RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going through a bunch of sound bites here that I was just sent from the Obama presser, and Cookie just tell me a yes or no here on the flash message. Is there more than one sound bite from Obama on the IRS Q&A? I’ve got three bites here, and I want to know if I’ve got more. Still waiting for an answer.
Nixon comparison, no apologies to the AP, I think I’ve only got one. The reason that I’m asking here is that he did not answer the question — yeah, just this one. Let’s play it, and I’ll give you the thing I wanted to say about it. Sound bite 27, and this is the press conference we didn’t really JIP. I think we played part of this answer. We did JIP it once. I’m gonna tell you what. It started raining.
It was very hot and humid in Washington today, started raining, and Obama called in a couple of Marines with umbrellas to shield him and Recap Syrup or whatever his name is from Turkey, Recep, Recap, whatever. I never can get this guy’s name. I have to be looking at it. It’s Recep Tayyip. He’s a big Islamist, big Muslim Brotherhood guy, thought to be this moderate Islamist, but he’s not. He’s a militant guy. He’s sort of like Obama in that regard. He’s thought of as the exact opposite of what he is.
Anyway, the thing went 90 minutes. I’m gonna guarantee you, the media that had to sit there, the White House press corps, when that was over, I guarantee you, “We sat through 90 minutes for this?” I’ll give you a little heads-up. There were very, very high expectations of this presser. You know how I know that? Normally our affiliate stations do not inquire here if we’re gonna cover or broadcast in its entirety any Obama press conference. They either do or they don’t, but they never ask me what I’m gonna do. They just assume I’m not gonna.
Today we had a number of inquiries from local EIB affiliates who wanted to cover the whole thing. It’s about the IRS, and their audiences are really loaded for bear on this, and they thought they had a broadcast duty to cover the whole thing, which means that they had high expectations. Everybody thought there might be some bombshells. I know what people were thinking. Everybody’s thinking the press was gonna really dog Obama on this, and he was gonna maybe be embarrassed.
Not I, El Rushbo. I don’t think the press has turned, and I don’t think he’s lost the press, and I don’t think the press is gonna give him a tough time. All of that is conventional wisdom, how he’s lost the press and they finally turned. That’s just BS, folks. But we did JIP part of it. I just think that the reporters that were there, after sitting there for an hour and a half and their expectations might have been high, too, and I guarantee you when it was over, they said, “We sat through ’90 minutes for that?” In the rain. It was a nonevent.
The Turkish prime minister’s name is Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And the question came from Bloomberg, chief White House correspondent Julianna Goldman. She said, “Can you assure the American people, Mr. President, that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your counsel’s office found out on April 22nd? And when they did find out, do you think that you should have learned about it before you learned about it from news reports, as you said last Friday?”
So as far as the press is concerned, Obama didn’t know about this IRS thing ’til last Friday. That’s how detached he is. That’s how rogue the employees were. He didn’t know about that, and he didn’t know about Benghazi. He didn’t know about any of that any sooner than any of you did. Here’s how he answered that question.
OBAMA: I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press. In terms of the White House and reporting, I think that you’ve gotten that information from Mr. Carney and others. I promise you this.
RUSH: Yeah.
OBAMA: The minute I found out about it, then my main focus is making sure that we get the thing fixed.
RUSH: Yeah, right. Well, I’m gonna tell you what. I think what you just heard is a virtual admission that the White House must have known what the IRS was doing. Now, you’re probably saying, “How do you figure that, Rush?” Well, let me ‘splain it to you. Obama did not answer the question. He was asked whether anyone in the White House knew about what the IRS was doing. What did he say? He answered by assuring that he personally did not know anything about the IG report. He’s talking about the IG report. He didn’t know anything about that.
Sorry, that answer has nothing to do with the question he was asked. And I think that is a virtual admission the White House must have known what the IRS was doing, which dovetails nicely with the fact that the IRS wouldn’t have been doing it at all if it wasn’t okay with the White House. And this, folks, is the primary point. If I could convey anything today, it would be that. What was happening in the IRS was not rogue. What was happening at the State Department and all that with Benghazi, not rogue. What’s going on at the SEC is not rogue. What’s happening at the EPA is not rogue.
In other words, there are not a bunch of rogue, renegade employees acting on their own outside of their authority without anybody’s knowledge. All of this is happening with the sponsorship of Barack Obama. He doesn’t have to call these IRS employees personally. They are hired because they know what’s expected. An Obama donor happened to be one of the people examining applications for tax-exempt status. You don’t get more partisan than that.
This is liberalism, ladies and gentlemen. This is who they are. This is what they do. They don’t need meetings to be told how to oppose conservatives. They don’t need to be taught. That’s already happened at home and in school or in college or wherever. They’re already indoctrinated. They are true believers when they get to the White House. That’s why they’re hired. They’re already activists. They want to work there precisely to do this kind of thing.
They want to work at the IRS to sabotage conservatives. They want to work at the IRS to make it harder for conservatives. An Obama donor does not go rogue by doing what Obama wants, by definition. Nobody goes rogue by doing what their leader wants. This is the kind of thing that Obama himself has done in his earlier political career. This is what community organizers do. They wreak havoc. They take out their opponents. They’re not interested in a debate in the arena of ideas. They’re not interested in winning a debate in the arena of ideas. Because, folks, in their minds, our ideas are not legitimate. And we aren’t. We’re oddball, extreme kooks. They really think that.
There’s not any reason for them to debate us. The only thing about us that’s important to them is that we’ve got to be diminished. We have to be defeated. That’s why all of this never-ending talk that I hear from the Republicans about being bipartisan, working across the aisle, is a trap, and it’s a sucker game. They aren’t interested in bipartisanship. They are not interested in crossing the aisle and working together. Their sole interest is eliminating any opposition, which, by the way, is good politics.
I wish we had that attitude. I wish our attitude was to wipe the slate clean of these people so that they were a governing minority or a minority that never got to govern. They have the political killer instinct. They will use the IRS. They are waging war against us. But back to Obama’s answer. I can assure you that I certainly didn’t know anything about the IG report? The question wasn’t about the inspector general. It wasn’t about the IG report. It was about, “Did you know what the IRS was doing?”
(imitating Obama) “Well, I didn’t know about that report before it was leaked. I didn’t know anything in it.” That’s not the question, sir. Avoiding the question, diverting his answer to the inspector general report is a tantamount virtual admission to me that he and the White House knew what was going on in the IRS. And not only that, they approved of it. And whoever got canned is going to be taken care of. Whoever got canned is being slapped on the back and said, “Attaboy.” In private. You’ll never see it. It’ll never be acknowledged. But they’re cool.