RUSH: Folks, there is a story out there today that I just love. And the story is being pooh-poohed. And it’s disappointing that it’s being pooh-poohed to me. Here’s the headline: “White House Proposed Releasing Immigrant Detainees in Sanctuary Cities, Targeting Political Foes.”
Now, what this is, the Washington Post claims to have seen some memos from the Department of Homeland Security where White House officials — i.e., Stephen Miller — supposedly tried to pressure immigration authorities to release detained illegal aliens onto the streets of sanctuary cities.
What a great idea! They say they love them, they say they want them, they’ve got their borders open, so send them there. What a great idea! The Washington Post claims it was planned as a way to retaliate against Trump’s political adversaries. Even better! Even better. This is exactly the kind of stuff we’re up against each and every day. What a great idea.
And it is so perfectly Trumpian! The plan was to send some of them to Pelosi’s San Francisco district. I mean, you… (Snort!) It’s the kind of idea I’m jealous I didn’t come up with it, the kind of policy suggestion that I regret I didn’t think of. But then you read further and it kind of depresses you. The Washington Post is just trying to make a scandal out of a blue-sky idea. They’re blue-skying ideas. The idea apparently was “briefly floated” and then it was “quickly rejected,” which is just disappointing as it can be to me.
Now, if you drill down eight or so paragraphs into this Washington Post story (it’s about a couple thousand words), you will see that the Washington Post grudgingly admits that a White House official and a Department of Homeland Security spokesman wrote to them to say the plan was just a suggestion, that was floated and it was quickly dismissed. The Post in its story, in other words, admits it was never a real thing — it was just some people making blue-sky suggestions — and yet, they have made an entire story out of the fact being it was real.
In their headline: “White House Proposed Releasing Immigrant Detainees in Sanctuary Cities, Targeting Political Foes.” They don’t propose anything. That’s the point. It never got to the proposal stage. They were just bandying things about. How many times have we seen this? The Washington Post, the New York Times do that with their supposedly bombshells. They write this dramatic headline, this dramatic two-paragraph lede, only eight or nine paragraphs later to undercut their own scoop by saying, “Ah, ah, never mind,” doing Emily Litella.
You wade even deeper into the article (which I did so that you don’t have to), and you’ll come across one of the most racist comments I have ever seen. Let me quote: “Pelosi’s office blasted the plan. ‘The extent of this administration’s cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated,’ said Pelosi spokeswoman Ashley Etienne. ‘Using human beings — including little children — as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable.'”
Isn’t that an incredibly bigoted thing to say? Why should sending more “gifts of love” to sanctuary cities perpetuate fear? Pelosi calls them gifts of love! That’s what she called illegal immigrants! How in the world could sending people she calls gifts of love perpetuate fear? Especially sending ’em to sanctuary cities, which she adamantly supports — eagerly, wholeheartedly, and all that. How in the world can sending little gifts of love “perpetuate fear and demonize” anyone?
Why, I thought this’d be a win-win. I thought the sanctuary cities would welcome them. Isn’t that the way this is supposed to work? We have an immigration problem. We are being overrun. We’re being invaded. The Trump regime says, “Hey, there are some places in this country where these people are wanted. San Francisco is such a place. It’s a sanctuary city. Why, in fact, Nancy Pelosi has even referred to these people in the invasion as little gifts of love. Why not send them there?”
Why aren’t the people in the sanctuary cities applauding this? Why aren’t they saying, “Hey, we’ll take ’em”? How do we get a story in the Washington Post that this is somehow supposed to embarrass Trump’s political adversaries? What, does that mean they don’t really like these people? Does that mean they really don’t want these people? What are these sanctuary cities for if not to welcome these little gifts of love? (interruption) No, no, no. I’m not exaggerating here. I’m being dead serious.
(interruption) Yeah, it’s hypocritical. I know it never sticks to ’em, but the point needs to be made nevertheless. On the one hand, we have people like Pelosi and the liberal Democrats who set up sanctuary cities to shield these people from the evil Republicans and conservatives who want to deport them, right? They go so far as tell these people when ICE raids are coming so they can hide. They broadcast, they amplify, they let us know how much they love being sanctuary cities.
So when they see the story in the Washington Post that Trump wants to send these asylum-seeking illegals to their town, why didn’t they say, “Come on in! We’ll take ’em”? Why didn’t the Washington Post get a Pulitzer for this story? Instead, they turn this… (laughing) They’re turning this story into somehow sanctuary cities don’t want these people and if Trump did this, it would be one of the dirtiest political tricks since Richard Nixon. What dirty trick? They love these people in the sanctuary cities!
They’re little gifts of love. How is this even a controversy? Why, this ought to make these Democrats love Trump! He was gonna not deport ’em. He was gonna send them to their own cities. They should be calling the White House and saying, “You’re getting it, Don! You’re finally getting it. We love these people, and now it looks like you love ’em ’cause you want to send ’em to us.” Instead, we have a story where somehow this is nothing more than a bunch of racist, bigoted political dirty tricksterism.
“Targeting Trump’s political foes”? How can something that they support and want and eagerly ask for be targeting them? Why, it must mean that the sanctuary cities are not really what they tell us that they are, that they don’t really want these people and they’re not out to welcome them. But we know that’s not true; they do. So I think Washington Post, bottom line, has stepped in it big time. It’s a great idea. It should have unified Trump with some of these big city left-wing liberals!
Why, he was going to give them more of what they want. But somehow, it’s turned into dirty tricksterism. Somehow, it’s turned into “targeting Trump’s political foes.” I hope they haven’t given up on this idea. I hope at some point they revive it and do it, under the premise that the sanctuary city people call these people gifts of love and they shelter them already and they advocate for more of them, so why not? Isn’t this a great way…? They’ve already destroyed those towns anyway, as far as we’re concerned. So what’s a little more destruction?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, you all in this audience will acknowledge that I have been blessed with a remarkable memory. It’s all about how the brain synapses (the deep, dark crevices in there) fire and coordinate together — and I remember this story about locating illegals in sanctuary cities. I’d seen this before somewhere. So we did a quick search at RushLimbaugh.com. Ready for this? Two and a half years ago, here’s the headline from Alabama, AL.com: “White House Considers Sending Illegal Immigrant Children to Sessions’ Home State.”
Right there. We did the story at the time, and there’s an accompanying story from Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby, the two senators at the time. “Shelby and Sessions: Halt Obama’s Plans to House Illegal Alien Juveniles in Baldwin County.” Here’s the story. June 12th, 2016: “White House…” This’d be the Obama White House. “The White House is considering a plan to relocate thousands of illegal immigrant children to the home state of U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, causing some to question whether presidential politics is at play.” Now, here’s the difference.
Alabama’s not a sanctuary anything. I don’t even know if they have a sanctuary city in Alabama, but the state is not. Sessions, as everybody knows, is a gigantic critic of illegal immigration. So the Obama administration doing this is a middle finger to Jeff Sessions. They’re sending a bunch of people who have violated the law to Jeff Sessions’ home state, and Jeff Sessions’ home state has not asked for them. The big difference in the Trump story is that San Francisco and Seattle, all these other sanctuary cities, want the illegals.
They advertise for them. They advocate for them. “Sessions has for years has led the opposition to immigration policies supported by President Barack Obama. The plan would send the children to Baldwin County, across the bay from Sessions’ home in Mobile County.” So they were gonna put these people right in Sessions’ front and backyard. “Sessions has also emerged among Donald Trump’s fiercest supporters and was the first senator to endorse [Trump].
“Trump’s hardline immigration approach – which includes deportation of all undocumented immigrants and a wall built along the U.S.-Mexican border — has been embraced by Sessions. ‘It’s highly probable that this is more political than practical,’ said Baldwin County Commissioner Chris Elliott. Said Baldwin County Sheriff Huey ‘Hoss’ Mack…” What a great name for a sheriff: Hoss Mack.
“Sheriff Huey ‘Hoss’ Mack: ‘I hope that is not the case. The polls I’ve seen is Alabama is very conservative on the immigration issue. The federal government is not.'” So, you see, folks — and the Washington Post didn’t do the story. The New York Times didn’t do the story. Alabama media did the story. But the Obama administration was planning this, in a gigantic middle finger to Jeff Sessions.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Scott in Aurora, Illinois. Glad you’re up first today. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I just wanted to bring up — I’m from the Chicago area, and I think that idea is hilarious. But here’s the thing with that, though. I don’t think they want the illegal immigrants. They only want their votes.
RUSH: Well, but you can’t have one without the other.
CALLER: Well —
RUSH: You’re saying here because they have not welcomed the idea of accepting the overload into their sanctuary cities that they really don’t want them; they just want to find a way to register them to vote or get ’em a driver’s license or something?
CALLER: Exactly. And I mean that’s why they’ve been pushing that idea. But I mean I think it even goes more than that is they don’t want ’em in the sanctuary cities because the sanctuary cities Chicago, San Diego, all those cities, already have the Democratic vote. They want ’em peppered throughout country to try to take over a lot of the states that are maybe already pushing towards that and aren’t quite there yet.
RUSH: Well, look. I understand your thinking on this. I want to try to — we can’t ignore the fact that they are sanctuary cities in all of these states like yours and California that are already fully formed blue. They’re not shutting down. They’re welcoming even more in. Now, the answer or the interesting question is, why? Of course they want the votes. Of course they want to get as many of these people eligible, legally or illegal, as it may be, to be able to vote. But do not think that they don’t want them.
There is a lot of psychology tied up in this. There’s a lot of money to be made with illegal immigrants. Everybody looks at it as an expenditure, as an outgo, but this is why they don’t want the citizenship question on the census, because they do receive – I don’t know how much in percentages, but they get federal money based on population. And if some of them are identified as noncitizens and thus illegal, it’d be tougher to keep getting the amount of money.
But they’re worth something. They’re worth a lot of things to these people. They love the sob stories. They love people that are obviously suffering and in need. They love victims. Everybody suffering, everybody in need, everybody in pain is an opportunity to blame the United States. It’s an opportunity to blame Republicans. It’s an opportunity to advance a political agenda.
So they do want them, and they want the suffering. Why in San Francisco — ask yourself something. In San Francisco there are so many different places in the city that human feces pile up that there are maps to advise tourists and others how to avoid them. Why don’t they just clean it up? Why don’t they try to explain it? Maybe they do clean. Why do they not try to stop it?
The liberal mind is a tough thing to understand because it’s not rational. The more victims, the better. The more apparent suffering, the better. The more people who obviously are seen to be in pain, the greater the opportunity to blame America or the system or Republicans.
Why do you think these problems of poverty and disparity are never really fixed? Well, there are multiple reasons. One of the reasons is liberalism can’t fix them. By definition, liberalism is impossible. Or it is, better stated, impossible to solve these kinds of inequities and social disparity problems with liberalism. Liberalism is what creates it.
But, believe me, there are big opportunities to move the agenda. Why do you think when homelessness was all the rage back in the eighties? “Three million homeless.” And every weekend Martin Sheen and somebody would be kicking people off their sewer grates to sleep on them instead to call attention, to raise consciousness to the issue, to point out how Reagan didn’t care, to point out how Republicans didn’t care, Republicans created homelessness. It’s a time-honored technique used over and over again by the left.
So if they didn’t want sanctuary cities, they’d close ’em down. If they didn’t want the illegals, they’d make sure they didn’t get in there. The real way to look at this is these are the worst people in the world to provide legitimate assistance, ’cause they don’t want these people improving their lot in life. There no value to them as self-sufficient human beings.
Here’s Barbara in Port Orange, Florida. Great to have you. Open Line Friday. Welcome.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, this is the third time I’ve talked to you in 30 years, and I am psyched. I love you. Here’s my point. I don’t want President Trump to back off this deal of thinking of putting these illegals into sanctuary cities, and here’s why. They dump all of these poor people into the most depressed areas in our country, all over our country. And emergency rooms are overflowing. School budgets are being busted because of having to deal with this. While all of the big, wealthy people like Nancy Pelosi, who says that what he wants to do is despicable and bigoted, well, what the hell are they doing if it’s not despicable and bigoted?
RUSH: Well, that’s exactly right. That’s precisely my point. These people in San Francisco, the sanctuary city, they are nowhere near Pelosi. They’re nowhere near where she lives, and they’re nowhere near where Dianne Feinstein lives in Pacific Heights. If they get anywhere near, here comes the lights and sirens and back to the tenderloin they go.
They’re not gonna get anywhere near where Pelosi and Feinstein and her Chinese spy driver happen to live. That is an excellent point. They’re the ones making all of this possible.