RUSH: Chicago politics: ‘Cut me in or cut it out.’ Love that. (laughing) I’m sitting around, folks, the Drive-Bys are portraying Blagojevich — we’ve played the audio for you here — as a lunatic, insane, wacko, he’s delusional, psychopath, sociopath, insane. His wife is a cussing, loose lipped slut. Blagojevich is going to work, he’s defying Obama. Our president-elect asked him to resign, Blagojevich said no. He just got up and went to work. You know he’s watching all this stuff. What is he thinking? What’s Blagojevich thinking? Then you ask, ‘What does he know? What does he know about all of these people that are now trying to bury him?’ He’s thinking, ‘If I get an invitation to the inaugural in Washington, I’m not going. That means I gotta get on an airplane to get there.’ If I know Blagojevich and if I know Chicago politics, I don’t think he’s thinking anything differently than he was before all this broke.
What was he thinking before this broke? ‘This is worth a lot of money. This Senate seat is worth a lot of money. I’m going to score big. I’m going to get my wife out there at a nonprofit job. I’m going to get myself in a union job. I’m gonna finally get rich. I’m gonna finally get wealthy.’ I think he’s still saying the same thing. He’s saying, ‘ha-ha-ha-ha, they know what I know, they know I can take ’em all down, they’re going to pay me to shut up.’ He’s still thinking the same thing. It’s just a different opportunity but with the same end result. He’s not depressed. He thinks it’s a golden opportunity that’s been handed to him. They shut down the investigation before he’d actually sold anything. He’s thinking about sipping pina coladas on the beach down in St. Thomas, getting paid for it. Everybody thinks that the Reverend Jackson’s son, Jesse Jackson, Jr., had a bizarre press conference yesterday. We have audio sound bites of this press conference. Let’s listen to the sound bites that we have. Here’s the first.
JACKSON: I reject and denounce pay-to-play politics and have no involvement whatsoever in any wrongdoing. I did not initiate or authorize anyone at any time to promise anything to Governor Blagojevich on my behalf. I never sent a message or an emissary to the governor to make an offer, to plead my case, or to propose a deal about a US Senate seat, period.
RUSH: Maybe not, but somebody did in your name, ’cause it’s in the complaint. You have been identified as Senate candidate #5, and you have been identified as somebody who could come up with $500 grand to a million dollars up front. Now, Congressman Jackson, remember that it was your father who wanted to cut off the president-select’s genitals, and your father apologized and appropriately cried on the night of his acceptance speech when he won the election. But it looks like the president-select still has his genitals but you may not. So you may not have authorized anybody to do anything in your name, but somebody did. Here’s the next bite.
JACKSON: I met with Governor Blagojevich for the first time in four years on Tuesday. I presented my record, my qualifications, and my vision. The media saw me into the governor’s office, and after a 90-minute meeting about my record, my qualifications, the media saw me exit Governor Blagojevich’s office. Despite what he may have been looking for, that’s all I had to offer, and that’s what we discussed. I’ve retained advice of legal counsel, Mr. James Montgomery, Sr., who held his own press conference earlier this afternoon in Chicago. On his advice and due to the ongoing investigation, I will not be taking any questions.
RUSH: Here’s the final portion of the remarks by the son of the Reverend Jackson.
JACKSON: Watching the president-elect carry himself in such an extraordinary way across this country to build bridges that had never been built in this country, even I have become inspired.
RUSH: Wow.
JACKSON: And so somewhere along the way over the last two-and-a-half years, I got the idea that if a skinny kid with a funny name could be president of the United States, that a short kid with a somewhat controversial but certainly high profile name could be a Senator from Illinois.
RUSH: This is bizarre. Very, very bizarre. I don’t know what bridges have been built yet. I have no doubt that the president-select can build them. I have no doubt that the president-select can unify our country, as he’s done throughout his life, unified all those in his orb, but I don’t know that it has happened yet. And I don’t know how you get away with calling the president-select a skinny kid with a funny name and expect to get the skinny kid with the funny name’s Senate seat. Here now is the lawyer for the Congressman Jackson. His name is James Montgomery, held a press conference. Unidentified reporter said, ‘How did he learn about the involvement with this? Did it have to come to him? What happened here?’
MONTGOMERY: I believe he received a call that he did not actually get himself on the eve of —
RUSH: Stop. I want you to recue this. He received a call that he did not actually get himself. Here we go.
MONTGOMERY: I believe he received a call that he did not actually get himself on the eve preceding the arrest of Governor Blagojevich and was advised by the US attorney that that arrest is imminent and that he was not a target.
REPORTER: (crosstalk) — was not a target of this, do you take that to mean he’s not a direct target or that there will never be any charges in connection with this against Congressman Jackson?
MONTGOMERY: I don’t think the government would ever tell anybody that they would ever say ‘never.’ They used the term target, and that’s the only one that I can use.
RUSH: And now audio sound bite 14 — and this is a little interesting as well. An unidentified reporter said, ‘What would you do if Blagojevich offered to appoint your client, Jesse Jackson, Jr.?’
MONTGOMERY: Accept it.
REPORTER: Why?
MONTGOMERY: Why? Because he’s campaigned for it, he wants it, he’s entitled to it, he’s qualified for it. Yes, he would accept it.
RUSH: Okay, so after all this, he’s still campaigning for it. Yes, exactly right. He’s entitled to it. He’s entitled to it. He wants it, he’s entitled to it, he’s qualified for it. Yes, he would accept it. Now, I want to give you a little test. The test is entitled, ‘How gullible are you?’ Are you gullible enough to be a liberal? Are you gullible enough to be a New York Times reader? Here’s the test to help you find out. Did you believe Bill Clinton when he said, ‘I did not have sex with that woman, not a single time, ever. I never asked anybody to lie.’ Did you believe Bill Clinton? Did you believe Bob Torricelli when he denied all the things he had to leave the Senate for? Did you believe David Axelrod when he said Obama and Blagojevich discussed his Senate replacement? Did you believe Obama’s Axelrod when he said he misspoke about Obama and Blagojevich having that discussion? Did you believe the reporter at the Quincy TV station when she reported that the day after the election, Obama spoke with Blagojevich?
Did you believe the Quincy TV CBS reporter when she said, ‘Nope, that didn’t happen’? Did you know that that TV station has taken down all stories, that website has been scrubbed, there is no evidence — I happen to have the cached websites, but they have scrubbed that whole story. Did you believe Jesse Jackson, Jr., when he said he met with Blagojevich for 90 minutes and pay-to-play never came up? Now, if you answered yes to all five, you are a liberal for life, or you are a Drive-By journalist. If you answered ‘yes’ to two or three of these questions, you are a moderate, and there remains hope for you if you remain a regular attendee at classes here at the Limbaugh Institute. If you answered ‘no’ to all five you are grounded in reality and are thus cursed because you will be forever hounded, frustrated, and driven to near insanity by the gullible, who did pass this test. One more question. When Obama promised hope, when Obama promised change, when Obama said the sea levels would stop rising, when Obama said things will get better, did he mean it, or did he misspeak?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Farris in Hartford, Connecticut. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Dittos, professor, and many thanks for the privilege of talking to you in today’s class of millions.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate that.
CALLER: Just an aside to test your theory on Geraldo, where was he when they found James McDougal and Vince Foster? Was he around on your screen?
RUSH: You know, that — Well, there was no Fox News then. Geraldo was working at MSNBC those days.
CALLER: Oh.
RUSH: And they were discussing this, yes.
CALLER: Interesting theory. But on your gubernatorial test, I think James McDougal’s demise is number one on anybody’s gullibility test, how a man can die the day before he’s to testify against the Clintons due to ill health is another question on your test, but I wanted to talk about something that —
RUSH: You know, I have to put my foot down here. We’re spending an awful lot of time here besmirching the character of a former president and a president-elect, and I think that’s beneath us as Americans to do that — especially the president-select. There’s no evidence whatsoever that he has done one corrupt thing in his life and it’s so sad that all these people around him here have been so tainted. He’s tried to walk a straight line on a crooked stick, in a crooked world. It’s gotta be a tough navigational problem for him.
CALLER: But the media has caught Obama doing the same thing that they caught Clinton doing, and that is talking lawyer speak. I’d like to remind you that this is our latest lawyer turned president-select. And when he first denied talking with Governor Blago — and you can replay the audiotape — what he says, and he corrects himself —
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: — says, ‘We had not spoken,’ he said, ‘Excuse me, I have not spoken with the governor about this.’
RUSH: Yes, he’s just being honest.
CALLER: Yes, but he had to change it, and that’s the same thing that Clinton did when he said to Jim Lehrer, ‘There is no relationship with Monica Lewinsky,’ and I could hear that clear as a bell. He didn’t say there ‘was’ none; he said there ‘is’ none, and of course there wasn’t at the time.
RUSH: Exactly, that we know of.
CALLER: So, in your excellent investigation of the situation, you will hear it.
RUSH: We had the audio yesterday, or maybe the day before, I forget. We did parse it exactly as you are.
CALLER: Well, that’s excellent, and —
RUSH: He’s admitting that — or actually what he’s doing is a very brilliant thing and it’s very typical of a very brilliant man. He can’t possibly know, with all the people in his organization, who might have talked to Blagojevich. He can’t go out and issue a blanket denial that nobody in his orb did. Frankly, because he knows that somebody was, because he knew the thing was for sale, and Blagojevich knew that Obama wasn’t going to play. That’s all in the complaint. So everybody knew what was going on here. But our president-elect decided when he first heard this to stay totally above it and not get anywhere near it, and for that we can be proud.
CALLER: Well, I am a little concerned about this Fairness Doctrine, but I thought I’d put that point out there anyway. I missed class yesterday, so if it was brought up…
RUSH: No, no, no. I was not chastising you. You know, I just was letting you know that we did indeed note that lickety-split correction made by our president-elect, knowing full well he doesn’t know 24/7 what all of his people are doing.