RUSH: Magic Johnson. After being raked over the coals by Donald Sterling on CNN, Anderson Cooper went out and got Magic to appear last night, and Anderson Cooper said, “Are you interested in the Clippers? There’s a lot of reports that you would be interested in being an owner, part-owner of the Clippers.”
JOHNSON: We have to wait. That’s gonna be eight months to a year to see if it ever hits the market. But for me, if it comes out and it’s for sale, and my Guggenheim Partners and I say, “Okay, we want to take a look at it; we want to buy it,” of course we’ll make a run for it.
RUSH: “[W]e’ll make a run for it.” It’s “gonna be eight months to a year to see if it ever hits the market”? That’s not gonna sit well with LeBron James. LeBron James wants this done tomorrow. Rick Barry wants the Sterlings to give up the team tomorrow! We had the sound bites. They don’t want to wait. Eight months to a year to adjudicate this? He’s got the timeline already worked out.
Magic says it’s gonna be eight months to a year before anybody can make a run at it. (interruption) It is. It is the first time I’ve heard a timeline at all on the team being available. Well, it would appear that Magic Johnson’s got information. I haven’t heard the commissioner talk about how quickly this is gonna end. I haven’t heard Sterling announce when he’s gonna give up the fight.
Well, his wife said she wants the team.
Everybody else said (summarized), “Well, you better realize nobody wants you. So you should just go away. Your husband should sell the team, buy an island, and leave everybody alone! Why do you want to be around people that don’t like you?” That was Rick Barry yesterday. But Magic on CNN last night said it’s gonna be eight to 12 months. I wonder if LeBron James has heard this, because they’re expecting this to happen like by Friday.
Well, they want it to happen by Friday.
So after revealing that it’ll be eight to 12 months before the team even hits the market, Magic then continued.
JOHNSON: We have to wait and see. But this notion that I want his team? If I was gonna trick somebody, deceive somebody, be dishonest to somebody, steal somebody’s franchise, it’s gonna be the Los Angeles Lakers. (laughing) Let’s make that clear right now.
COOPER: You’re putting that on the record?
JOHNSON: It won’t be the LA Clippers. Look, I’m a respectable guy. I’m a guy who worked hard to put myself in this position. I am not gonna do anything bad to ruin that. I can’t look my kids in the face and say, “Hey, I’m a thief. I’m a guy who back stabs people to get to where they want to get to.” I don’t do that.
RUSH: He was just kidding about stealing the Lakers. I want everybody to know he was only kidding. He didn’t really mean it. He was bouncing off the allegations he was gonna steal the Clippers. Well, ’cause he’s not gonna talk openly about seriously stealing a team. He was joking about stealing it. If he gets one of these he’s gonna buy it. He’s not gonna steal. He was just making a joke. Some people take it seriously. I just wanted to step in and make sure everybody understood. (interruption) They did ask if he knows V. dot. Let’s see. Grab sound bite 15. He said he never met her. Anderson Cooper, “Donald Sterling claimed in this interview that I did with him the other day that you knew V. dot and that you knew her really well.”
JOHNSON: I’ve never met this young lady. I took a picture with her probably, it looked like at a Dodger game. That’s it. That’s all I know of her. You know, and then he says I’m trying to set him up. How am I trying to set you up?
RUSH: Well, he thinks that you’re behind her getting the tape. He thinks that you want his team and that you’re using V. dot to sweet talk him into saying things to get him thrown out of the league. But he didn’t know V. dot. Did not know V. dot. So okay, back to sound bite 14. Anderson Cooper. “One of the things that Sterling said to me was that you called him up.”
JOHNSON: I was sitting in my office, I get a call from Donald Sterling. This is what happened. He asked me to go on the Barbara Walters show with him. I told him I wouldn’t do it. I said, “The number one thing you need to do, which you haven’t done, is apologize to everybody and myself.” “I’ll get to that. I’ll get to that.”
COOPER: So he wanted you to go on with Barbara Walters sitting next to him?
JOHNSON: Sitting next to him.
COOPER: To kind of give him cover or —
JOHNSON: Exactly. So I said no. Then I told him, I said, “Donald, you should consult with your attorneys.” I said, “This thing is a big thing, and you should deal with your attorneys and let them advise you on what to do.” But I said, “You need to go public and apologize to everybody.”
RUSH: And he did. And then he stepped in two more buckets of excrement in the process. He did. He went on apologized. And he tried the Clinton route. It was just sex. You know what he said was, he said (paraphrasing), “Look, you’re with a woman, everybody knows this, you say whatever you have to say. I mean, you don’t think anybody’s recording it. If you thought somebody was recording it you’d never say it, but you say whatever in order to get the woman to have sex with you.” They tried that. Shortly after the Lewinsky thing had resurfaced, there’s no question what he was trying. If it worked for Bill Clinton, it can work for me, Donald Sterling.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look, let’s get one thing straight. It’s not crazy for Sterling to ask Magic to appear on Barbara Walters with him. It’s not crazy. I mean, it’s crazy that he might think Magic would do it, but it’s not crazy to ask. I mean, it would be like Bill Clinton asking Hillary to sit next to him in an interview about his bimbo allegations, which she did, to give him cover. It was 60 Minutes, 1992, and it was Steve Kroft doing the interview. (interruption) Well, she didn’t show up the second time? (interruption) Well, no, they didn’t, but they walked out of the White House together hand in hand and then she goes on the Today show and blamed the right-wing conspiracy for it.
But she did give Clinton cover on 60 Minutes in 1992. So it’s not unusual. I mean, if Sterling is trying to channel Clinton and do what Clinton did, I mean, Clinton did that. It’s interesting to me, though, that wherever you look in this story — I mean, we’re just playing sound bites of what’s on television, and all roads lead to Magic Johnson in this thing. I mean, whatever angle is discussed, it all ends up back with Magic being the go-to guy for the real story about what happened here. And I know Magic is Mr. LA, but Kobe is there, too, and they’re not going to Kobe about it.