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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: Let’s go to sound bites from the inauguration. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Conan rip-off. I’ve got it here. I’ll get to it here in just a second. I mean, I’ll tell you what it is. We were the first to discover and document how the media, all of them, will use the same word or phrase in covering a story. We put together a montage. When Bush chose Cheney to be his vice presidential running mate in 2000, the media used the word “gravitas” to discuss and describe Cheney and the move.

We put together a montage of at least 20 different media people all using the phrase, all using the word, and whenever we have found it happening again, we’ve put together another montage. Well, I guess last week sometime Conan did the same thing, as though it had never been done before, and the media is talking about what a brilliant comedic bit it was, and the media’s talking about, “Oh, my God, look at what Conan’s discovered!”


The media is out there, “My gosh, this is incredible what Conan’s discovered about the way the media operates,” and I will bet you that the 20 writers that Conan O’Brien has will each win an Emmy for this, even though our gravitas thing… When did we first air this? It has to go back to 2000. It has to be 14 years ago now, and we’ve been airing it a lot since.

Now, let me do this before I have to end up putting this off, this Conan O’Brien rip-off, because this is dead, flat rip-off. I don’t know… Snerdley, do you believe it’s possible that nobody at the Conan staff knows what we’ve done here? You don’t think it’s possible? ‘Cause we’ve been doing this since 2000. Let’s go back. Here’s what we’re talking about. Go back, Mike, grab sound bite number three. This is it. You remember this. We put this sound bite together starting in July of 2000. This is a montage when George W. Bush decided to choose Dick Cheney as his vice presidential running mate.


AL HUNT: He meets all of George W’s weaknesses, lack of gravitas.

JUAN WILLIAMS: We see the son, who is seeking some gravitas.

CLAIRE SHIPMAN: They were looking at candidates with gravitas.

STEVE ROBERTS: But he has the gravitas and you can sum it up in one word, stature.

VIC FAZIO: It may go to the gravitas.

JEFF GREENFIELD: We’re to use the favorite phrase, gravitas.

LESTER HOLT: This is a vice president who brought gravitas.

WOLF BLITZER: This will give some gravitas, add some credibility.

ED ROLLINS: I think the gravitas that Cheney brought to the ticket.

JONATHAN ALTER: What he gets is gravitas, a sense of weight.

BOB KERREY: He does not need anybody to give him gravitas.

MARGARET CARLSON: It means that, you know, gravitas.

MIKE MCCURRY: I think he also needs some gravitas.

SAM DONALDSON: To give gravitas.

ELEANOR CLIFT: Well, he brings gravitas.

WALTER ISAACSON: He does seem to bring some gravitas.


AL HUNT: ItÂ’s called gravitas.
MARK SHIELDS: A little gravitas!

JUDY WOODRUFF: You certainly have gravitas tonight.

SAM DONALDSON: He displayed tonight a certain gravitas.

MARIO CUOMO: I think gravitas is the word. Unfortunately for the Governor, you canÂ’t graft gravitas. He has gravitas.

RUSH: All right, so that was the first time we have put something like that together, and it was, as I say, in July of 2000 through August of 2000. You know, it was phenomenal. I mean, let me count. It’s over 20 people, over 20 people saying the same thing about one event in the news. I remember asking, “How does this happen? Who sends the memo out? How does it happen that 25 people all have independently the same reaction to an event, and is that possible?

“Is it possible that all of these people independently thought to describe this choice as ‘gravitas’? That’s a hard thing to believe,” and there have been countless other instances of this since 2000, and we’ve documented them each and every time. There’s another one. It’s sound bite number two. This is one that we put together Sunday and Monday. This is a montage of the media repeating something else. The New York Times had a story, folks, over the weekend which is a CYA for Hillary.

The New York Times is preparing Hillary’s presidential run. They did a story on Benghazi in which they maintained two things: There was no Al-Qaeda involved in Benghazi, and it was all caused by a video. Now, you and I know that it was Al-Qaeda and that the people involved said they didn’t know about a video. The video, nobody ever saw it. The video, made by this poor, hapless guy, had no impact on what happened in Benghazi.


But Hillary and Obama have been lying through their teeth about it ever since it happened. So the New York Times has come up with a story over the weekend that spreads those lies that it wasn’t Al-Qaeda. “Benghazi? No big deal. It was just a video, everything Hillary said,” and everybody knows what this is. It’s the New York Times paving the way and getting this issue out of the way for Hillary, and we put together another media montage of all the media saying the exact same thing about it.

JOHN BERMAN: Al-Qaeda was not behind the 2012 attack. The attack was likely carried out by independent Libyan militias and that those fighters were, in fact, infuriated by that anti-Muslim movie.


MIKE JERRICK: It really was an anti-Islam film that sparked the attack that killed four Americans.

DAVID GREGORY: There was no involvement by Al-Qaeda. The attack was, in part, fueled by anger over an American-made video.

JONATHAN KARL: No proof Al-Qaeda played any role at all, and that many of the attackers were in fact motivated by that anti-Muslim web video.

CHRIS WALLACE: No evidence that Al-Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. It was fueled in large part by anger at, yes, an American-made video.

ANDERSON COOPER: No evidence that Al-Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role. His reporting assigns essential role in the tragedy to the American-made video denigrating Islam.

DON LEMON: There is no evidence that Al-Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault and it was fueled in large part by a video denigrating Islam.

JILL DOUGHERTY: There is no evidence that Al-Qaeda had any role in the attack. An anti-Muslim video did play a role.

DAVE BRIGGS: There’s no evidence Al-Qaeda was involved in the Benghazi attack at all and it was all sparked by that YouTube video.

VICTOR BLACKWELL: Al-Qaeda was likely not involved in the attack.

CHRISTI PAUL: It was fueled in part by a US-made, anti-Muslim video.


RUSH: So the propaganda shows up, and it gets regurgitated verbatim by everybody in the media. We have been pointing this out since 2000, so that’d be 13 or 14 years now. Well, last week, Conan O’Brien did this, and the story that I have accompanying talked about what a brilliant thing it is and how informative and what an educational thing Conan O’Brien is doing by illustrating how the media is marching in lockstep. Oh, thank God for Conan O’Brien. Wow, we would have never known this was going on if Conan had not brilliantly spotted it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I better play the bite or I’m gonna run out of time. This is it. It’s actually from late November, and Conan is introducing and playing a montage of various news anchors from around the country all saying the same thing, and thinking he’s on to something big.


O’BRIEN: Judging by local news — and I’ve been looking at a lot of local news — there is an even bigger story that’s sweeping the nation right now.

LOCAL ANCHOR: Who are you really shopping for this holiday season? It’s okay. You can admit it if you bought an item or two, or 10, for yourself.

LOCAL ANCHOR: Well, it’s okay. You can admit it if you’ve bought an item or two, or maybe 10, for yourself.

LOCAL ANCHOR: It’s okay. You can admit it. You bought an item or two, or 10, for yourself.

LOCAL ANCHOR: It’s okay. You can admit it, if you bought an item or two, or 10, for yourself.

LOCAL ANCHOR: It’s okay. You can admit it if you bought an item or two, or 10, for yourself.

LOCAL ANCHOR: It’s okay. You can admit it, if you bought an item or two, or 10, for yourself.

LOCAL ANCHOR: It’s okay. You can admit it. If you’ve bought an item or two, or 10, for yourself.

LOCAL ANCHOR: It’s okay. You can admit it. If you bought an item or two, or 10, for yourself.

LOCAL ANCHOR: It’s okay. You can admit it, if you bought an item or two, or maybe 10 for yourself.

LOCAL ANCHOR: It’s okay. You can admit it, if you bought an item or two for yourself.

LOCAL ANCHOR: It’s okay. You can admit it, if you bought one or two or maybe three or four, maybe even 10 items for yourself.

LOCAL ANCHOR: It’s okay. You can admit it.

RUSH: That’s it. Now, this goes on for another minute. He found anchors. Now, obviously what happened here is that these are local anchors from around the country — if this is legit. I don’t know if they produced this. If it’s legit, it’s clear that some consultant who consults all of these local stations told the anchors to do this. All the news anchors are robots these days. Consultants dictate what’s said to relate to people via focus groups and so forth.

Just… (interruption) Well, but it’s lazy, people doing the news. But, I mean, this is verbatim. So this is obviously from a consultant, a consultant firm that consults all these stations. Anyway, the people reporting this. “Wow, Conan has really taught us something here about how the news media marches in lockstep.” Yeah, you watch, and they’ll probably win an Emmy for this. The twenty writers will probably get an Emmy.

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