RUSH: We’ve gotta get to these protests, because that’s not what they are. The things that happened Saturday in Arizona, the things that happen at Trump rallies. I’ll tell you a little story to set this up. I played golf yesterday. Oh, speaking of which — I was telling Snerdley, I hit some of the best golf shots I have ever hit in my life yesterday. I went to sleep thinking about one of them, reliving it over and over. I’m not gonna describe it to you because the Stick-to-the-Issues crowd will go nuts.
But after golf — and it was a large group of people. It was a bunch of friends of mine and their wives. The guys played a foursome and the wives played a foursome and the wives followed. And after it was all over I began talking to people about the campaign, obviously. I hadn’t seen a couple of these people in a while. And they came up to me and said, “Oh, Rush, I just so miss having a chance to ask you, you’ve gotta tell me, what do we make of these Trump protests, isn’t it terrible?”
And I said, “They’re not Trump protests.”
“What do you mean?”
I said, “Do you think these are Trump people protesting? Trump is responsible for this?”
“Well, yes, isn’t that –”
“No, it’s not.” See, this is how this works. Because Trump has an attitude about these protesters, and because he says he’s not gonna tolerate it and because he doesn’t tolerate it, you have a bunch of people who, because the Drive-Bys want you to think this — I mean, it’s understandable. The Drive-Bys want you to think that it’s Trump responsible for all this, that Trump and his very existence, Trump and his speeches, Trump and his rallies are causing otherwise normal and sane people to lose their minds and start protesting and shutting things down.
And, folks, this is the point I was trying to make on Friday on this program. We get caught up in this Republican campaign, but I told you on Friday that’s what’s happening in this campaign is tiddlywinks compared to what’s going to happen when we get to the general. It doesn’t matter who our nominee is, this is tiddlywinks compared to what’s gonna happen. The left, they got their guy, they got Obama for two terms.
We are in the midst of the official, long hoped for, long-awaited transformation of this country from capitalism to socialism by the left and the Democrat Party. They’re not just going to abide by the results of an election if they lose it. They’re not gonna sit by and let this happen. And they never have. They have always used what is commonly called public protest or dissent or what have you. What it’s become now borders on criminal behavior.
Let me give you an analogy to explain what I mean. Let’s take protests at abortion clinics. Let’s say protests at Planned Parenthood. What are the rules for those? Well, Planned Parenthood’s what? It’s a private company, whatever you want to call it, organization. It’s private. It isn’t public. So anybody that wants to protest what goes on in there cannot walk in and start harassing employees and start beating up employees. They have to stay outside the building, in many cases they’re required by law to stay a few feet away.
Imagine what you would do, imagine what Obama would do, imagine what anybody would do if anti-abortion protesters stormed Planned Parenthood facilities, actually went inside and started beating up people that work there and trashing the place. Do you think anybody would say, “It’s the time-honored art of American dissent. Isn’t it wonderful? Look at what these protesters are doing.” No. It would properly be called criminal behavior. There would be arrests, and the cops or anybody would go in there and kick them out and get rid of them, forcibly remove them, as should be the case.
Well, it’s the same thing at a Trump rally or any of the other rallies. These are private events. They are not rallies held by an American politician open to the public. They are private rallies paid for by the candidates. They rent the arena. They have to provide security. The Secret Service does not go into the crowd and keep order. The only thing the Secret Service does is react to what they think might be a threat to the person that they are assigned to protect. And in this case, it’s candidates.
So if somebody storms a stage, yeah, they’ll go into gear and they’ll get into action. If they hear somebody make a threat against the candidate they’ll take action. But if there are fisticuffs out in the crowd, Secret Service doesn’t touch that. That’s up to local security, local law enforcement and whatever private security the candidates have purchased. And in no instance is a protester allowed to come in there and do what they’ve been doing without being kicked out and arrested. But that’s not how this is portrayed. This is portrayed as normal, everyday American people protesting what they think is the dangerous Donald Trump. These are purposefully planned and executed strategies to disrupt these events.
The people doing this in no way will ever become Trump supporters. They are there to shut down these events. They are there to cause these problems; to make it look like it’s Trump and his supporters. And I would say this if it were happening to Cruz. I would say this if it were happening to Kasich. I would say this if it were happening to Hillary. Except it doesn’t happen to Democrats because our side abides by the law and doesn’t seem to see the benefit in doing this kind of thing. But these groups are the same groups they’ve always been.
They are climate change groups, global warming groups. They are Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter. Whatever the protest groups over the course of the years are, it’s the same people, just with different names, the organizations that have been created that they supposedly are members of or represent. But the people that run the Trump rallies have every right to throw them out of there. They do not have the right to come in and disrupt these things under the guise of peaceful protests.
Look at the blockade of the street in Arizona that happened on Saturday where Trump was supposed to speak. These people block the street. That’s not a protest. That’s criminal behavior. They were trying to keep people from getting to the Trump rally, and so they shut down the one road that people had to get there. And law enforcement wasn’t prepared. It took a while for law enforcement to show up and be able to do anything about it. You had people with vehicles linked across the street, people laying down on the street, making passage impossible.
It was backed up for miles. That one road led to the only hospital in the region. How many people in those cars that were tied up and unable to get to the Trump rally were not even going to the Trump rally? How many of them were doing other things, going other places? How many ambulances might have been in that line trying to get in to the hospital? How many people had their young children in the cars? It’s out in the desert here, folks. Miles and miles!
This is not a protest, and it’s not Trump people. And if you want to say, “Well, Trump’s causing it,” you’re wrong. This was my whole point on Friday. The enemy is not Trump. The enemy is not Cruz. The enemy is not Kasich. The enemy is not any Republican. The enemy is the left, the Democrat Party, the American left. They are the most destructive force in this country today. And they are doing whatever they can to create havoc and discomfort, and they want the reaction to be you blaming Trump, or you blaming whoever the Republican happens to be.
They want you blaming Trump for it. “If Trump weren’t doing what he’s doing, this wouldn’t be happening.” That’s what you are supposed to conclude, and then you’re to conclude, “Trump should stop. Trump should get out. Trump’s a menace. Trump’s this and that.” It isn’t Trump doing this. It is not Trump’s people doing this. It is not Trump supporters. These are people that are gonna vote for Hillary Clinton doing this. Or Crazy Bernie or whoever ends up with the Democrat nomination. These are criminal leftists.
These are not protests.
These are provocations and riots in waiting.
Shutting down a highway as they did is not lawful. It’s not a protest. It’s not dissent. It is criminality, and it needs to be dealt with as such. These are private events. Protests do not have the right to enter and disrupt them. In no other circumstance would this be tolerated. You can come up with any number of analogies in addition to the Planned Parenthood, but that is probably a good one ’cause do you know how many people would tolerate something like that? Zilch. Even on our side, zilch, zero, nada.
That’s why even at the Republican convention, Democrat convention, you don’t see this. The protestors are kept away from the arena, away from the venue. They are kept outside. They are not permitted in. They are private events for that specific reason. The hall has been rented and leased by the candidate. He has total control of the usage. Of course within the boundaries of the law. But it struck me. I mean, these are good people that I played golf with. They’re fine, and they’re up to speed. But it’s like everybody else: They react to what they see in the media.
We’re never gonna get around that. I don’t care how many Fox Newses there are or talk radio, there’s always gonna be a Drive-By Media. We’re never going to get around the fact that they are supportive of the Democrat Party and everybody else that supports it. They are tolerant. They encourage all of this — and not only do they encourage it, they follow along and make it look like the victims of these things are actually the perpetrators. So the people I was talking to after golf, you should have seen their faces when I told them what I just told you.
Their eyes lit up. “Yeah, yeah. Okay. That makes sense.” They don’t hear that anywhere in the media that they consume. And so they… I guarantee you that there are a whole lots of people — pro-Trump, anti-Trump, you name it, but especially anti-Trump people — who are eagerly glomming onto this as just another reason to criticize Trump. “Yeah, look what he’s causing.” I guarantee you, this goes on before Trump.
Didn’t you see this in Ferguson? You saw this against Mitt Romney. You see… Folks, the point is, this is standard operating behavior for these people. It’s gonna happen whether Trump’s the nominee or not. If Trump were to drop out of the race (just a wild hypothetical; it’s gonna continue to happen), they’re going to move on to whoever they fear. Whoever they think poses them the greatest threat is who they are going to act on.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Dave in Columbus, Ohio. You’re up first and it’s great to have you. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: I’m fine. Thank you.
CALLER: About these protests, the thing that frustrates me the most… I’m an attorney, Rush, and no one seems to understand the very basics of Constitutional Law 101, the First Amendment, free speech. The First Amendment protects the content of your speech. It does not protect your conduct when you speak. People get this all wrong. I hear these talking heads on TV everywhere. They say, “Well, as long as they’re nonviolent or they don’t enter into private space — as long as they don’t do this, they don’t do that…” If you’re in public and you annoy people, that’s the disorderly conduct. You grab a megaphone and start marching around blocking foot traffic and screaming at people, getting in their faces, that’s disorderly conduct.
RUSH: Well, you can do it, but you’re gonna be removed. In any other circumstance, you’re gonna be removed if you do it.
CALLER: But it’s not, “The time-honored free speech. In the history United States, you know, everybody has a right…” You don’t. You can’t act like… You can’t be a nuisance and carry a Bernie sign and you’re inoculated. No one on TV seems to get this. They say that they’re allowed to march down the street. You know, when you see protesters with megaphones and signs marching around, they have to get a permit from the city to do that. There has to be a space, a time —
RUSH: Well, I get your point. There was no permit to block traffic given. His point is that the First Amendment does not provide you freedom of conduct. You have freedom of speech, but there’s no freedom of speech in these private events anyway. You do not have a right to be heard. You know, that is another thing about the First Amendment that a bunch of idiots seem to misunderstand. They equate the right of free speech with the right to be heard.
Nobody has to listen to you. You can go or you can say whatever you want to say and nobody has to listen, and you can’t do anything if they don’t. The minute you start forcing them to listen by shackling them or imprisoning them or trapping them or whatever, you are in violation of the law. The thing is, the media’s always gonna do this, Dave. The media’s always going to promote leftist protesters. They’re always going to categorize them as great heirs of the American tradition.
They’re gonna promote them as great freedom fighters and free speech lovers, civil rights leaders and all that. They’re nothing but a bunch of thug criminals. And for the first time, somebody’s calling them out. It happens to be Trump. For years, Republican voters have ached for something to be done about this. I’m telling you, you do not know how fit to be tied so many people are that crap like that ends up being a factor in policy.
Crap like that that goes on in Ferguson, crap like that that goes on in Baltimore or Los Angeles and ends up becoming public policy, included in public policy. You don’t know how many people are fit to be tied over for years and years and years. It’s one of the many things Republican voters feel ticked off about. What was it I just had? I just had a… Oh, it was Lindsey Graham. “We must be prepared to lose an election to maintain our heart and soul.
“We must be. We as Republicans, we must be committed and prepared to losing an…” We’re only talking about the future of the country, not your heart and soul! And we’re not talking about your job. And we’re not talking about maintaining the establishment. People are concerned about their own futures, not yours. Their own lives. Yours is set! You’re a member of the establishment. You’re gonna be fine no matter what happens. That’s the problem.