RUSH: All right. Trump is busy commuting sentences. He has commuted the sentence of the former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Grab audio sound bite number 22. Trump today pardoned the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers, Eddie DeBartolo Jr. By the way, I need to explain something. Why do I pronounce it the “Fort’erners”? Well, back when I worked at KFBK in Sacramento, the 49ers had a radio network, and there was an announcer named Don Klein, and he had to say “49ers” so many times during a game that I’m sure it just ended up being “Fort’erners.”
You know, I’m amazed by speech patterns. I’m a student of it. I’m a student of the human voice. I’m an expert, a highly trained specialist in the usage of the voice, and I’m fascinated by inflections and accents and the way people speak. It’s like fingerprints. Everybody’s different. And this guy was fascinating. I couldn’t do it at first. I had to really learn it. I had to practice to say it the way I heard this guy do it during 49ers play-by-play radio games, and people around the radio station started making fun of me.
They’d come by and say, “So, you been listening to the Fort-uh-nunners lately?” “It’s not ‘Fort-uh-nunners.’ It’s Fort’erners. You gotta…” Anyway, that’s just to explain that that’s why I say it that way. I like mimicking people. Nothing against Don Klein. He was a great guy, don’t misunderstand. He’d done so many 49er games that he had to spend the least time possible pronouncing the name of the team in the process of the play-by-play.
Anyway, Trump pardoned the former owner of the 49ers, Eddie DeBartolo Jr. A bunch of NFL Hall of Famers were at the White House for the ceremony. Among them, number 80, the Hall of Fame receiver for the 49ers, Jerry Rice.
RICE: I think with Eddie and what he has accomplished, what he has done on the football field, off the football field, a lot of charity work. So we talked about that. We talked about just being great, you know, trying to be the greatest of all time and, you know, I take my hat off to Donald Trump for what he did.
RUSH: “I take my hat off to Donald Trump for” pardoning him. Jim Brown was there and a bunch of Hall of Famers from the NFL. “I take my hat off to…” Eddie DeBartolo Jr. was one of the most popular owners in the history of the NFL, and you know why? Because DeBartolo hung around with the players. He loved ’em. He was the first to charter wide-body jets for big football players rather than cramming ’em on DC-9s and stuff, and the players love that stuff. When the 49ers traveled to the East Coast, they always left on Friday.
He put them in the greatest hotels. He put ’em in as many suites as he could go in every hotel. He had the greatest buffets, the pregame meal, all that. The players loved Eddie DeBartolo Jr., and then he got involved in a gambling scandal with the then-governor of Louisiana. And, of course, the NFL back in those days would wink and nod and frown at gambling. DeBartolo Jr. had the team taken away from him and his sister Denise and her husband, John York, took it over — and their son, Jed, now runs it.
So it’s a big day for all of those people. I mean, this is the Joe Montana 49ers that loved Eddie DeBartolo Jr.
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RUSH: Okay, we’re back, and we have some audio sound bites here from Trump, and there’s some additional people that he pardoned here, and he announced it or was asked about it on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. Here first is Trump. He’s defending his tweeting, agreeing that it makes Bill Barr’s job a little tougher.
THE PRESIDENT: I do make his job harder. I do agree with that. I think that’s true. He’s a very straight shooter. We have a great attorney general, and he’s working very hard. And he’s working against a lot of people that don’t want to see good things happen, in my opinion. That’s my opinion, not his opinion. That’s my opinion. You’ll have to ask what his opinion is. But I will say this. Social media for me has been very important because it gives me a voice. The attorney general is a man with incredible integrity. Just so you understand, I chose not to be involved. I’m allowed to be totally involved.
RUSH: Totally true. He can be involved however he wishes. He runs the executive branch. Of this, there’s no dispute. It’s just considered politically dubious to do it. But Trump’s not gonna stop tweeting, I don’t care what anybody wants or says. It’s the way that he combats the fake news that surrounds him. And he’s not gonna stop. Now, here is Trump commuting and pardoning, first up, Rod Blagojevich.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. So we have commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich. He served eight years in jail. It’s a long time. And I watched his wife on television. I don’t know him very well. I’ve met him a couple of times. He was on for a short while on The Apprentice years ago. Seemed like a very nice person. Don’t know him. But he served eight years in jail. There’s a long time to go. Many people disagree with the sentence. He’s a Democrat. He’s not a Republican. It was a prosecution by the same people — Comey, Fitzpatrick, the same group.
RUSH: The key name there is Comey. Comey appointed Fitzpatrick. This was the group that took down Scooter Libby when he wasn’t guilty of anything. And Blagojevich, that’s also debatable. But Blagojevich is a Democrat, and he fell on the wrong side of the Chicago Democrat machine. So that’s why he went away. But up next Trump announcing commutations and pardons for Bernie Kerik and Michael Milken.
THE PRESIDENT: I just pardoned Bernie Kerik, a man who had many recommendations from a lot of good people. You know, oftentimes, pretty much all the time I really rely on the recommendations of people that know them. We have Bernie Kerik. We have Mike Milken, who’s gone around and done an incredible job for the world, with all of his research on cancer, and he’s done this, and he suffered greatly. He paid a big price. Paid a very tough price. But he’s done an incredible job. And, yeah, these are all people that you have to see the recommendations. I rely on recommendations.
RUSH: What’s interesting about this, most of the time presidents issue pardons at the end of the year. And some not until the end of a term. And Trump is announcing these pardons throughout the year, any year of his administration.
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RUSH: The Drive-By Media is going nuts now over the announcement of the presidential pardons, Bernard Kerik, Blagojevich (commuted his sentence), Michael Milken. “Well, these are just friends of Trump’s (sputtering) — or the people that recommended the pardons, they’re just friends of Trump. So why is he doing this? Are they the…? Is Trump announcing these pardons now on the verge, right on the eve of the Roger Stone sentencing?
“He’s trying to send a message to the judge: ‘I don’t care what you sentence Roger Stone. I’m gonna pardon him anyway, so you may as well let him go,'” and so forth and so on. They’re just beside themselves with this. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton could pardon whoever he wanted, the terrorist from Puerto Rico, and it didn’t matter a hill of beans.
But now all of a sudden, they’re looking at all of the people who recommended pardons for these people and they’re being ripped to shreds in the Drive-By Media, and it’s just another indication of how Trump owns these people. He owns them! He has them in the palm of his hand and can set them off any time he wants to light up a fire underneath ’em. He knows how to play these people to a T.