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RUSH: Okay, let’s go to the audio sound bites here. I kind of predicted this. These are some sound bites here about the testimony of the “star witness for the prosecution” in the George Zimmerman trial, Rachel Jeantel. Last night on Piers Morgan Live, communications strategerist Maya Francis was the guest. Piers Morgan says, “I watched it all live and I did find her not only a compelling witness, but also somebody that overall I tended to believe, even though she was awkward and a bit edgy and confrontational.”

FRANCIS: I think that would any of us, you know, at nineteen be that polished to be able to relive over and over and over again those excruciating details? I thought that the — the defense, after a while, really started to look like a bunch of bullies —

RUSH: Yeeees.

FRANCIS: — because they were trying to trip her up, and regardless of what you think of her delivery, she was consistent.

RUSH: “A bunch of bullies.” That defense lawyer was doing everything he could to soft-pedal what was going on. This is such… Polished? She was consistent. There’s no question that Rachel Jeantel was consistent. But polished? Most people, most of these leftists watching this yesterday just fell sorry for her, for a whole bunch of reasons.

But she was the last one to talk to Trayvon Martin, and that supposedly is very traumatic. She was the last person to talk to Trayvon Martin and that’s traumatic. “Most of us wouldn’t be able to relive over and over those excruciating details.” So yesterday on CNN, all day and night, they had their white anchors asking black guests to tell them what “creepy-ass cracker” meant.

BROOKE BALDWIN: The issue is the word “cracker.”

RYAN SMITH: (whispers) Right.

BALDWIN: She said that this was — that he was being targeted because it was a race thing, but then she said the word “cracker,” itself, wasn’t racial. Did you hear that?

SMITH: Yeah! And it made total sense to me! You know why? A lot of black folks all over the country, for a lot of southern folks, nothing wrong with that statement. There is a cultural divide that is going on in this trial that played out between Rachel Jeantel and Don West.

RUSH: Right. It’s a cultural divide. He doesn’t understand it! She’s the victim. I tell you, if she’s a star witness… I don’t know. Because you can’t predict juries. I mean, this is an all-female jury, and we’ve had those before. Do you remember the Menendez trial, the two brothers that slaughtered their parents? Well, they were acquitted. Lyle Menendez was acquitted, and they had some of the female jurors on Oprah. You may remember this; some of you may have forgotten it. But I’m not exaggerating.

A female member of that jury went on Oprah and said, “We felt so bad for him because he was going to have to go through the rest of his life without his mother.”

Yeah, that’s because he killed her. In fact, after he thought he killed her, he went back in the house, reloaded the shotgun, and fired again to make sure.

“Yes,” said the female juror, “but he’s suffering. It’s so tragic. He’s going to spend the rest of his life without his mother.”

Yeah, there’s a reason for that. He killed her.

“Well, that’s true, but it’s still very sad that he’s going to go through his life without her.”

So, folks, that’s a California jury. This is a Florida jury. You can’t predict juries ever, but especially now. This witness yesterday was the star witness. If that was the best that the prosecution has, they have to be in trouble in the real world, a sane world. There was a witness today that just blew the prosecution out of the water in a sane world. But we don’t live in one of those.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to go back to the Zimmermann trial here for a second. This is something really fascinating here, folks. Yesterday we had testimony from a woman named Rachel Jeantel. Today we had testimony from a former neighbor of Zimmerman by the name of John Good. These two witnesses… It’s stunning to me to watch media portrayal of what happened here. The witness today… Again (sigh), I wish I didn’t have to qualify everything I say anymore. I wish I lived in a sane world.


I was just telling Mr. Snerdley, “I hate this.” I hate this, folks, and you know it. I’ve been doing this for almost 25 years, and for most of those years people would call here and say, “Rush, what you don’t get is most people in this country are stupid,” and I would always argue with them. I would say, “No. The people of this country are great, they’re good, they’re decent. We can count on them.” I don’t know that I think that so much, anymore. We just seem to be surrounded by — I don’t know if it’s stupid, just ignorant people.

But I hate to have to qualify everything that I say. But in the case of these two witnesses, there’s no contest which one has really had impact in this case and it was the guy today. But you’re not going to hear much about him, because Rachel Jeantel is sympathetic. She’s made-to-order for people that want to advance the liberal agenda. Don’t doubt me on that. Just don’t doubt me. Now, from CBS News, I want to share with me what they’re reporting about today in the Zimmerman trial.

“Neighbor Testifies Trayvon Martin was [on Top of] Zimmerman Moments Before Fatal Gunshot.” Remember, the Zimmerman defense is it was self-defense, that he was being beaten up. They had a witness who essentially said this today, a neighbor. His name is John Good. “A former neighbor of George Zimmerman testified he saw two men in a ‘tussle’ outside his home the night of Feb. 26, 2012, and said he now believes the person on top in the altercation – which would moments later turn fatal – was Trayvon Martin.”

Whoever is on top is on offense.

It was Trayvon Martin who was pounding Zimmerman’s head and banging Zimmerman’s head into the ground and into the concrete, and Zimmerman had the wounds on his face and the back of his head to indicate this. By the way, when somebody is sitting on top of you and pounding your head, there’s no way you can do anything but fully absorb the blow. You can’t dodge it. You can’t create a glancing blow by getting your head out of the way because it’s got nowhere to go.

So somebody sitting on top of you pounding your head is serious. It’s far more impactful if both people are standing up and somebody socks you in the head. There’s no give in the situation this witness described Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin in. “Taking the stand Friday, John Good said he was at home watching television with his wife when he heard a “faint noise” that seemed to be getting closer. Outside, he said he saw the person on top of another man.

“The man on the bottom, who he said he now believes is George Zimmerman, yelled for help. ‘At first it was “What’s going on[?]” and no one answered,”‘ Good said, describing calling out to the men. ‘And then at that point the person on the bottom, I could finally see, I heard a “help.” Then at some point I said “Cut it out.” And then, “I’m calling 911.” That’s when I thought it was getting really serious.’ The altercation seemed to escalate, according to Good.

“The struggle moved to the cement pathway, and he said the person in dark clothing straddled the other man in “mixed martial arts position” he later described to police as a ‘ground and pound.'” He watches MMA, this witness. “He said he saw ‘arm movements going downward,’ though he couldn’t be certain the person on top was striking the person on the bottom. ‘The person you now know to be Trayvon Martin was on top, correct?’ asked defense attorney Mark O’Mara. ‘He was the one raining blows down on George Zimmerman, correct?’

“‘That’s what it looked like,’ Good answered.” Remember Trayvon Martin had no wound on his body apart from the gunshot. He had scrapes on his knuckles, but that was it. But this testimony, this witness today is not getting — doesn’t seem to be — anywhere near the coverage that Jeantel’s testimony, which is practically meaningless by the way… Her testimony involves a phone call. (interruption) What, do you think I’m in trouble for saying that? (interruption) No, I’m not saying that. (sigh)

My point is, this country is so polarized — particularly around racial issues — that we have a poor, 19-year-old black girl who can’t write or speak English very well, and she becomes a sympathetic figure and immune from criticism. “You don’t dare do that! That would be racist and so forth.” But her testimony, compared to what we heard this morning? She wasn’t an eyewitness to anything. She is basically recounting hearsay.

Within the construct of the courtroom, what she’s talking about is hearsay. Snerdley was telling me something. We were in the room trying to fix one of the fifteen broken coffee machines here, and he was talking about Geraldo and how Geraldo is out there on Fox and he’s talking all about the gang mentality and the NFL and why doesn’t the NFL provide mentors and father figures for these gang guys to keep them on the straight and narrow and so forth. Snerdley said, “You know what the problem is?

“Back when you were talking about watching a game and it looked like the Crips and Bloods, what nobody understood is you love the game. You were trying to warn everybody! You didn’t want the game to descend into that,” and he’s exactly right. “But instead people looked at what you were saying out of context. They didn’t hear you. They didn’t add to it the fact that you’re a big football fan. They just took the opportunity to attack the conservative on race, and they did it.

“You happen to be the guy they went after.” But he’s exactly right. My whole point with all of that was I didn’t want to see the game descend. I wanted it to remain special — and by the way, it’s not anymore. I was talking about that with him, too. I think getting so much older than players is a factor. It’s easier to look up to them when you’re closer to their age. Now, you know what a bunch of really young immature bupkises they can be. But regardless, you don’t put them on pedestals the older they get. As a fan.

But even without that, the game is just changing, and the gang culture that has taken over. It’s obvious every Sunday in small, little ways. This Hernandez thing is what Geraldo is talking about. He won’t get any grief for it. I will probably again for this. The point here is that we have stories all over the place about Rachel Jeantel today. We have Salon.com. We have CBS, ABC, NBC. They’ve all done stories on how great she was and how intimidated she had to be and consistent she was and really together.


How tough it is for young women like that in America today, but she did her duty, and all this. There’s a story on a website called Global Grind by Christina Coleman, who it says is “the news and politics editor at Global Grind,” a Howard University alumnus. There’s a picture of her here and she’s a very pretty young woman. But her piece is, “Why Black People Understand Rachel Jeantel,” and the basic thrust of this story is that white people are in Mars; black people are from Venus.

We are a universe apart. A half century of decimating the black race in America has resulted in a divide so deep and wide that there’s no bridging it and there’s no understanding it, and there’s no commonality. In my mind, when I looked at this yesterday, I thought Rachel Jeantel was shredded. I thought her credibility was pretty much destroyed. But if you thought that, I guarantee you that in the rest in the media, you and I are profound minorities.

Because the story is how great she was, how wonderful, and what a great citizen. She really hung in there against these bullies and these prosecutors. But she was consistent. And the prosecutor had no idea how to relate to her. When she said, “We don’t call the cops where I live,” the defense lawyer had no idea, no clue. And the point of this story here by Christina Coleman is one of the reasons that we think her testimony was so ineffective or defective was because we just can’t understand people like her.

We “white people” just can’t understand.

Like we can’t understand the culture that leads to the shooting in Chicago and therefore we have no business talking about it. And we don’t understand the culture of violence in the NFL. White people just don’t get it. And by the way, Ms. Coleman says that she doesn’t expect us to. “Let’s cut to the chase,” she writes. “Any attorney, jury member, judge or white person in that courtroom is not going to understand Rachel Jeantel. And I don’t expect them to. In fact, I certainly … understand why white people wouldn’t like Rachel.”

What is this? Doesn’t like her? Whoever said they don’t like her? I don’t know whether she’s telling the truth or not, but I do know that she is a tool. She’s a useful tool for a bunch of leftists who are looking at this trial as an opportunity to advance a political agenda, because leftists look at everything as an opportunity to advance a political agenda and that’s what this trial is for a leftists, and that’s what this trial is for civil rights activists. And that’s what’s wrong.

The fact that we can’t have an American citizen show up as a witness and judge her as a witness without regard to her skin color or her heritage or background or what native language she speaks — the fact that we’ve got to think about all of that first — is illustrative of the problems that we have in the country. Bipartisanship, common ground, getting along. We have people who are separatists in this country and want it that way! Well, what we don’t understand… I’ll just read what Ms. Coleman says here.

“The reason white people don’t understand Rachel Jeantel has something more to do with white privilege then, what they would call, Rachel’s capricious nature. Let’s for one second try to understand why Rachel is ‘angry’ (read emotional), ‘hood’ (read blunt), and ‘unintelligent’ (read multilingual).” Now, by the way, Ms. Coleman says here that the word for “angry” is “emotional.” She was emotional but really angry.

When black people describe Rachel Jeantel as “hood,” that means that she was “blunt,” and when they describe her as “unintelligent,” that means that she’s “multilingual.” English is not her first language, and if you don’t speak English well people think you’re dumb or stupid. She’s not but that’s what people think of her, and because we have this kind of prejudice and we look at her as angry, blunt and unintelligent then we aren’t able to go any further.

“The thing is,” back to what Ms. Coleman writes, “what white people see in Rachel has little to do about her own issues, and more to say about the America that white people are blind to. Let’s take her testimony on not calling the police, for example. Rachel told defense attorney Don West that she didn’t call the police after she heard the scuffle between Trayvon Martin and the man that was following him for numerous reasons. First, she believed that he was right near his ‘daddy’s house,’ and that Tracy would help him.

“She also was under the impression that, if it were a life or death situation, someone would certainly come to his aid. But as West continued his questioning, riddled with nuances to throw Rachel off track…” See, he did that because she’s a minority, don’t you know? Defense lawyers never try to throw witnesses off track! Only when they have minorities up there do they do that, I guess. “But as West continued his questioning, riddled with nuances to throw Rachel off track, the glaring subtext of this all became clear.

“Don West doesn’t understand why Rachel didn’t call the police when she heard a struggle. Rachel, who is a black woman, doesn’t call the police. Why? Black people and police officers don’t mix,” and white people are never going to understand that. “Distrust in police stems from decades of being disenfranchised and treated unfairly by those who were supposed to protect us. And yes, I’m taking it there…distrust in white people. Government. LAPD. NYPD.” Ms. Coleman, if you distrust the government so much, why do you keep voting for Democrats?

It says black people distrust white people, government, LAPD, NYPD. You guys can’t wait to elect Democrats every chance you get, and they are the government. Anyway, Christina Coleman continues writing here: “The point is, black people can understand Rachel’s hesitancy when it came to contacting the police because the fear and doubt that comes with dealing with law enforcement is as entwined into the tapestry of our culture as is our slavery past.”

That would be the “slavery past” that might have affected her great, great grandparents, but certainly not her. But Rachel Jeantel and the culture of her “slavery past” coupled with distrust for white people, means they’re never going to call the cops. And that’s what we white people just are never going to understand. “[S]omeone with white privilege wouldn’t exactly grasp” this. Black people can. Black people understand this, and they overlook it. Something “someone with white privilege wouldn’t exactly grasp.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So we have more ’60s clap trap, here. On this racial differences business, which is it today? Is it racist to say that black people aren’t like white people, or is it racist to claim that blacks are like white people? I get confused! Because I know a lot of black people who get criticized for being “too white.” They do too well in school. They speak too well, whatever, and they’re criticized. They’re “not authentic.” Here’s the thing about Christina Coleman’s piece.

I haven’t said, and I don’t know how many other people have… I haven’t talked about Rachel Jeantel any sort of a racist or “racial” connotation, even. We’ve stuck to the testimony which was really tough to believe. I don’t care how consistent it was, but look at the contortions. Yet we have a piece here, “Why Black People Understand Rachel Jeantel — and White People Don’t.” We have a whole piece. It’s unfortunate.

We have a whole piece written here to explain or criticize people on racial grounds who haven’t even said anything! Ms. Coleman is just assuming what people think. It bothers me. This whole racial strife stuff, this divide, bothers me. It bothers me as an American. It bothers me for the future of the country. Of course it bothers me politically. But all this stuff happens and it just seems to cement the idea that any kind of unifying of people of any difference is just hopeless in this country, at least at the moment.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So here’s how Christina Coleman ends her piece — and I have to tell you, this is literally distressing to me. “But most importantly, if there is anything that black people can understand that those judging her are not, it’s the loss of life without justice.” I guess that’s supposed to be Trayvon Martin, and we don’t know that yet. The witness today, by the way, was far more impactful than Rachel.

“And as Rachel Jeantel sits on the stand, nervous, mumbling and annoyed, it’s not that she’s just a ‘hoodrat with no media training from a hostile environment.'” Who in the world is saying that, a “hood rat with no media training”? It’s not just that she’s that. It’s that her world… Let me read this. “It’s just that your world and our world are — excuse the cliche — worlds apart. And that, my friends, was never Rachel Jeantel’s fault.”

You see, it’s hopeless. It’s hopeless. We’re from different worlds. By the way, I… Here’s Ebony. Ebony magazine. “When You Make Fun of Rachel Jeantel, You Make Fun of Us.” Who is making fun of her? (interruption) Well, Snerdley is, but you haven’t heard him. I’m not making fun of her! This is another thing, this presumption that all of these things are going on out there. When we saw Rachel Jeantel on the witness stand today, we saw ourselves.

“We saw the daughter of immigrants, the product of Miami Norland Senior High School and the poignant realities of the disparities in our public education system that provides unequal opportunities to many immigrant students and students of color.” You people at Ebony, stop voting Democrat if you want to change that! You want to straighten out the public education system? You want to straighten out the inequities in the public schools? Stop voting Democrat!

Who have you been voting for for 50 years?

Who have you been depending on for 50 years to bring you out of all of this?

They’ve been letting you down — every day, every year — for 50 years! Who runs the public school system, for crying out loud? You do! You and your Democrat allies! Man, I tell you, this is painful, folks. It’s really painful. For those of us would want a great country, that want a country where every citizen could be depicted in a Norman Rockwell painting — and I’ll be disparaged for that. “That just goes to show how out of touch you are, Limbaugh. Do you realize what we think of Norman Rockwell?”

I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

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