RUSH: I just want to have one more little turn at Biden’s comments today. Actually, they were yesterday at the National Association of Black Journalists’ and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ virtual convention. And I’ll tell you at the outset that some of you may have a problem with this. Some of you may have a bit of disagreement with me about this. But you’ll see why.
I’m gonna play two things for you. One happened back in 1987 on Nightline, the other one yesterday with Joe Biden. And here again, sound bite number 1, NPR, Lulu Garcia-Navarro saying to Joe Biden, “Are you gonna reengage with Cuba?” The question is, Trump did this and Trump’s done that and Trump’s getting us out of the world and Trump’s — this woman, “reengage with Cuba.” Obama did that in a way that was not beneficial to the United States, so Trump comes along and takes the relationship with Cuba back to where it should have been. So, now this woman is saying, since Trump is bad orange man, automatically bad guy, automatically wrong, Biden automatically right, Democrat, answer to every problem, “Are you going” — and she is Hispanic herself, Lulu Garcia-Navarro — “Are you going to reengage with Cuba?”
BIDEN: Yes. And, by the way, what you all know but most people don’t know, unlike the African-American community with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things.
RUSH: He’s talking to an Hispanic reporter. And he knows that. And he says, “Look. What you all know but most people don’t know, like Biden knows something that most everybody doesn’t, you know that unlike the African-American community, you Hispanics, we love you guys. You are diverse. You have incredibly different attitudes about different things. But African-Americans, hell, come on, man, they’re all the same, you know what I mean? They think the same way, they act the same way, they’re just the same. That’s what he said.
Let’s go to back to Nightline 1987. Ted Koppel was interviewing then vice president of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Al Campanis. And Ted Koppel said to Campanis, “Why is it -” 1987 here, folks. This is a year before this program began. Mr. Campanis, vice president the Dodgers, “Why is it there are no black managers, no black general managers, no black owners? Is there still that much prejudice in baseball today?”
CAMPANIS: I don’t believe it’s prejudice. I — I — I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, uh, let’s say a field manager or perhaps a general manager.
KOPPEL: You really believe that?
CAMPANIS: I don’t say all of them, but they surely are short. How many quarterbacks do you have, how many pitchers do you have that are black? Why are black men — or black people not good swimmers? ‘Cause they don’t have the buoyancy.
RUSH: And that was the end of Al Campanis. The Los Angeles Dodgers sent him somewhere never to be heard from again. Bye-bye. And Al Campanis was loved. Al Campanis was respected throughout the Major League Baseball community. We didn’t call things communities back then. Throughout the world of Major League Baseball, if you were in management with the Dodgers, you were considered to be in the top tier of baseball people.
Remember it was Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers who broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. Then they got this guy — and we didn’t play the whole interview, but Ted Koppel gave Campanis two different, maybe three different times. He gave him an out. “Are you sure this is what you’re trying to say, Mr. Campanis?” Because up to this time nobody thought Campanis was a racist. He’s a VP, general manager of the Dodgers.
Obviously what he said here was highly, highly racist, but he really believed that there was something about skin color that determined their qualifications. That they just didn’t have what it took, and they certainly couldn’t float well enough to be good swimmers. He believed this. I don’t think this was the first time Campanis ever said anything like this, but it was the first time he had said it publicly in the media.
Now, what I’m doing, I’m asking, how is this that different from the way Joe Biden’s thinking here? I mean, Campanis says, “I’m not saying all of ’em. But, I mean, they’re certainly short of qualified people.” And what does Biden say? “What you all know most people don’t know, unlike the African-American community, with exceptions, the Latino community is incredibly diverse, incredibly different attitudes, unlike the African-American community.” All the same, think the same.
Joe Biden told everybody here how the Democrat Party looks at African-Americans.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So what’s gonna happen to Biden with this? The answer is nothing is gonna happen to Biden. You’re probably not gonna hear this sound bite much outside of so-called conservative media.
I don’t think that Lulu Garcia-Navarro will ask for time on CBS Evening News to broadcast this bite from Biden. Do you, Mr. Snerdley? (interruption) But I think what’s gonna be going on in the internals of the Democrat Party, they’re gonna say, “We cannot let this guy out. We’ve got to keep him in the basement. There can’t be any debates.” They’re not afraid of Biden losing his place. They’re not afraid of Biden forgetting his thought. I mean, that’s gonna happen. They’re afraid of stuff like this, that he doesn’t even know the gaffe after he’s committed it.
He doesn’t know. Campanis didn’t know. Al Campanis was given three different opportunities in that same interview by Ted Koppel to get out of it, to change what he was saying. But he didn’t realize he’d said anything wrong. And neither here does Biden.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. So Fox News now has the Biden comment about there being all kinds of diversity among the Hispanic community out there, lots of different people, lots of different ways of thinking. But African-Americans, they think pretty much the same, unlike the Hispanic community, all kinds of diversity out there. Well, they got the bite now at Fox and they’ll be assembling a panel to discuss it.
The Democrats will dispatch people to say, “Hey, no, no, no, no. You’re misinterpreting this. No, no, no, no. He was simply talking to an Hispanic reporter, trying to be nice to an Hispanic reporter,” blah, blah, “nothing to see here.” We’ll see how they decide to tackle this.
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