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Rules for Rioters: It Doesn’t Matter What You Do, It’s Who You Are When You’re Doing It

by Rush Limbaugh - Jan 7,2021

RUSH: I’ve been thinking so many things, folks, during all of this, when I’ve had moments of, shall we say, consciousness. Imagine how things might be different today — and I know it’s no fun to play this game ’cause it doesn’t accomplish anything, but I still want to.

I want to get some of these things out there and off my chest. Imagine how things might be different today if Congress was as mad, was as outraged when private businesses were being burned to the ground and innocent citizens were attacked this past summer during riots across the country in Seattle; Minneapolis; New York City; Portland, Oregon.

Imagine if there was anything near the degree of outrage over all of that. When it was not the political class property being torched and destroyed, it was not the political class’s lifestyle that was being summarily attacked, nothing was done about it. In fact, it was ignored in the mainstream media. The mainstream media said, “What riot? Where? What — what violence?

“There isn’t any violence. There’s peaceful protests out there. What are you talking about? There’s no riots.” And they didn’t show any videotape of any of the burning and the looting and all that. You had to search for it yourself ’cause there isn’t any news anymore, and if you had no idea that it has happened you wouldn’t even know to go look for it ’cause you didn’t know it had happened.

The people who make the country work, though, they were outraged. The people who make the country work wanted names, wanted justice. Imagine how frustrated and angry Congress would be if the riots that happened yesterday — I’m gonna call ’em that — happened for months. Can you imagine if what happened in one day went on for months like it did this past year?

Can you imagine how outraged they would be? They didn’t put up with it for one day when they think they are the targets. In fact, the rioters this past summer were said to be “mostly peaceful.” The people protesting yesterday got no such benefit of the doubt. Even the most fervent and ardent supporters of the president — columnists in the media — have turned 180 degrees against Donald Trump.

Because if you desire a career in political Washington, which includes political New York and political Boston and so forth, you have to abandon Donald Trump, and you have to pretty much blame him for everything that’s gone wrong, and you have to get as close as you can to apologizing for helping him. What if the Capitol Police…? What if, like last summer, when people were running around demanding the police departments of this country be defunded…?

Can you imagine the political class in Washington if the Capitol Police were said to be defunded? If somebody were running around making a movement out of defunding the Capitol Police, can you imagine the reaction of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and all the rest? How would that feel to them? So there’s two sets of rules, as we told you.

There will continue to be two sets of rules. The law will not be applied fairly to various rioters because it matters who you are when you’re rioting, not what you are doing. This we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt. It doesn’t matter what you do; it’s who you are when you are doing it. What if those arrested yesterday had been bailed out by the NRA?

Do you remember how Hollywood leftists and a number of other left-wing political activists, including journalists, were bailing out people put in jail during the riots (I”m sorry, the “peaceful protests”) this past summer? What if the NRA were bailing out people that were engaged in the protests of yesterday? Can you imagine? Can you imagine the outrage of that? Leftist groups did exactly that this past summer, and the media said, “What?”

They didn’t care.

Democrats did not care.

It’s that simple.

There are two sets of rules.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So, ladies and gentlemen, I have been looking at the media coverage. I’ve started doing that again. I finally decided I had to turn it on to figure out what’s about to go out there, at least what they’re telling us is going on. Man, oh, man. Based on what I’d heard, I was looking for all the fires in all the stores in downtown Washington. I was looking for video of a bunch of people walking in there and then walking out with a bunch of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent bags.

Yeah, I was looking for all of that. I was looking for fires. I was looking for burning automobiles. I was looking for Antifa mobs claiming they had set aside a two- or three-block area of town as a You Can’t Come Here Zone. I didn’t see enough that. (interruption) What do you mean? There wasn’t any fires and there wasn’t any looting? Well, then what the hell were they talking about was going on?

I know they broke some windows at the Capitol and so forth. Yeah, I know they breached the doors and took some selfies. Oh, that’s what they took? They took selfies. So you can set fire to a downtown strip of any blue state city — Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, New York — and it’s called a peaceful protest. But you dare not set foot where the political class lives and works and does its job.

I mean, I expected to see mobs and mobs of people with Gucci and Chanel purses being shoved in the backs of 2021 SUVs. I guess the small businesses in Washington, D.C., are all still intact, then? Is that what you’re telling me? (interruption) They weren’t even attacked? Oh, wow. So the fire department didn’t have to stand back and let the fires go, let people get their anger out? There was none of that? (interruption)

What was at Trump’s inauguration? The fire…? (interruption) Oh. (interruption) Oh. They lit the fires at Trump’s inauguration. You’re talking about like four years ago. (interruption) Oh, and that’s where the fire department stood back and let them? Ohhh, okay. Okay. Well, I misunderstood, ’cause based on the reporting yesterday, I was thinking, “Man, oh, man.

“By this morning, we’re not gonna have a city.” So I guess I was wrong. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I heard wrong. I read tweets wrong. It was my fault. I’m sorry. I read wrong. (whispers) How’s that? (interruption) Okay. So… (interruption) No, I still don’t have my sea legs yet, but… Trust me, I don’t. But they’re getting closer — and, by the way, please, folks, pardon my sniffles.

I’m gonna try to it as little as I can. Some of it’s habitual, but I’ll try to hit the cough button as often as I can. I really do not mean to be rude. But let me get serious here for a minute. For years now — decades, even — we’ve watched as the Democrats, in the guise of protesters, in the guise of anarchists… There’s Occupy Wall Street protesters, more recently in the guise of anti-Trump protesters…

As Antifa, as Black Lives Matter protesters — an avowed, acknowledged, so-stated communist group! Black Lives Matter, right on their website, is proudly proclaiming their ties to Marxism — and yet here’s every professional sports league signing on, advocating, amplifying, getting on board. They’ve burned down ICE offices. They’ve burned down police precincts.

They’ve burned down political federal courthouses, after barricading people inside of them. They’ve taken over freeways. They’ve taken over entire cities. They have looted and burned portions of cities to the ground. They have torn down statues that have linkages to our past. They have burned and looted stores and businesses in almost every state of the union.

The Democrats, in the guise of journalists, have praised these protesters as justified and even heroic. And none of these Democrats in the guise of protesters has been shot by the police. In fact, hardly any of these protesters have been arrested — and if they are arrested, they are released immediately with friendly Democrats posting bail. Biden staffers and Kommie Harris and corporations have helped raise money to bail ’em out.

Corporations have poured untold hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of these protesters. So with a record of that as our recent history, yesterday hundreds of thousands of people — Americans who have gotten tired of being ignored and lied about and smeared as racists by these very Democrats in the media and the popular culture. Americans who have gotten fed up with having elections stolen from them by the Democrats, including the White House.

Now they think two more Senate seats have been stolen, and they thought they were going to be stolen even before the election, and these people went to Washington. They weren’t protesters paid by George Soros and the Democrat Party. The overwhelming majority of these Americans were well behaved and respectful. They’re not known. These are Republicans. They don’t raise mayhem. They don’t know how.

How many times have we sat here over 30 years bemoaning the fact that this is not what Republicans do? That they’re either too busy working or they don’t know how or they’re waiting for somebody else to do it. But the fact remains they don’t do it. Republicans do not join protest mobs, they do not loot, and they don’t riot — to the grand disappointment of many people. But a tiny number of these protesters — and undoubtedly including some Antifa, Democrat-sponsored instigators — did decide to go to the Capitol to protest.

It’s “the people’s house,” by the way. Just as Democrats in the guise of Code Pink and a thousand other guises have done before. They actually raided Senate hearings. Code Pink actually got in the damn hearing room, raised hell, threatened violence. They were there because Democrat senators gave them invitations. They were politely escorted out after their political message had been given and covered on television.

As recently as this time last year, anti-Trump protests were held in the Capitol during the impeachment. But all of a sudden, protesting Congress is being called the end of the world. Can’t have this. It’s the worst crime against democracy in our nation’s history, and yet all kinds of anti-presidential protests were held in the Capitol during impeachment.

Nobody was concerned about it, in terms of the damage being done to our government institutions. And in the mother of all ironies, the Democrats and the media are calling yesterday’s protests “a bloody coup attempt.” (chuckles) A bloody coup attempt! Even though the only blood spilled was that of an unarmed Trump supporter who was shot.

She was an unarmed white woman who was an Air Force veteran who had done four tours of duty in the Middle East defending the right to protest, and we’re supposed to be horrified by the protesters. Meanwhile, four years of a coup launched in the Oval Office of Barack Obama to overturn the election results of 2016, and not a single word of concern about the potential damage to our Constitution. No. There were just utter denials.

“We didn’t do it. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Trump’s gotta go. Trump’s poison.” So, yeah, there’s a lot of irony out there, and there’s a lot of people calling for the end of violence. There’s a lot of conservatives on social media who say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances. I’m glad Sam Adams, Thomas Paine — the actual Tea Party guys, the men at Lexington and Concord — didn’t feel that way.


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