious thing about this particular comment was this idea that if we don’t do things the way Trump wants them, then the police will get involved. A police state! The military will get involved. Oh, maybe we’ll have tanks rolling down the street or the bikers, the Hell’s Angels. He says these things and it — it attacks our democracy. He attacks our institutions. He says, “I’m not sure that if I lose the election that I’m going to accept the results,” and then he says, “I’ve got the military on my side.” We hear this in dictatorships. We don’t hear this in our democracy. We have peacefully transferred power for 200 and, you know, how many years — and now we have a president who’s hinting that maybe we won’t.

RUSH: What in the world is he talking about? So Trump’s gonna send tanks in the streets if he’s not reelected in 2020? All of this from one comment that Trump made during the debate, the final debate with Hillary Clinton when he was asked the setup question about accepting the results of the election that night.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Let’s get started on the phones. We’ll go to Cleveland and Tim. You’re first today, sir. Great to have you with us. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?

RUSH: I’m okay. Doing pretty well. Actually, I’m a little worn out and tired, but I’m not gonna complain about it ’cause I don’t know how to complain.

CALLER: Fair enough. So I would like to postulate just a little theory here. I haven’t read the manifesto yet. I heard it from you. But I’m listening to this guy, and he, of course, sounds like a crazy. Anyone who’s gonna take someone’s life, something’s wrong with them. But the depth, the ego that is oozing through is just amazing to me in attempt to manipulate all the media. You know, essentially you have terrorists who are killing people because of their religion or they’re killing people because they hate somebody. But now we’ve got a guy whose specific attempt here is to manipulate the media. So I just think it’s interesting to me. The media actually made this guy. His whole point in doing this whole thing is simply to rile up the media.

RUSH: Wait a second. Wait just a minute. This is a tremendous charge you’re making. Let me make sure that I understand it, okay? Let me run it by you in my own words, and you tell me whether I understand you. Okay, so we have this deranged lunatic in New Zealand. This deranged lunatic has his own political points of view. He wants to accomplish various things. He knows how the media operates, or… No! Let me change it. This guy is minding his own business, and he’s going through life, and he’s exposed to the media every day, and the media tells him this, they tell him that, and they make him mad.

The media tells him he’s a creep. The media tells him that things he believes in are full of it and so forth. And so the media agitated this guy. They didn’t focus anything on him, just the media doing their jobs every day turned this guy into a radical. So rather than Donald Trump being responsible for this, the media actually made this guy write his manifesto and follow through on it. That’s your take?

CALLER: The only twist is this guy sees what happens when there is a tragedy, and so he’s manufacturing the tragedy because he knows the media will take it and politicize it —

RUSH: Oh, okay. So let me try take two. You think the guy is media savvy.

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: You don’t think he’s an innocent bystander who has been affected by media lies and manipulation. You think he’s pretty savvy. And so he’s designed an event here because he knows how the media is going to report it. And, therefore, if the guy’s a crazed leftist, as an example, and hates conservatives and wants to make sure they’re blamed, he knows how to do this and engender a specific media reportage and coverage to guarantee that his enemies get blamed for it despite the fact that he did it?

CALLER: Pretty much. I would love — we’ll never get it — but I would love to hear, like, an FBI specialist who has a frank and candid conversation over —

RUSH: Come on.

CALLER: — what they think this guy —

RUSH: No, no, no, no. FBI — do you know what we have just learned, by the way? A former aide for Michelle (My Belle) Obama and somebody who also worked for Barack Obama attempted to lobby the Chicago PD to have them turn that Jussie Smollett case over to the FBI.

Now, let’s put this in context. Why would an Obama person want the Smollett case taken away from Chicago PD and turned over to the FBI? Well, let’s go look at how the FBI was manipulated by the Obama DOJ in the Hillary Clinton investigation, basically to shut it down. Basically to take certain words of the description of her crimes so that she would not be prosecuted.

We know that Lisa Page thought that a bunch of FBI people and a bunch of FBI people thought Hillary had committed crimes with her illegal email server. And they wanted to charge her, and they were told by the DOJ — that’s Obama — not to do it. So the DOJ interceded, told the FBI, no, you’re not gonna charge Hillary Clinton. And Loretta Lynch was compromised ’cause she’d gone out and talked to Slick Willie on a jet on the tarmac at Phoenix, Comey had to take over, do the July 5th press conference, basically exonerate her under orders from the Obama DOJ.

Given that, why do you think that somebody work for working for Obama would want to get the case of Jussie Smollett transferred from Chicago PD to the FBI? So it could be buried or so it could be massaged and manipulated and maybe have the case dropped. But the FBI never got the case. The Chicago PD refused to surrender the case after they were approached by the former Obama official to transfer it to the FBI.

Now, back here to Tim in Cleveland. I want to read to you the U.K. Daily Mail. They have a unique format in the way they report news. They pretty much put everything in the story in bullet point before the actual text of the story begins in headline-size font. And here it is.

“Evil terrorist’s twisted manifesto: Right-wing mosque shooter posted 73-page rant foreshadowing massacre just hours before the bloodbath and said he was ‘inspired’ by Norway mass murderer Anders Breivik. Gunman posted manifesto online hours before opening fire inside two mosques. Suspected gunman has been identified as an Australian man Brenton Tarrant, 28. He wrote in the document how he was inspired by mass murderer Anders Breivik. Tarrant said he initially targeted a Dunedin mosque, but later changed his mind. Police have arrested four people.”

So right there it is, evil terrorists twisted manifesto, right-wing mosque shooter. That’s what our caller is talking about.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back to the phones, Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh.

Steve in Boca Raton. Great to have you, sir. How are you?

CALLER: Hey, Rush. How are you?

RUSH: I’m good. I’m good. I’m good.

CALLER: I’ve been listening to you since you started. This is the first time I ever got through to you.

RUSH: Well, I’m glad you made it through, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: All right. But this is something I think you’re gonna like and I hope your audience appreciates. Remember the guy, I think his name was Cesar, who had the van with all the brand-new stickers, anti-Hillary, anti-Democrat —

RUSH: Oh, yeah!

CALLER: — down here in Florida?

RUSH: That guy driving around — yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The perfectly aligned Hillary stickers on that van. Yes. We all remember that. What about it?

CALLER: Nobody ever heard whatever happened to him. Was he ever in court? Was he ever tried? Was he ever arrested? Notice how once the election came about, it just vanished. Talk about a Democratic swamp set up —

RUSH: You know what, you’re right, Mueller didn’t even try to track this guy down.

CALLER: Nobody tried to track this guy at all. He has just vanished. I’ve looked all over the Web, I can’t find anything about this guy.

RUSH: This guy, the stickers on his van, they were pro-Trump or anti-Hillary?

CALLER: They were anti-Hillary, pro-Trump. They even had targets —

RUSH: Oh, yeah, bull’s-eye.

CALLER: Bull’s-eye. And he supposedly sent bombs to Hillary, to Soros, to all these Democrats.

RUSH: Right. And he hung around at the casino at the Hard Rock Cafe. Yeah.

CALLER: But nothing ever — the news media couldn’t stop talking about him two weeks before the election. They made sure —

RUSH: They even had photos of this guy at the gym working out, pumping up. Oh, yeah. And you’re right, not a word about this guy ever since.

CALLER: Nothing. Nothing. I have searched, I have searched. Nothing. I have no idea where he is. He probably got paid off by the FBI and he’s probably enjoying his life somewhere in Costa Rica.

RUSH: Either that or The Keys.

CALLER: I’d like to say one other thing.

RUSH: His name was Cesar. something, right?

CALLER: Cesar. Cesar.

RUSH: Yeah. That totally slipped my mind.

CALLER: I got one other thing.

RUSH: What’s the other thing?

CALLER: The other thing I want to do is I happen to be a Jewish American. I want to just say to all my foolish liberal Jewish voters out there, your Democratic Party of your fathers and FDR is gone. They don’t want you. They want you destroyed. In fact, Omar and Rashida talking this morning to CAIR, which is nothing more than a Hamas front, they want the destruction of Israel and more important, they want the destruction of us. So you better wake up and you better vote for Trump and you better vote Republican because these Democrats will destroy you. And that’s all I have to say.

RUSH: I appreciate the call. Thanks much and gotta go.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The guy’s name was Cesar Sayoc Jr., S-a-y-o-c. He was the pipe bomber who did not send a single real pipe bomb. He was being held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn is the last we’ve been able to determine what happened to the van guy, Cesar Sayoc Jr. We’ll have more and lots of other things when we get back.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: My good buddy Jeffrey Lord, American Spectator and NewsBusters, just sent me a link. Apparently, these clowns at Mediaite have a story that I am presenting a “false flag theory” on the New Zealand shooter, that I’m spreading conspiracy stuff. Now, normally I would just ignore this stuff and let it go. But this is something I didn’t do. I mentioned the kind of things that are out there. I don’t know what happened, and I didn’t claim to know what happened. I have no idea what happened.

I simply read some stuff from this guy’s manifesto and shared the theory that Snerdley had found today going around just as a bit of information. I have no clue. I’m not pushing a theory. I have nothing of the sort. I don’t engage in that. But this is… In fact, it’s exactly the kind of stuff I’m talking about: The overpoliticization of events like this so that people can score political points immediately in the aftermath of one of these events — and how we get weary. We get worn out. We can’t even take time to actually figure out what happened before the pollution starts.