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RUSH: I want to go to the audio sound bites now. We predicted this here at the EIB Network, and we actually predicted the time. We knew that when the Edwards thing came up and the comments that were made on this program, we knew they'd be taken out of context. Half the fun of doing this program is knowing that's going to happen. The way this happens is that the people who end up commenting on this program never listen to it. They read "watchdog websites," liberal websites, which take, out of context, things that are said or even straight misquotes, and that's how the Drive-Bys learn what happens on this program. It's as though you need a secret password and a special receiver that we only give to our listeners in order to hear this program.
It's amazing to me that they continue to rely on third parties and even second parties for the content of this program when it's plain as day. We're on 600-some-odd radio stations. Turn it on at 12 Noon Eastern Time every day. It's plain as day for anybody who wants to listen to it. We knew when this Edwards stuff happened, we dropped a couple key things in there within context, knowing full well that it would be taken out of context, and we have now the audio of the videotape to illustrate it. Here is, first off, a montage of the Drive-By Media trying to distort what I said about Elizabeth Edwards. By the way, it's amazing. I got home from the golf course last night about 7:30, and I went in there and I checked the e-mail. I went to the subscriber site, the Rush 24/7 e-mail, and there must have been, I don't know, ten or 15 e-mails: "Rush, I'm sure everybody is telling you this, but I can't believe the way they just took you out of context on X network."
Then about 10:15, another slew of e-mail: "I can't believe this. I'm sure I'm not the first to tell you. Everybody will probably tell you what they said about you on Larry King tonight." Of course, I don't watch any of that stuff so I don't know what was said. All the e-mailers think that somebody else is telling me so they just tell me that something happened but they don't have give them details. So we have to wait for the transcript. Cookie rolls tape on this stuff. (Unfortunately for her, she has to watch it in order to put these bites together.) We have two. This is a montage of Inside Edition, PMSNBC, and Larry King Alive.
INSIDE EDITION ANNOUNCER (music): Controversy over what Rush Limbaugh said about Brave Elizabeth.
LIMBAUGH ARCHIVE: Most people, when told a family member's been diagnosed with the kind of cancer Elizabeth Edwards has, turn to God. The Edwardses turned to the campaign.
WOODWARD: That's radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh criticizing the decision.
O'DONNELL: Rush Limbaugh has been saying on his radio program that this is an effort by the Edwards campaign to re-launch his campaign.
MILLER: To me, Larry, this is beyond the pale. When Rush Limbaugh says he's doing this as a political stunt.
KING: Did Rush say that?
MILLER: ... Yes, Rush did say that. |
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RUSH: We'll have that full bite coming up in just a second. But let's go back, shall we? "Controversy over what Rush Limbaugh said about "Brave Elizabeth," and then they have the bite. Most people, when told a family member has been diagnosed with the kind of cancer Elizabeth Edwards has turn to God. The Edwardses turned to the campaign." I said that. You heard me say it. But the context was in the discussion of how all political people are different from other people, and there were all kinds of phone calls from people that day who said they didn't understand it. When their family members got cancer, they gave up work or maybe they came to work but they spent as much time with the kids as possible, especially if they were young because they weren't going to see 'em graduate from haskrool, walk down the aisle or get married, or any of this sort of thing. Callers did not relate or understand it. I was trying to explain that political people are a different breed. The quest for the presidency is a huge, huge thing -- and, by the way, what's wrong with saying politics is their religion? That's where they did turn. Now the other voice, the Larry King voice was Stephanie Miller, and here's that whole bite that happened on Larry King Alive last night.
MILLER: To me, Larry, this is beyond the pale. When Rush Limbaugh says he's doing this as a political stunt to boost --
RUSH: Hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it. I just now figured out what this is about. Recue that. This is about Tony Snow. This is about Tony Snow. I got an e-mail yesterday from one of the producers at Larry King Alive telling me they were going to do a show on Tony and wanted some of Tony's friends to come on -- as if Stephanie Miller is a friend -- and discuss Tony. I said, "Sorry, I can't. I'm going to be watching House tonight." They e-mailed back, "I don't blame you." Anyway, this little bite here between Larry and Stephanie Miller is about Tony Snow.
 MILLER: To me, Larry, this is beyond the pale. When Rush Limbaugh says he's doing this as a political stunt to boost his political --
KING: Did he say that?
MILLER: Tony Snow had the good grace to say something nice about Elizabeth Edwards last week.
KING: Did Rush say that?
MILLER: Yes, Rush did say that. And you know, I don't know where we're at. You know, my dad ran for vice president with Barry Goldwater. I don't know what either of them would think today of a party that has produced Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter --
KING: You know --
MILLER: -- who just called John Edwards a f----t last week. I asked my listeners to pray for Tony Snow and his family today just like I asked them to pray for Elizabeth Edwards and her family last week. You know --
KING: Does Rush think Tony Snow is political?
MILLER: I'm like Obama. I think that we really all want a better kind of politics
KING: Rush thinks Tony Snow is being political?
MILLER: No, Rush hasn't said that about Tony Snow because he's a Republican, apparently.
RUSH: What's funny about this is King can't believe it, and during this whole rant of Stephanie Miller's, all King was saying is, "Rush Limbaugh said that? Tony Snow would be political?" (Laughing.) Well, Stephanie... (Do you remember Goldwater's running mate Bill Miller? I do. It's his daughter. She's a lib comedian, and she has one of these liberal talk shows that nobody listens to, or very few do.) So let's put this in perspective. Let's go back to last Friday. Now, this is what happens when these people don't listen to this program and get information of what was supposedly said on this program from these so-called watchdog websites. Put this in context. This is why it's important to listen to this program. |
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When the Edwards' presser happened, I was stunned that the Drive-By Media's first take was what the political quality of it was and what the political boost would be and what the political outcome would be. Howard Fineman in the first sound bite we played, was raving about what a great political move this was. There wasn't any tears for Elizabeth Edwards. There weren't any prayers or any of this. Howard Fineman said it was "a ten strike" on the political scale. It was it was just fabulous. I'm sitting here aghast that these people are looking at a press conference where a candidate's wife has just essentially said that she's got a recurrence of cancer that has a 20%, five-year survivability rate, and they're looking at this and speculating, and they're all saying, "We really hate to do this, but it's a question that must be asked," and guess who it is they're blaming for doing this? Me! I'm the one being accused of it. We have the sound bites. We had 'em yesterday. I don't want to redo 'em again because it was redundant, but if I have to drag 'em out of the archives, I guess I should drag 'em out of the archives. They're all on yesterday's roster.
We played all these sound bites of all these Democrats and media analysts who were talking about the political result and the political quality and the political impact of this press conference. So let's move to Friday. On Friday, Tony Snow makes his announcement that testing has shown a new lump, something in his lower abdomen, and he was going to go in and get it checked. So I said, in my way of poking fun at the time media and Democrats, "I wonder..." and I was asking this rhetorically, and you people, by the way, the e-mails I got from people last night indicated listening to this program know it full well. I said, "I wonder if Tony's just doing this to upstage the Edwards? Do you think Tony is doing this to get Bush's poll numbers up?" We all laughed about it. Tony is our friend here. We know Tony Snow. We know how they do and don't do things, and how he does things and doesn't do them.
Now, I was just playing off the reaction. I said, "We're going to examine the political impact of the Edwards presser. I wonder if the Drive-Bys are going to examine the impact of the Tony Snow announcement," and then yesterday, we found out that it's a recurrence of Tony Snow's earlier cancer that was in his colon, which has been removed, and that it's now moved to his liver. It's not penetrated the liver. It's on the outside. He had surgery to remove it. He's going to be in the hospital three weeks. I asked again if this was an effort by Bush and Rove to upstage Edwards, and I wondered if the Drive-By Media was going to be examining the political impact of this. Of course, none of that happened. We didn't get one word of political analysis of Tony Snow. Which is fine, just pointing out the differences. We got a lot of sympathy and we got a lot of other things. But for them to accuse me of suggesting that Tony Snow did this as a political stunt, which is what was said on Larry King Alive last night, just goes to show what we're up against and what you as consumers of news are up against.
I'm telling you, there is a great rule of thumb here. If you're watching one of these Drive-By oriented shows and you hear comments about any Republican or any conservative, your best bet is to doubt everything you see or hear and find out on your own. This has happened to me so much, it's a routine now. It's part and parcel of my existence. I'm under the impression I don't believe anything these people say when they report it, particularly about Republicans and conservatives, because they never, ever get it right about me, as you who are regular listeners of this program understand. Of course, the satirical and the parodic humor cannot -- and is not -- captured by these blogs and websites that shift through this show and then put up these things out of context, and even if they did get -- well, they can't get the humor because they're not funny. They certainly don't understand this kind of humor, even though they claim to love irony. Now, here's Fineman. Let's go back. I'm being pilloried now. What did they say in the first bite? "Controversy over what Rush Limbaugh said about Brave Elizabeth." Here's Howard Fineman from Friday. |
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FINEMAN: Looked at politically -- diagnosed, if you will, politically -- that was a ten strike of a press conference! They showed guts. (It) was nothing short of remarkable, and somewhat unexpected, and it's always great when something unexpected happens around here.
RUSH: He was talking about the fact that there was a leak that was erroneous that Edwards was going to suspend the campaign, and then all of a sudden Edwards announces, "No, we're not going to cower in the corner. We're going to move on," and then finally Fineman says, Wow, fabulous! We love this stuff, we love press conferences with surprises! So there's a 100% political analysis of this thing, and yet the Drive-Bys are obsessed with "controversy" over what I said. Who's the next one that you found? Oh, yeah. Here's Matt Lauer. This is the Today Show, and this is from last Friday.
LAUER: I'm stalling a little bit here because the -- the -- the question I want to ask you is one that's going to sound terribly inappropriate, and I'm trying to figure out the right way to say it. Neither John or Elizabeth Edwards asked for this. However, one of the facts that remains this morning is that John Edwards' picture is on the front page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and in some ways we have to ask the political question of what is the impact of this going to be on a campaign that was toiling in third place?
RUSH: And now we know. He got a bump. He's still there, but he got a bump. He went from nine to 14% or something like that. His fundraising is up. There are still stories about it today. In fact, here's one. LA Times: "Edwards Moves in Uncharted Territory." The theme of this story is that Edwards is now defined by his wife's cancer and will that continue, and that could be a problem. "Yet there is a danger that Elizabeth's cancer and the couple's personal travails will become all-consuming, drowning out Edwards' message and turning the focus away from issues that matter to voters, even though the announcement has humanized the Edwardses in a way that people can relate to." If the announcement "humanized" Edwards, it must mean he wasn't humanized before. So the Drive-Bys are saying all this. There's Matt Lauer. They're all talking about the political impact, and somehow I am the only one who dared do this. (Gasp!)
As to Tony Snow, there's an untold heroic side story in the Tony Snow news. Tony Snow gave up a great gig, a high-paying job to do work for the country he loves. As a husband and a father, the family he loves, he made a big financial sacrifice to answer the call when the White House said, "We want you to be press secretary." In the midst of this climate he didn't need this, but he chose to do it. It makes him not only a nice guy and the object of our prayers, but in one sense, a true hero. Tony Snow represents the kind of goodness that makes America, America. He's a longtime friend, and for these people to sit here and seriously accuse Snow of making this up for a publicity stunt to blunt the Edwards press conference, gives you an idea of where the so-called thinking on the left resides today. |
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BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Kathleen in Grants Pass, Oregon, you're next on the EIB Network. Welcome.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Nice to talk to you. This is about the Elizabeth Edwards thing. Regarding your show that day, you made a comment that there was a leak that day that said that they were going to shut down the campaign. And of course after the news conference, everybody knew they weren't going to shut down the campaign. And you made a comment that, was this a political ploy? You did not say, was John Edwards using his wife's cancer as a political ploy or using those to his advantage.
RUSH: I haven't, but others have, by the way.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And others have said even worse.
CALLER: Right. But that day, the minute you said that about his campaign floating the idea or coming out and actually saying the campaign was going to shut down was a political tool, I knew right then and there somebody was going to misconstrue this -- or not "misconstrue this," was going to out-and-out lie -- about the fact that you said that Edwards was going to use this as a political tool.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: That's what Miss Miller's comment was about. It was not about Tony Snow. It was about you, but absolutely an untruth about you saying that Edwards was using this as a political tool. And that's why Larry King was so credulous that you would say this, because she was giving him the idea that you actually said that John Edwards was going to use his wife's cancer as a political ploy. And that's what it was. It was not Tony Snow.
RUSH: Okay, well, I didn't do that, either. (Laughing.)
CALLER: No, absolutely. I heard the show.
RUSH: But the point is it's not that Stephanie Miller -- who is a babe, by the way, I must point this out. It's not that she is confused in a sense. It's that she's not coming to the source.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: I can give you the two or three websites that have made it their business to take this program out of context, take me out of context and create all of this hubbub. Here's a short little story. I hope I have time to squeeze this in. The leak showed up on ThePolitico.com website, which is these guys that left the Washington Post: John Harris and Mike Allen and Roger Simon over there. They put a leak out at 11 o'clock which is about 11:05, which is an hour before the Edwards press conference, which said that the Edwards campaign was going to be suspended, and they had a clean, good source that had never done them wrong. Then, press conference comes, and Edwards says he's going to extend the campaign. The leak was inaccurate.
The Politico corrected it, and they did it quickly. But then I heard the Howard Fineman bite. Howard Fineman said, "Oh, this is exciting." So I speculated on the speculation, "What if the Edwards people, to spice up the press conference..." because everybody know that press conferences leak the contents first or announcements like this. "What if they purposely leaked that there was going to be a suspension of the campaign, so that when they announced the opposite, it would really light off balloons and so forth?" I'm going to run out of time for this, but I want you to hold on through the break here, Kathleen, because I want to explain this. I want to get your reaction.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I then got e-mails from John Harris at Politico.com who told me that friends of his, this source, had told him of things I had said about Politico when I hadn't even gotten close to uttering the syllables. It's exactly what happened to Stephanie Miller, but sit tight because we'll get to this. I can't wait to tell the rest of this story.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT |
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RUSH: I want to go back to Kathleen in Grants Pass Oregon. Kathleen, thanks for holding on. I appreciate it.
CALLER: Hi.
RUSH: All right. I want to start the story again so I don't lose any context in this, because Kathleen's point is that the criticism I got last night on Larry King Alive was based on a misunderstanding. Stephanie Miller, who made the criticism, said that I had -- well, what did she say? Did you see it?
CALLER: I did.
RUSH: All right, tell me again what you think she was criticizing me for.
CALLER: She was criticizing the fact that she said that you thought that John Edwards was using this medical situation kind of politically -- you know, to get a bump, so to speak -- and that their decision to do so... I'm extrapolating. I don't remember exactly what she said, because the minute she said it, I remembered the show that day, and I knew that what you were saying was immediately going to be taken out of context.
RUSH: So did we. We sit here and we chart the instances that this happens, and we wait for it to be taken out of context on these various websites because we know that people in the alternative and the Drive-By Media and other places do not listen to this program. They find out what happened here on these websites. So it's kind of fun to toy with them now and then.
CALLER: Yeah. But it wasn't Tony Snow she was referring to, and I said that before, this is why Larry King was so horrified, because she gave him the impression that you were criticizing the Edwardses.
RUSH: Well, no. If you go back, I've got the transcript. I don't want to play the whole thing again, but King's last question, "Rush thinks Tony Snow is being political?" He thought Tony Snow was what she was talking about.
CALLER: Oh, that's not... Oh, I see. But that was not what she was referring to.
RUSH: Well, and I thought it was because they invited me on the show yesterday. They said they wanted friends of Tony Snow to come on and talk about him, and I couldn't make it last night, so knowing that that's what they were talking about, I thought Tony Snow was the topic. Well, here's the whole thing in context, because what Kathleen in Grants Pass, Oregon, is saying is that the criticism of me last night was misunderstood because of this. There was a leak on The Politico website at 11:07 last Thursday that the Edwards campaign was going to suspend. The press conference happens, and the exact opposite is said. The Edwards said (paraphrased), "We're going to hang in there. We're going to keep it going. We're not going to cower in the corners," and whatever else they said. The Politico did their correction as soon as they found out. They explained what happened and so forth. They got it up. They didn't put it on the back page. They put it right there front and center.
Howard Fineman, reacting to this in glee, said, oh, it was exciting, too. In addition to it being "a political ten strike" for the Edwardses, it was exciting because we had something unexpected. We never get the unexpected in these affairs." So I then said, "Well, whoa, maybe the Edwards campaign, we know how PR works in politics. Maybe they decided to falsely leak?" I speculated the idea the campaign was going to suspend in order to create the very suspense and excitement that Howard Dean said he so loved. It's that which Kathleen says that Stephanie Miller misunderstood my point.
Now, let me take it further because after all this happened, later that afternoon, I got an e-mail from John Harris who runs Politico.com. He and Mike Allen left the Washington Post to go over and start this, and they got a bunch of people with them over there, Roger Simon and others. He sent my chief of staff a note, my trusted aide, H.R. He said, "I didn't actually hear Rush today, but, two things. In the first place, we stand by our story on the Republicans are looking for a replacement for Gonzales." See, I said that the politico had blown two scoops here in one week, and that upset them. I said the Gonzales scoop was blown because he's still there. He hasn't been forced to leave; the president's backing him up, and then this Edwards leak that said he was going to suspend the campaign. So the e-mail was basically, "We didn't blow the thing. The Gonzales thing is still there. Yeah, you're right about the Edwards thing, but we've apologized for that and we put the correction up." Then Kathleen, he went on to say in his e-mail that he had not heard my show that day but he had heard from people that I had suggested that the Washington Post ought to slap these guys around a little bit and censure them.
CALLER: (Laughing.) |
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RUSH: So I'm looking at this e-mail, and they wanted to come on the program and discuss this. So H.R. -- and I don't see these e-mails 'til late in the early evening when I got home. So I'm seeing these long after they've been sent, and H.R. said, "You guys had better be very careful. That's not what was said on this program, and if you ask to come on under these premises, it isn't going to work." So I got home and I read all this. John Harris, his e-mail address was in the correspondence, I sent him an e-mail back, and I said, "John, I have 600 and some odd radio stations, and it would really help if you guys would tune in one day to actually listen to what happens here instead of getting your information from your so-called sources," or whatever term he used to describe these people. I said, "I assume your business is competitive, just like mine is, and I assume that when you had these two mistakes today, that your old newspaper -- who's gotta be worried at having lost you, and you've got this competing website I thought they -- would slap you around.
"I didn't suggest they should. I said it will be interesting to see if the Post does slap you around a little bit. You used to work there. But I never once said anything about censure. I don't even understand this." Somebody had told him that I had compared the people at The Politico to the Indianapolis Colts! I didn't understand that. I said, "How in the world are you guys like the Indianapolis Colts? I never even used the term Indianapolis Colts talking about you guys today." He wrote back and he said, "Well, what I was told was that you equated us with being the Colts the way we pulled out of Baltimore in the middle of the night on a snowy night in January or whatever it was and moved to Indianapolis, and we did the same thing and we've left the Post in a lurch and now we ought to be censured."
I said, "I cannot believe this. I didn't talk about the Colts! I didn't talk about censure. I hope you kick their ass!"
CALLER: They're so emotional.
RUSH: He wrote back to explain to me, because I didn't understand the Colts analogy, what that was to me. He said, "Well, I didn't have a chance to listen to your show today. I got to it a little bit later," and then he didn't want to come on the air because we'd hashed it out, and he was really concerned about the blown scoops thing and so forth that I had talked about with Gonzales and the Edwards leak. I said, "This is another glaring example of how this happens." I don't know who it was that heard my show that day, but it couldn't have been what I said that they passed on because I never mentioned the Colts and I never mentioned censure.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Or any of this sort of thing. And then, the pièce de résistance is the next day, on Friday, Howard Kurtz, who is the media writer for the Post, slapped them around. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post did a story on how The Politico people blew this press conference and the leak with Edwards and so forth and so on, and I got a nice note from John Harris, saying, "You were right. Your prediction was right. We did get slapped around by the Post today."
I said, "Well, I expected it. You can't expect they're going to be fraternal and love you guys. You were their star political reporters and now you've split the scene and you've got this great website going that's getting noticed and it's causing them, I'm sure, some grief over there. All newspapers are wondering what the hell to do to keep their businesses viable, and if I were you guys, I wouldn't worry about Kurtz and I wouldn't even respond to them by putting all this in an e-mail. Stay on offense on your pages." They did respond to it because that's their nature, but I only wanted to tell you that story because it's emblematic and typical of the kind of things that happen that get said on this program and then they get twisted and totally made up in some cases.
CALLER: You know, I've heard that many times, but today on the show I just had to straighten it out because I heard your show and I know exactly what you said about John Edwards and Elizabeth Edwards, and I know exactly where that comment came from. I just think these people get so emotional and they're so bent on destroying you or getting something from you, that I think it just fries their brain a little bit, and they don't pick up what you say accurately.
RUSH: They don't want to.
CALLER: No, they don't want to.
RUSH: They don't want to.
CALLER: Right. |
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RUSH: Furthermore, don't forget who these people are. These are the people that think Bush ought to be murdered.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: These are the people, if you go to their websites you can read comments about, "Tony Snow, you deserve to die for lying for Bush."
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Those things are all over their websites today -- things that, you know, would try to portray me and others on my side of the aisle as these insensitive, mean-spirited extremists and so forth.
CALLER: Right. That's why Stephanie Miller made the comment about the conservative party and the Republican Party could produce people like you and Ann Coulter, because Larry King kept asking her, "Are you sure he said that? Are you sure he said that?"
RUSH: Yeah. Well, I don't know Larry that well, but I gathered from that he couldn't believe I'd said it.
CALLER: No, he couldn't. He absolutely he couldn't. You could see it on his face. He didn't know what to do with it. He didn't understand it.
RUSH: Well, I'm glad you called.
CALLER: Well, thank you.
RUSH: I hadn't even thought to repeat The Politico story, but it dovetails with your analysis of what happened here.
CALLER: Well, I'm really glad it got straightened out. It was really bugging me.
RUSH: You sound like a babe, by the way. I have to say this.
CALLER: Well, I used to be. (Laughing.)
RUSH: Once a babe, always a babe, until you get elected to the Senate. Something happens then.
CALLER: (Laughing.) Well, thank you very much.
RUSH: Okay, Kathleen. Have a great rest of the week.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. |
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