RUSH: Correct me if I’m wrong here. He just threw Jeremiah Wright under the bus, and the train. He totally disowned him, right? Did he use the word? Barack Obama is giving that press conference now that I was misunderinformed. I was told it was going to happen later this afternoon. But he said he is upset that Reverend Wright is the focus of attention; that Wright doesn’t speak for him or for his campaign; he doesn’t associate himself with any of Wright’s statements. He’s called his statements appalling, the statements that Reverend Wright is making. The question now is, and this is what Obama should have done early on, but he was trying to be nice to Wright, he was trying to have it both ways here. Wright didn’t take it that way. Wright probably thought he was thrown under the bus and the train back in the Philadelphia speech. If Wright had any doubt about it, that doubt has been settled today because today he was thrown under the bus, thrown under the train, thrown under the airplane, even flushed down the sewer by Barack Obama.
So the question is, is this too late? Is it too late? Should he have done this out of the box? Yup, there it is, ‘Wright does not speak for me or my campaign.’ We’re working feverishly at headquarters here securing audio sound bites, the appropriate sound bites of the Obama comments. I don’t want to JIP this. We’ll have the comments in due course. The question now is, is it too late? A lot of people are going to think that it is too late. And of course it will be interesting to see now, what does Wright do? What will Wright’s reaction be? People are speculating here that Wright’s doing what he’s doing now because he felt he was thrown under the bus back in the Philadelphia speech. Now he’s been thrown under the train and flushed down the toilet into the sewer, will he now come back and really unload on Obama? And he could! Obama’s been in that church 20 years. Reverend Wright baptized Obama’s kids. So it’s fireworks out there. Operation Chaos. This would not have happened without Operation Chaos, ladies and gentlemen, because Mrs. Clinton would be gone, and with Mrs. Clinton gone, none of this could have been done, nothing could have been done about it, so it wouldn’t have been any kind of a story at all. There are numerous Jeremiah Wright stories in the Stack of Stuff here today as well as sound bites.
This is a column by Errol Louis in the New York Daily News: ‘The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn’t have done more damage to Barack Obama’s campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that’s just what one friend of Wright wanted.’ Get this. ‘Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds.’ I remember Barbara Reynolds. She’s a former member of the editorial board at USA Today. She had her own little byline column there. ‘She runs something called Reynolds News Service and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister). It also turns out that Reynolds — introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club ‘who organized’ the event — is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter.’
Yes, ladies and gentlemen! The woman who secured and organized Reverend Wright’s appearance at the press club is a Hillary Clinton supporter, Barbara Reynolds. ‘On a blog linked to her website … Reynolds said in a February post: ‘My vote for Hillary in the Maryland primary was my way of saying thank you’ to Clinton and her husband for the successes of Bill Clinton’s presidency. The same post criticized Obama’s ‘Audacity of Hope’ theme: ‘Hope by definition is not based on facts,’ wrote Reynolds. ‘It is an emotional expectation. Things hoped for may or may not come. But help based on experience trumps hope every time.” So this woman is not only plugging for Hillary, she’s out there berating Obama’s entire campaign theme. ‘In another blog entry, Reynolds gives an ever-sharper critique of Obama: ‘It is a sad testimony that to protect his credentials as a unifier above the fray, the senator is fueling the media characterization that Rev. Dr. Wright is some retiring old uncle in the church basement.” So she thinks that this guy is a nutcase from way back and that Obama has not been honest about his relationship. And she is the one who organized the appearance of Reverend Wright at the National Press Club on Monday.
Look, let’s cut to the chase here. You have a Hillary operative securing Wright’s performance at the press club, which has been universally condemned as unhelpful, and worse than that, very damaging to the Obama campaign. Obama just said, ‘I am clearly, unequivocally denouncing Reverend Wright’s comments. Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed now.’ The next thing, he’ll apologize to his grandmother. He’s gotta fix that. He insulted his grandmother. Typical white person. He’s gotta apologize to his grandmother. He’s thrown Wright overboard now. He has unequivocally denounced Reverend Wright’s comments. The wheels of the Obama campaign are coming off. They came off a long time ago, now we’re skidding to a stop, have gone off the rails. The Obama camp and the campaign is about to be derailed in a cornfield. It’s amazing to watch, amazing. And the Clintons — (laughing) — the Clintons are just sitting out there, and they’re watching all this, and they’re yucking it up. They’re having a grand old time.
What’s this going to do with the superdelegates? Snerdley, will you be patient? Will you just calm down? Snerdley is now having a conniption fit, ‘What’s this going to do to me when Hillary wins the nomination?’ If Mrs. Clinton wins the nomination, it isn’t going to be my fault. My objective was not to see that either of these two won specifically. One of them was going to. It was to see to it that just this kind of thing happened. Operation Chaos, a profound success, ladies and gentlemen.
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RUSH: We have some Obama sound bites from his press conference going on now. You look at this guy. I’m looking at this press conference. He looks beaten. His shoulders are hunched. He looks defensive. He doesn’t look authoritative. He started out trying to be authoritative by the way he identified reporters with that JFK version of pointing them out. But he looks beaten back, on the defensive. He chose this church for political reasons. That is what has become obvious. He chose this church for political reasons. He’s now paying a political price for doing that. You choose your church, and he chose this one — and what this is showing is that judgment matters. I wonder if Michelle (My Belle) feels the same way about Jeremiah Wright. How can Obama be surprised today? We need to get some other parishioners out there to say whether or not they’re shocked by Wright’s recent comments.
They sat in that church, too. Wright’s only repeating what he said in this church. Wright has said nothing new. There’s nothing new! This is the key. There’s nothing new that he has said, and all of a sudden Obama has to throw him under the train. Let’s go find some other parishioners; let’s find some that agree with Obama. Wright set this up. ‘Well, he’s a politician. He has to say what he says.’ Twenty years he couldn’t see what kind of man Jeremiah Wright is, didn’t know he held these views, yet he expects to be president? Does he know what his own wife thinks? I wonder, does he know what his wife thinks about this? Because she’s out there parroting Wright. She’s out there, in her own way, giving his sermons as political speeches. Don’t become part of the middle class, don’t succumb to ‘middle classness.’ She gave a speech Friday night that I’ve been reading about. Apparently, she was fit-to-be-tied angry.
She always is angry when she shows up. But the bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, the bottom line, Reverend Wright in the past three days has said nothing new. He didn’t say anything new on Moyers. He didn’t say anything new Monday at the National Press Club. The Reverend Wright has broken no new ground, and yet Barack Obama now says he is insulted and says that he is upset and that he is outraged and there has been great damage to their relationship; that he thinks Reverend Wright caricatured himself yesterday. He hasn’t caricatured himself! He is who he is, and he didn’t say or do anything new. My friends, I can’t tell you, this is a profundity. This is why I am repeating it. He has been saying these things for 20 years, the sermons on video that everybody has seen. He said nothing new in the past three or four days. And yet Obama now tosses him aside purely for political reasons. Couple sound bites. Obama damage control, the first of two that we have here.
OBAMA: The person I saw yesterday, uh, was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only (pause) divisive and —
RUSH: Do you see…? Stop this. Do you see? The person we saw yesterday was mild compared to the person who’s been at that pulpit! This is my point. There is nothing new. There’s nothing new. ‘The person we saw yesterday is not the person I met 20 years ago’? He damn well sure is! Let me tell you something. Do you know who his bodyguards were? Do you know who Wright’s bodyguards were at the National Press Club? Nation of Islam. Louis Farrakhan’s bodyguards provided security for Reverend Wright at the National Press Club. This guy is Nation of Islam, when you boil it all down. Play that sound bite again, from the top.
OBAMA: The person I saw yesterday, uh, was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only (pause) divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate; and I believe that they do not portray, accurately, the perspective of the black church. They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that’s ‘political posturing,’ as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well, uh, as I thought, either.
RUSH: Whoa. Whoa! He can’t get away with this. Does not portray the perspective of the black church? How would Obama know? This is his church! How would he know what the black church is? This is the church he’s been going to for 20 years. Do not accurately portray my values and beliefs? It took you 20 years and a presidential campaign to come to that conclusion? This is not messianic. This is not unique. This is not new. This is not a politician who has never trod the political ground of a presidential campaign before in the great country of the United States of America. This is your average, ordinary, inexperienced run-of-the-mill politician with a sense of entitlement about him; who has been softened up by puff ball coverage from the Drive-By Media, and now is having trouble dealing with the rigors of a presidential campaign. I knew when Wright said, ‘Hey, he’s just a politician. He’s gotta say what he’s gotta say. I gotta say what I gotta say. We got different audiences,’ I knew that would get under Obama’s skin, and it did. ‘If Reverend Wright thinks that’s political posturing on my part, he doesn’t know me very well.’ I realize some of you people think this is a grand scheme on the part of Wright and Obama, that they’ve set this up, that Wright knew all along he was going to have to be disowned. If that’s the case, this would have happened the minute those sermons surfaced on video. He wouldn’t have gone through this speech in Philadelphia. No, no, no, folks. This is ineptitude on parade. Here is another sound bite.
OBAMA: When he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the US government somehow being involved in AIDS; uh, when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the twenty — twentieth and twenty-first century; when he equates the United States’ wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. Uh, they offend me. Uh, they rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced, and that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.
RUSH: This is not working. This is not working. He’s in this guy’s church 20 years. He’s heard the guy talk about the United States being responsible for AIDS. He’s heard all these things. He’s acting like he just heard these things for the first time, even though he’s admitted that he heard these, then he said he hadn’t, then he said he had. Can you say ‘toast’?
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RUSH: Here’s one more audio sound bite from Obama this afternoon, another portion of his remarks.
OBAMA: Upon watching it what became clear to me was that it was more than just him defending himself. What became clear to me was that he was presenting a worldview that contradicts who I am and what I stand for. And what I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing.
RUSH: This is unreal.
OBAMA: Anybody who knows me and anybody who knows what I’m about knows that —
RUSH: We don’t know! That’s the key.
OBAMA: — I’m about trying to bridge gaps and that I see the commonality in all people.
RUSH: We don’t know.
OBAMA: And so when I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS and suggestions that somehow minister Farrakhan has been a great voice in the twentieth century —
RUSH: Lord.
OBAMA: — then that goes directly at who I am and what I believe this country needs.
RUSH: Is this the change we’ve been waiting for? Is that Barack Obama’s change? The change is he’s the last guy on the planet to figure out Jeremiah Wright? You know what this is like? This is like Hillary Clinton calling a press conference, ‘I’ve just learned my husband cheats on me.’ This is absurd, folks! Our intelligence is being insulted again. Imagine Hillary Clinton today with a press conference, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I come to you today because I am divorcing my husband, because I just learned that he has been unfaithful to me for over 20 years.’ Good Lord, folks, he’s talking about Wright at the National Press Club yesterday. ‘What became clear to me was that it was more than just him defending himself. What became clear to me was that he was presenting a worldview that contradicts who I am.’ You chose the guy. None of this is unbelievable, Barack. ‘What I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing. Anybody who knows me or what I’m about –‘ we don’t know who you are and what you’re about, that’s what this is all about. ‘When I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS and suggestions that somehow minister Farrakhan –‘ He’s been asked about Farrakhan traveling to meet Khadafy. He’s been asked about Wright making that trip.
So we’ll watch the Drive-By Media tonight do their best to spin this into an act of courage, something that’s worthwhile of the Kennedy School of Government’s award for the Profile in Courage. You know, every year Caroline Kennedy awards a Profile in Courage Award to a great political operative. The Kennedys have endorsed this guy, right? So this is going to be spun as an act of political courage today. Lurking now in the shadows is the Reverend Wright. (laughing) Wouldn’t it be great if Wright says, ‘You chose me. You’ve been to my sermons. You’ve been in my pulpit for 20 years. I baptized your children.’ Barack doesn’t have the juice to Fort Marcy Park this guy so he’s going to have to put up with him out there and whatever he happens to say, if he says anything. There’s another conspiracy going around, I kid you not, ladies and gentlemen, check the Democrat blogs, another conspiracy theory going around out there.
New York Daily News columnist, Errol Louis, in his piece today, indicates that the woman who secured and organized the appearance of Reverend Wright, the National Press Club yesterday, is actually a Hillary Clinton operative, Barbara Reynolds. She used to be on TV all the time. She’s an ordained minister, runs the divinity school at Howard University. I remember watching her on TV. She used to be one of these angry — like Julianne Malveaux-type people. You know, Julianne Malveaux wishing that Clarence Thomas’ wife would feed him a little cholesterol so he’d have a heart attack. Barbara Reynolds, she was mad out there. A minister set up Wright. A Clinton minister set up Obama’s minister, exactly right, Errol Louis is saying today that the organizer of Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club was set up, and she was sitting right next to him at the dais talking to him. He was set up by Barbara Reynolds who is a Clinton operative and she’s written on her blog some very critical things of Obama and his reaction to his preacher and so forth and to Wright.
So that the conspiracy theory is, who is the most public operative for Mrs. Clinton right now? It’s me, commander-in-chief, US Operation Chaos. And so the Democrats say, you know, the real reason, real reason this happened, they’re saying the real reason that Wright got set up with this invitation, the National Press Club, and Obama ends up getting set up by this, is me, Operation Chaos. That’s some of the wild conspiracy theories that are floating around out there. All right, again, we have declared an operational pause, pending study. You gotta have flexibility. You know, every battle cannot be planned from beginning to end because the minute you meet opposition, the plan changes. So we have always remained flexible with many, many options at our disposal. This is one of these that we did not foresee. In Operation Chaos, we did not foresee coming down the road that Obama would throw Wright off the planet. The operational pause has been declared while we engage in further strategy sessions to see where we go from here with Operation Chaos. One thing you can count on is, Operation Chaos will continue.
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RUSH: Barack Obama has committed another rookie mistake. He should never have had this press conference between noon and three eastern. This is something that even the stupidest Democrats have learned! You just don’t do this. So now he’s done it. We have one more sound bite from it. I want to warn you people again: Operation Chaos with an operational pause. We put it on hold here for just a day. I want to gauge the Drive-By Media reaction to this tonight because I know exactly what it’s going to be, and you’d better be prepared. If you watch it, you’re going to be tempted to get sick. They’re going to portray this as something exactly the opposite of what it is; that it’s courageous, that it was brilliant, that it’s an act of courage that we have not seen since the sixties in American politics. You watch. I’ve already seen Chris Matthews set it up. I knew it was going to happen before he did it, but he followed through. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, had the same take — and the others will be in on it. That’s why Obama should not have done this between noon and three. Huge rookie mistake. Here’s the final bite.
OBAMA: He (pause) provided valuable contributions to my family, but at a certain point, if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally —
RUSH: At a certain point?
OBAMA: — and then he questions whether or not you believe it, in front of the National Press Club —
RUSH: Come on, baby.
OBAMA: — then that’s enough. That’s a — a show of disrespect to me. It is also, I think, an insult to what we’ve been trying to do in this campaign. She was (pause) similarly angered.
RUSH: He’s talking about Michelle (My Belle) Obama there, being similarly angered. She was probably angry this is all happening, that Wright’s been uncovered. She’s a disciple! Look, we can cut to the chase on this. There’s no way — absolutely no way — that Barack Obama learned anything new about Reverend Jeremiah Wright by virtue of what he said at the National Press Club yesterday. ‘He provided valuable contributions to my family’? What? What were his valuable contributions, Senator Obama? Because he hasn’t said anything new since we first heard of this guy. He hasn’t said a thing new. He is who he is. If we want to talk about genuine on the Democrat side, there’s one guy who is genuine in all this and it’s Reverend Wright. Reverend Wright at least has the courage to open himself up and say, ‘Here’s who I am, and I hate you! But this is who I am. I hate you, and I hate your country, and I hate riiiich whiiiite peeeeople! America’s chickennnnnnns have come home to roost.’
At least he’s got the guts to tell us what he is, what he thinks, and who he is — and there’s nothing new here. I cannot emphasize this enough. So all these things he said at the Press Club yesterday, Obama, the light just went off? Ha! Fat chance. Again, I ask you to think of this: Imagine if a press conference was called later this afternoon, Mrs. Clinton walks out to the microphone and says that she’s divorcing her husband; that she has filed papers because she just learned that he represents things that she can’t stomach. He represents ideas and beliefs that she had no idea that he held, and he has been having affairs the whole time they’ve been married. She just found out about it, and she is going to get out of the marriage. ‘It has no place in this campaign. He has no right to be dominating this campaign. It’s my campaign.’ This is what Obama has said about Jeremiah Wright. (sigh)