RUSH: Here is a couple of sound bites to illustrate a couple of points that I have been making all day on the program, specifically in the last hour. First up is the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania. His name is John Fetterman. He was on CNN with Poppy Harlow, some show called CNN Newsroom on Friday. She had a question for him. She said, “Mr. Lieutenant Governor, it sounds like you don’t think Twitter made the right decision by taking the president off the platform. Is that right?”
FETTERMAN: Saying that Pennsylvania was rigged or that we were trying to “steal” the election, unquote, that’s a lie. And that… You do not have the right; that is not protected speech. The second those tweets went up, they should have been deleted. That’s not de-platforming someone, it’s deleting lies that are yelling “fire” in a crowded theater when there is none. And there’s a difference. That is not protected speech. No one — Republican, Democrat, whatever — has the right to say those kind of incendiary lies.
RUSH: Who gets to call ’em lies? Who is this magnificent personage sitting somewhere who gets to proclaim that whatever Trump said about Pennsylvania is lies? But more importantly, Lieutenant Governor Fetterman, who the hell did you people do for four years if not lie about Trump colluding with Russians to steal the 2016 election, when everybody knows it was Hillary Clinton that did exactly that?
You guys still haven’t conceded the 2016 election. Oh, yeah, Hillary may have, but you haven’t. You’re justifying everything you’re doing to Donald Trump on the basis of a lie that you can’t stop telling, and nobody is deplatforming you, and nobody is taking your tweets down — and nobody’s even suggesting that your tweets, Lieutenant Governor Fetterman, come down.
The Democrat Party has spent the last four years lying about the 2016 election. How in the world is what you people are continuing to do any different than what President Trump is saying about Pennsylvania today? You guys started all of this! You guys on the Democrat side with the media are the people who got it all rolling, that the American electoral system has been torched, that it has lost its honor and integrity.
You’re the ones for four years with never-ending reports in the New York Times (your Bible) and at CNN, the Washington Post (your Old Testament), that all of this that happened was undoubtedly true. You have put everything on your side up to the test of legitimacy, and you have claimed that Trump colluded with Putin. You said that he was a traitor. You said that he was an agent of Vladimir Putin.
And for that, Donald Trump needs to have those tweets taken down. But nobody is suggesting that any of your lies be taken down? Nobody’s even suggesting that what you guys said for four years is lies except people like me. But you don’t have any evidence, and nobody made a move to shut you down. Nobody made a move to deplatform you.
Nobody made a move to take your so-called offending tweets down. What have you said here? “Saying that Pennsylvania was rigged or that we were trying to ‘steal’ the election, unquote, that’s a lie.” What’d you say about Donald Trump for four years and counting, Lieutenant Governor Fetterman? “You do not have the right; that is not protected speech.”
What protected you for four years and counting?
Oh, the New York Times report?
Oh, I’m sorry. The New York Times reporting it legitimizes it? No. The New York Times reporting it does nothing but slam the reputation of the New York Times. “The second those tweets went up from the president they should have been deleted.” I could say the same thing about the never-ending lies from James Clapper, from John Brennan, from Comey, from Hillary Clinton.
I mean, the list is never-ending, the number of who consistently lied. Strzok Smirk, Lisa Page, that whole FBI cabal — and yet nobody made a move to take your tweets down or to suggest the New York Times not be able to report what they were reporting because they didn’t have any evidence. They lied about the fact that they had evidence. But this is exactly what they do.
If you dissent, you’re a domestic terrorist, folks. If you dissent from whatever it is the Democrat Party today believes, they are claiming they have a right to shut you down, to delete your tweets. Now, the lieutenant governor here of Pennsylvania, Mr. Fetterman, stopped short of suggesting that Trump be deplatformed. He didn’t agree with Rasputin Jack and his decision to take Trump off of Twitter.
But we have somebody who does. Yes, you can always count on Democrats to give you what you want. Sunday morning on CNN’s Reliable Sources, our old buddy Little Brian Stelter has a guest, Stanford University professor and former chief security officer at Facebook, Alex Stamos. Question from Little Brian to Alex Stamos: “Will there ever be a solution to this information crisis that has been perpetuated, in my view, by platforms like Facebook as well as Twitter and others? Will there ever be a solution to the information crisis?”
STAMOS: There needs to be an intentional work by the social media companies collaborating together to work on violent extremism in the same way they worked on ISIS. We have to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences. There are people on YouTube, for example, that have a larger audience than daytime CNN.
And so it’s up to the Facebooks and YouTubes in particular to think about whether or not they want to be effectively cable networks for disinformation. And then we’re gonna have to figure out the OANN and NewsMax problem. These companies have freedom of speech, but I’m not sure we need to Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and such to be bringing them into tens of millions of homes.
RUSH: Well, isn’t that comforting? We’ll look at this with OANN and NewsMax. The OANN and NewsMax problem? What’s that? “Well, these companies have freedom of speech,” yeah, have to be begrudging and grant them that, “but I’m not sure we need to Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and such to be bringing them into tens of millions of homes.” What’s the difference?
They may as well not have freedom of speech if you’re gonna say that they can’t have platforms that give them a basis to operate. “And so it’s up to the Facebooks and YouTubes in particular to think about whether or not they want to be effectively cable networks for disinformation.” So this guy is telling Little Brian, “There are people on YouTube, for example, that have a larger audience than” you do, pal, and you ought to be really worried about that.
“There are people on YouTube, for example, that have a larger audience than daytime CNN.” We gotta fix that! You need to have a bigger audience than they do. We need to find a way to make you bigger than you are. So this guy, Alex Stamos, I guarantee you, he doesn’t know. I think he’s so young (he’s a former security officer at Facebook), I don’t think he has the slightest idea how he sounds.
I don’t know he understands the First Amendment or the Constitution — and if he does, he doesn’t support it. I’m not trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. I guess it sounds like I am. He either doesn’t understand the Constitution or just doesn’t support it or believe in it. It’s gotta be one of the two, because he does think these conservative groups…
He said, “Look. It’s up to the Facebooks and YouTubes to think about whether or not they want to be effectively cable networks for disinformation.” That’s what conservatism is, you see. Disinformation. “We have got to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences. They may as well be talking about me and radio stations. And they’ll get there eventually.
Right now we’re flying under the radar ’cause these people don’t know what AM radio is, so they don’t feel threatened by it. When they figure it out, they’re gonna saying the same thing to our EIB affiliates that they’re now saying to Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast. “Well, I mean, you know, Rush Limbaugh has the biggest audience of anybody in radio, and you gotta something about that. That’s out-of-control conservatism. We can’t let you do this.” Yeah, that’s where we’re headed.
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