RUSH: Yeah, it’s as fascinating a case study as almost everything is these days with the Drive-By Media, the media left, the media-Democrat complex. The Notre Dame Cathedral fire. It is simply unacceptable. It is not tolerable. You must not even breathe the possibility of arson because if it’s arson then fingers will point in one direction, and we’re not gonna point in that direction. We’re not gonna permit fingers to point. We’re not gonna even allow thoughts in that direction. No, no, no, no, my friends.

But let’s play the game just to start for just a second here. Even if the Notre Dame fire was not arson, there is no denying that attacks on churches, churches throughout France, throughout Europe, are on the upswing. I’m gonna tell you something, folks. This is just me. But watching those pictures yesterday as that cathedral was burning throughout the afternoon into the evening, watching all that I thought I was looking at what may well be a symbolism for all of Europe going up in flames.

This is simply head-in-the-sand denial, to refuse to openly accept what is happening throughout France and throughout Europe. And the very idea that there is this concerted effort coupled with a demand to ignore all of this in my nature is all I need to believe that maybe there are some things going on that everybody knows and some just will not admit and will not permit discussion of. Because there is no denying that attacks on churches in France and all over Europe are on the upswing. It’s undeniable. It’s not all arson. Not random arson. And everybody knows this.

So it makes all this sanctimonious concern about Notre Dame from the people on Drive-By Media cable news channels, kind of rings a little hollow to me since these same news outlets can’t be bothered to even report on the attacks on churches, the attacks on Christianity that have been taking place throughout Europe and Africa, not to mention the War on Christianity in the United States, which they are helping to wage. These are undeniable things that are happening.

And yet, the compulsion in the mainstream media is to do just that. Not just ignore it, but to chastise, castigate, and attack anybody who might even try to point it out, even while acknowledging the possibility that Notre Dame was felled by arson. You know, there is a trend that has developed in the Drive-By Media, and it is happening all over cable news. It doesn’t matter where you go in the mainstream media. Any story that comes out, any story, if the story is a negative for the Republicans or for conservatives, then that alone is the story.

However, if a story emerges that is bad for the left, like the Covington kids or the Mueller report or anything, anything that is bad for the left, anything that’s bad for the media, guess what the story is? The story is not the story. The story is the right’s reaction to it. And so the conservative Republican segment of our population is always the target of any story, especially stories that are bad for the left, especially stories that point to the hypocrisy of the left.

Look at Trump’s sanctuary city gambit. What is the news story on that? The news story is not illegal immigration and not the existence of sanctuary cities. The story is how crazy is the right? How insensitive is the right? How crazy is Trump? And so we have a version of that happening here. I can go through the Stack of Stuff today and I can show you all of the stories which are focused on all of the people who attempted to point out who might benefit from setting fire and burning down Notre Dame.

Even on Fox News the head of the Catholic League, Bill Donohue, was on. He acknowledges it may be arson but also that we have to look at what is actually happening. There are churches being destroyed and set on fire, and the moment he got even halfway out with that sentence, the anchors at Fox, “No, no, no, no, no, we’re not going there. We’re not going there Bill. We’re not gonna speculate, we’re not. Until we have the facts, we’re not even gonna go there.”

The story becomes the right-wing reaction to the burning of Notre Dame, not the burning of Notre Dame. You see how this happens? And so throughout the Drive-By Media today there are stories on all of the supposed lamebrain, Looney Toon conspiracy theories out there to explain this rather than an open and honest, factual presentation of what the heck might have happened. No, no. It is already established, and you can’t challenge it that this was arson started by somebody who flicked a cigarette. Even though no official investigation has even begun nor been announced, nor the conclusions released.

Oh. And also part of the story is making fun of Donald Trump and his reaction to the fire. So you see, folks, whatever the story in the Drive-By Media, the story is either going to be how bad it is for the right or how crazy and conspiracy oriented the right is. This is not something that has been common for very long. It’s relatively new. I mean, it’s not brand-new. It didn’t just start last month or last year. But it is something that if you pay attention, you will notice.

So any attempt, any attempt to bore in on a possibility outside of arson is met with, “That’s a conspiracy theory. You’re a kook. You’re dangerous. We know you want to blame Muslims, and we’re not gonna let you blame Muslims. We know that Muslims couldn’t be responsible. And even if they are, no, we’re not going there, we’re not going.”

So the story becomes how crazed and conspiracy oriented the right is. And what we’re not getting is even a pretense of curiosity as to what really happened here. You notice the Drive-Bys will not even allow anyone to even mention the possibility of arson. As I say, even on Fox News, supposedly conservative news network, a couple of anchors had occasion to cut off their guests, Bill Donohue being one, when they began to speculate the fire could have been intentional.

And they didn’t say “Islam,” and they didn’t say “Muslim.” They didn’t have a chance, they didn’t have a chance to get that far because their microphones were cut off.

Ilhan Omar: Some people did something on 9/11. What do you mean, some people did something on 9/11? That story has become the right wing’s attack on Ilhan Omar, not on what Ilhan Omar said and what it might mean. If anything has any potential to go against the narrative of the left, then the story will become how the right is a bunch of crazed, wacko, conspiracy-oriented theorists.

Now, we’re supposed to accept the word of the French authorities who say they know for a fact the fire was accidental, even though they have not even begun to investigate its cause. By the way, it’s not the first church fire in France. This is not the first event of this kind in France. Certain neighborhoods in Paris are now off-limits to the cops. You can’t even go there. Not supposed to go there. But we’re not supposed to tie any of what we know even as a possibility in a list of things that might explain this. Can’t even go there.

I can’t get past those images of Notre Dame, the roof or the spire in flames and, in a sense, seeing much of Europe in a symbolic way. It’s supposed to be crazy, it’s supposed to be even dangerous to imagine this could be anything but an accident. Dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Don’t go there.

Even though a report from France’s own central criminal intelligence service noted that from 2016 to 2018 there have been thousands of cases of church vandalism, thousands of cases of church — not synagogue, not mosque — church vandalism. Thousands of cases from 2016 to 2018, two years. It peaked in 2017, 1,045 cases of church vandalism in France.

And according to the French ministry of the interior, when cemeteries and other sites are taken into consideration, the number of acts of church vandalism rose to 1,063 in 2018. But we’re supposed to ignore that. That’s not relevant. Anybody that wants to look at that is a crazed conspiracy theorist.

In fact, folks, earlier this year in one week alone, France saw 12 churches vandalized, including attackers attempting to set fire to the church of Saint-Sulpice. In Nimes, vandals smearing feces on the wall of the church of Notre-Dame des Enfants, stole objects from the altar. In March, the over 800-year-old Basilica of Saint-Denis in the now heavily migrant-populated suburbs of Paris, where cops can’t go, was also vandalized, with the basilica’s organ being heavily damaged and stained glass windows were broken.

I mean, this is happening all over the country. It’s happening all over Paris. But but but but, no, no, no, no. Uh, uh, we’re not gonna admit it, acknowledge it, we don’t want anybody to know about any of that. Why? Who are we afraid of offending? Why are we afraid of offending? What are we afraid of discovering? Why are we afraid of discovering it?

Well, I’ll admit here this could all be irrelevant. The Notre Dame fire could very well have been accidental, caused by some construction worker flicking a still-burning cigarette. But as a thought experiment, apply all the numbers that I just recited to black churches in the United States, and then imagine a fire like the one at Notre Dame at a black church in America, and then imagine how the media would react to that.

Using the same theory, if there had been over a thousand black church fires, acts of vandalism, cemetery violence, if that had been happening in the last two years in the United States and a big black church erupted in flames yesterday, what do you think the story would be? The story would be who on the right did this? What white nationalist is doing this?

The speculation on who on the right could have been responsible would be the story. There wouldn’t be any, “Hey, let’s not jump to conclusions. It could be arson. It could be totally innocent. Let’s not go there.” Every guest would have been required to blame such a fire at a black church in America on white nationalists.

I was watching a TV show last night. Sometimes I watch NCIS Los Angeles. You can’t turn on a television show these days without white nationalists — and somebody define that for me — without white nationalists being the villains. White nationalist, crazed Alt-Right, ultraright wingers. People that had nothing to do and have nothing to do with — the Covington kids is an example. They got blamed! They were inciting the riot because they were wearing Trump hats, that made them evil.

I’ve got a Stack today on the tax cuts and the nine outright lies that were told about Trump tax cuts that a lot of people ended up believing. And one of the lies was told by Lawrence Summers, who is the former Treasury secretary, former president of Harvard. He actually said that the Trump tax cuts would result in an additional 10,000 people dying in America.

And it was reported without question. It was reported with applause. So for some reason one of the chief fact-finding organizations, institutions is doing everything but. Why? Well, the question answers itself. I’m asking it rhetorically.

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RUSH: And to prove the theory that if a story has any possibility of looking bad for the left, then the story is the right’s reaction to it. I have here a shameless example from the Associated Press. Here’s the headline: “Trump Offers Unsolicited Advice on Fighting Notre Dame Fire.” So here’s the president of the United States, who’s tweeted some really beautiful thoughts about this and knows a lot about construction and accidents and fires and all kinds of calamities that happen in buildings.

He knows how to put out fires. He knows these things. It was his business. So the president of the United States tweeted some things yesterday (paraphrased), ” Maybe they could have some tankers fly over the place and water bomb it,” and of course the French authorities took two hours. It took them two hours to get to this location. Are you aware of that? Did you hear that? It took firefighters two hours to get there and get set up and get going.

So Trump sends out his tweet, and French say, “Well, well, that just shows your president doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If you firebomb with water from a tanker plane flying over, you’re gonna collapse the roof.” Uh, duh? The roof had collapsed! The objective was to save the structure and some of the contents from at least being burned to smithereens. But the headline here: “Trump Offers Unsolicited Advice,” much like “Trump, without evidence, suggests that the Mueller report’s a witch hunt.”

Utterly… They can’t help themselves. They just can’t help it. See, they’re even using the fire at Notre Dame to attack Trump. “As a catastrophic inferno tore through a cultural treasure, President Donald Trump assessed the response from 4,000 miles away and offered unsolicited advice for firefighters trying to save Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral.” Mind you, the AP and others have no problem publishing stories from psychiatrists who psychoanalyze Trump who’ve never met him and that’s perfectly fine.

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RUSH: Now, I did go back to the audio sound bite archives here, and I have an example of what I was talking about in the opening monologue. Bill Donohue, the Catholic League New York. I love Bill Donohue. I have to tell you there’s no greater advocate for Catholicism than Bill Donohue. And this guy takes hits like you can’t believe, and he just stands up and he thrusts his jaw back at ’em and says, “Hit me again,” and he fires back.

He’s a great guy to have on your side, and his passion is the Catholic Church and defending it from all sorts of attacks, be it on theology or culture or anything. He was on Fox News yesterday to talk about the Notre Dame fire. He was on with Neil Cavuto. And the question that gets this bite started it’s, “Okay. We don’t know what started this. We do know the repercussions and what has been left as a result of this, ruins that could take some time to fix and make right.”

DONAHUE: If it is an accident, it’s a monumental tragedy. But forgive me for being suspicious. Just last month a seventeenth century church was set on fire in Paris. We’ve seen tabernacles knocked down, crosses have been torn down, statues have been smashed.

CAVUTO: We don’t know that. So if we can avoid what your suspicions might be, I do want to look at what happens now.

DONAHUE: Well, first they have to get to the bottom of it, and they will rebuild it, there’s no question about it that. The Catholic Church will come up with the money for it. That’s not even a question. But I’m sorry, I mean, when I find out that the eucharist is being destroyed and excrement is being smeared on crosses.

CAVUTO: Wait a minute.

DONAHUE: This is going on now.

CAVUTO: Bill, I love you, Bill, but we cannot make conjectures about this, so thank you —

DONAHUE: Oh, I’m not.

CAVUTO: — Bill, I’m sorry. Thank you very much.

RUSH: It’s the one area, it’s the one area where conjecture and speculation isn’t permitted. They can go get psychiatrists who have never met Donald Trump, who’ve never been in the same city as Donald Trump, they can bring ’em in, they can put ’em on TV and they can have them analyze Donald Trump, and that is gold. That we can trust, that we can take to the bank.

They can bring in people that had nothing to do with the Trump campaign, they can bring in people had nothing to do with the FBI and tell us what happened with the Trump-Russia collusion, and if it fits the left’s narrative, we’ve got to believe it. But the minute anyone explores even an alternate possibility to explain this disaster ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, can’t go there. There is some kind of real fear that just requires that any such talk be shut down.

Now, he was talking here, Donahue was, about the seventeenth century church set on fire just last month in Paris, some of the other vandalism. I have a story here from the U.K. Express: “Anger As France Sees 10 Catholic Churches Attacked in One Week — A seven day spree of vandalism has seen Catholic churches targeted across France sparking fears of a fresh wave of anti-Christian sentiment in the country, including one church being defiled with human excrement.” I should stop.

I should use discipline and stop myself from going any further so that I do not engage in any irresponsibility. Right? “At least 10 incidents of vandalism and desecration of Catholic churches have been reported across the Channel,” — remember, this is a U.K. story – “since the beginning of February. French Roman-Catholic newspaper La Croix International reported how the attacks on churches took place across France. Senseless acts included the desecration of altars, the defacing of Christ on the cross and in an extreme case, human excrement being spread across the walls of a holy place of worship.

“On February 5, an altar cloth was found burnt and crosses and statues torn down or disfigured –” cigarette probably did all this, “– at the recently refurbished Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, in south-central France. The fire was found early by a parish secretary and did not spread – but the altar and adjacent walls were badly damaged by smoke.”

And so it is an undeniable fact that this is happening. And not just in France. It is happening all over Europe, folks. And it’s happening to various degrees here in the United States. ‘Cause I’m gonna tell you. Whenever you hear anywhere on the left an attack on white nationalism or white supremacy or white this or that, what they’re really talking about is the founding of the country and its roots in Christianity. That is the actual target of all of these made-up targets — white nationalists, white supremacy, white privilege, white this, white that. White males and all of that.

So now the question rebuilding Notre Dame. Do you know how long it took to build that cathedral? The cathedral dates back to the 1300s. You know how long it took to build Notre Dame? A hundred years. It took a century to build it. And I would have loved to have been there the day they said it’s done. Something that’s been under construction for a hundred years, they had to be renovating stuff that had been build 80 years prior while they are still completing it.

And the roof was some of the most magnificent wood. That cathedral was many things, in addition to a glorious testament to what you can do with trees, to what can be fashioned out of wood. By the way, there was no way that they were gonna destroy the church if they had dropped a bunch of bombs of water from an overflying jet. It’s only the roof that was wood, and it was on the way to being destroyed anyway.

Water would not have destroyed the foundation or anything of the sort. But any excuse to attack Trump it will take.

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RUSH: Mr. Snerdley has sifted through our massive amount of calls and has found some he has judged to be qualified to appear on the program. We’re gonna start in Boca Raton, Florida. This is Mike. Congratulations, sir, getting through here today. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Thank you very much, Rush. I just have one fact or one thing I’d like to mention. I haven’t heard it from anybody, and certainly not on TV. But were you aware that on Friday France actually convicted and jailed a female Islamic —

RUSH: All right, all right! That’s it, that’s it! We —

CALLER: — terrorist for (crosstalk) —

RUSH: Ah, ah, ah! We can’t, we can’t use the magic word “jihadist.” That’s it, that’s it! We’re not allowed to go any further. I’m just kidding. Don’t hang up the phone. I just had to make the point. I had show people how it sounds.

CALLER: Well, that’s the same thing that’s happening on TV! I’ve seen people get cut off when they’re starting to talk about something. I mean, heaven forbid we should state the obvious. It doesn’t take a historian to know this. I mean, this woman in 2016 tried to car bomb the Notre Dame Cathedral. She was jailed on Friday, this Friday past. Now 72 hours has gone by, and it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to remember that before the same group of people were accused of doing what they did to our country, taking down a major symbol of power, that that very morning — hours before — the mastermind for the 1998 attack on the Cole was put in jail. Hours later, our symbol was gone.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: That’s all I have to say. I’d love to hear what you say about it.

RUSH: Mike, I’m glad you called. Thanks much. I’ll be honest with you here, folks. I’ve never understood… That’s not the right way to say it. I understand it. That’s the problem! I understand it. You go back to 9/11, and at the time, we knew who did it. The next day, who knew who did it! There were their pictures all over the news of the 19 hijackers. We knew who did it. We knew their names. We knew where they grew up. We knew where they were trained, that the majority of them were from Saudi Arabia — and then Osama Bin Laden is out claiming credit for it.

It’s a no-brainer who did it. And yet, within a few short days the entire narrative changes and becomes our fault. “What did we do to inspire this kind of attack?” The State Department! The State Department convened a symposium on, “Why do they hate us so much?” And it didn’t take long after 9/11 before you weren’t allowed to talk about the people who did it. You know the old saw about, “Oh, we’ve got to guard against the backlash against Muslims in the United States.”

What do you mean guard against a backlash against…? It’s descended from there consistently to today, where you’re not even allowed to mention it, speculate, talk about it. Even things that we know were Islamist terrorism we’re not really supposed to say this. It has made no sense to me. We had no problem identifying the enemy in World War II, the Japanese, the Germans and their allies. We had no problem identifying the supposed enemy in the Vietnam War, which was an amalgamation or combination of the North Vietnamese and the Russians.

And, yeah, the ChiComs as well. We’ve got no problem identifying that little pot-bellied dictator in North Korea. But this, there is a “can’t go there, must not go there, must not even mention things factually true in going there.” And I’ve always been curious of the origins of it. Now, a lot of people blame CAIR. CAIR started after 9/11 as a means of providing insurance, insulation against that kind of talk. But, man, it doesn’t make any logical sense whatsoever.

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RUSH: Say, folks, I goofed up on when CAIR was founded. And the reason is that I have in my mind the lie told by Ilhan Omar about it. Her explanation was that CAIR was founded after 9/11 and because some people did something. And I want to correct the record. I don’t like to be wrong about anything.

The Council for Arab Islamic Relations is actually a spin-off of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood spin-off of Hamas, which is the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, if you will. And CAIR was started 1993, ’94 after then president Slick Willie sided with Yasser Arafat in his battle with Hamas for control of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas was branded a foreign terrorist organization, which meant that you could get in legal jeopardy for advocating for Hamas.

So they came up with CAIR as a faux civil rights organization that had media savvy so they could basically advocate for Hamas and for jihadist Islamist causes with some deniability about whether they were actually part of Hamas. I realize some of this may sound Greek to a lot of you who were not old enough back in the early nineties, mid-nineties to remember any of this or be paying attention to it.

And even some of you who were who may have forgotten, let me run through this again, because Ilhan Omar lied through her teeth about this, claiming that CAIR was founded to do damage control and to try to — some people did something on 9/11, so CAIR came along to provide defense against these outrageous attacks on these people that did something on 911.

And, in fact, CAIR is a PR concern, but it was created for the express purpose of being able to advocate for organizations related to terrorist organizations in the Middle East. Again, they’re a Muslim Brotherhood spin-off of Hamas. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch. The Muslim Brotherhood’s everywhere, Muslim Brotherhood Arab Spring, Muslim Brotherhood Egypt.

But CAIR itself, C-A-I-R, started in 1993-94 after Clinton decided to side with Arafat, who was the rival to Hamas for control of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas was branded a terrorist organization, which meant that anybody could get in trouble, legal jeopardy for advocating for them.

So, Hamas came up with CAIR to be a faux civil rights organization that had media savvy so that they could basically advocate for Hamas under the civil rights banner and advocate for jihadist and Islamist causes under the civil rights banner with resulting deniability about whether they were actually part of Hamas. So they set themselves up as being a third-party disinterested but advocating for when in fact they were a direct spin-off.

And CAIR has been an apologist for virtually all the terrorism cases throughout the 1990s through and including and beyond the big attack on 9/11. Now, it was Ilhan Omar who misstated the facts about CAIR’s founding. And that’s what I was reacting to. So I wanted to straighten that out.

I’m looking at the call board. I’m thinking of taking a call right now. I’m gonna wait. I’m gonna wait. Let me move now, folks, since I mentioned it in the first hour, because this is really incredible what the media pulled off here. I mean, in addition to every other bit of bias and advocacy and activism that they get away with, this is especially profound and sadly effective.

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RUSH: Well, the French president mac and cheese is on TV right now. I’m sorry. That’s what I think of when I see his name. I know some people think macaroni, but it’s macaroni and cheese. Who has macaroni without cheese?

Anyway, you know what the guy’s saying? And it sounds so good, it sounds so wonderful, and it’s such a bald-face, misleading lie. French President Macron is saying this is not the time for politics. Of course it’s not the time for politics.

But let a black church burn in America, and it’s the time for politics. Or let there be a mass shooting anywhere in America, and it’s time for politics, and we don’t wait. We politicize everything instantly when the target can be said to be conservatives.

But now when conservatives can’t in any way be blamed for this, “This is not the time for politics.” It may not be. My point is the hypocrisy of these people. They politicize everything, and in the process they are destructive. They corrupt pretty much everything they get their hands on because they do politicize it! But now this is not the time for politics. Right.