RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, you know how I often speak about the crumbling institutions that we all seemingly used to be able to rely on when it seemed like there was social and cultural deterioration or when there was the rise of questionable illegal or immoral behavior. We always used to be able to handle and rely on institutions to be a bulwark, to provide a backstop, to prevent the backslide from continuing. And we had that today.

We saw an institution stand up and assert itself. We saw an institution, a man, actually, representing an institution stand up and call something out for exactly what it was. We saw somebody unafraid of violating politically correct speech. We saw somebody unafraid of what the media might say in reaction to his statements. We saw somebody fearless. We saw somebody totally devoted to properly categorizing what we had been exposed to for the past week for exactly what it was, without any attempt to spare anybody’s feelings.

We saw the institution of the Chicago Police Department stand up and provide the clear right and wrong of what had gone on in the Jussie Smollett case. We didn’t see any equivocating. We didn’t see any apologizing. We didn’t hear any, “Please forgive me if what I’m about to say is going to offend you.” We had a man stand up and call out a person for running a hoax without any fear of recrimination.

I don’t want to make too big a deal of this, but it doesn’t happen much anymore, and it’s why it stood out like crazy to me. This man called out every fake artist that bought into this scheme from the get-go while acknowledging how fairly and accurately the Chicago police did their job. The guy comes forward with a story and for 47 of 48 hours, they treated him as a victim. They treated him as telling the truth. They treated him as though they believed what he was saying, and they endeavored to uncover what had happened to him. And in the last hour of their investigation the fruits of all of their labor came forward.

All the searching of community video, all of the interviews with witnesses. It finally came together, and they found out they’d been punked. I am referring to the Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson who, to me, is an example of the kind of fortitude and courage that the times today call for. You might think, “Rush, you’re making an awfully big deal.” Yes, I am making a big deal out of this because this doesn’t happen enough.

This guy called out presidential candidates for piling on here without any evidence whatsoever. He called out a bunch of people being punked and fooled by an actor. He called out the actor himself as an African-American. How dare this man sully the civil rights legacy of this country by taking advantage of it for his own desire to get more money. This is an adult, this police superintendent in Chicago is an adult. He’s not a grownup child and he’s not trying to be friends with the perp and he’s not trying to soft sell anything.

He’s just a cut-and-dried: This is what happened, we looked at it every which way we could, and I am personally offended, the Chicago Police Department is personally offended. This man has wasted money, he has wasted resources, he has made fools of us, he has wasted our time.

There was absolutely no sympathy for the perp. There was no, “Gee, we hope we find out what’s bothering him so that he can get the help that he needs.” There was none of that. So let’s go to the audio sound bites. You can hear what I mean. We’ll start here with Eddie Johnson, audio sound bite number 4. He is the police superintendent, the equivalent of the police commissioner in New York City.

By the way, did you notice who was not at this thing today? Where was the mayor? You talk about a photo-op, where was the mayor, Rahm Emanuel? Now, I know there’s a mayoral election coming up soon. May have been a factor. Where was he? I guarantee you if the perp had been white, I think the mayor would have been there. Do you agree with me on that? I think so.

I think if a white guy had run this hoax, you’d a had the mayor and a whole lot of Chicago politicians showing up. And I might also ask, why did they allow Smollett to turn himself in with his lawyers at 5 a.m.? Where was the raid of his apartment with 19 to 26 body-armor-clad agents fully armed, and where was the media in tow to witness this predawn raid of Smollett’s house? None of that happened like it happened with Roger Stone.

Now, admittedly, this is the Chicago Police Department, and maybe they are not as corrupt as Robert Mueller’s investigators. But, man, what a striking difference. They ask Smollett to show up and they allow Smollett to get there before 5 o’clock in the morning when the media isn’t there. They don’t tell the media he’s coming in at 5 o’clock. They allow him his privacy. But Eddie Johnson unloaded in his press conference today. Here we go the first sound bite.

JOHNSON: Why would anyone, especially an African-American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations? How could someone look at the hatred and suffering associated with that symbol and see an opportunity to manipulate that symbol to further his own public profile? To make things worse, the accusations within this phony attack received national attention for weeks. Celebrities, news commentators, and even presidential candidates weighed in on something that was choreographed by an actor.

RUSH: As if to say, what a bunch of idiots. What a bunch of fools. You fell for something choreographed by an actor. You know how he started this press conference? He started this preference chiding the media! “I wish the real crime in this town got anywhere near the attention this event is getting.” He pointed at the media, he looked right at ’em and said (paraphrasing), “Where are you when real crime is happening in this town? If the real crime that we’re battling in this town would get one smidgen of the attention this hoax event has gotten, then maybe we could do something about it.”

He just unloaded here. He was very reasonable sounding. But, folks, we do not get this kind of adult behavior. We don’t even get it in the Department of Justice. We certainly don’t get it anywhere in the media. There aren’t any adults left in the media. You wonder about all these reporters like what’s his name, Jim Acosta, Don Lemon, or all of these irresponsible know-nothings, they have bosses. Where are the adults in the news networks who are embarrassed by what their reporters are doing?

Where are the adults at all these networks who today ought to be livid with rage that every damn one of their reporters fell for this without first looking into it? Where are the adults in the news business during the Covington kids hoax? Where were the adults in the news business after it was discovered that the Duke lacrosse case was a hoax? There aren’t any adults anymore. This is my point. There aren’t any adults. All we have is partisan children! Adults who have not grown up!

And that’s why the police superintendent of Chicago stands out to me. I hope I’m not ruining this guy’s reputation by speaking for him. I can just see his office phone ring: “Hey, hey, superintendent, Rush Limbaugh’s praising you.” The superintendent, “Oh, no, that’s the last thing I need, aw, gee.” I have supposedly ruined journalists’ reputations by praising their work when it’s called for.

Here’s the next bite from Eddie Johnson, superintendent of police in Chicago. We have two more. This is what they’re mad about. They’re worried the hate crime business is gonna take a hit. Listen to this one…

JOHNSON: Smollett attempted to gain attention by sending a false letter that relied on racial, homophobic, and political language. When that didn’t work —

RUSH: Hold it! Hold it! Hold it! Stop the tape and recue that. We now have Smollett wrote the letter! He actually didn’t “write” anything. Smollett got the magazine and cut the letters out of the magazine for the letter that was sent to the show. It was sent to Empire. It said, “You will die, black,” and then it is slang for “gay person,” and that was supposed to… It had a “white substance” in it. That was supposed to be anthrax, of course.

It turned out to be ground-up aspirin, and Smollett got mad that the producers of Empire didn’t take that more seriously! He wanted to set the stage where all kinds of people are really focused on and care about or hate Jussie Smollett. Here we have a classic example of a guy in social media desperate for fame, doesn’t have nearly the fame that he wants and doesn’t have nearly the income that he wants.

So he stages a couple of hoaxes here trying to get paid and trying to get noticed, and he plays the media like a Stradivarius. He plays the American left like a Stradivarius. For three days, the media reported on this letter but very confusingly. They never did indicate whether the police thought that Smollett had written the letter or whether the letter was legit. Well, it turns out that Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has informed us that Smollett composed this fake letter and sent it. Here is the bite again from the top…

JOHNSON: Smollett attempted to gain attention by sending a false letter that relied on racial, homophobic, and political language. When that didn’t work, Smollett paid $3,500 to stage this attack and drag Chicago’s reputation through the mud in the process. And why? The stunt was orchestrated by Smollett because he was dissatisfied with his salary. So he concocted a story about being attacked. To put the national spotlight on Chicago for something that is both egregious and untrue is simply shameful. I’m also concerned about what this means moving forward for hate crimes. My concern is that hate crimes will now publicly be met with a level of skepticism that previously didn’t happen.

RUSH: Mr. Superintendent, they already are because of all the previous hoaxes that you didn’t mention, starting in Ferguson, Missouri. We can then move to Baltimore and Freddie Gray. Michael Brown in Ferguson. The Duke lacrosse case. The left is nothing but phony hate crimes, phony alleged hate crimes, phony charges, made-up stories — like the “Tea Party guy” that shot up the movie theater in Denver. The left is famous for these, and it gets me off on another subject I need to circle back to.

They know these things probably aren’t true, but they want them to be, and that’s why they report them as true. They think this is what America is. It’s no… Look, it’s just like the Rolling Stone’s University of Virginia rape story. It turned out to be totally made up — absolutely, 100% made up. When the reporter is confronted, she says, “Well, it may not be true here, but it’s true elsewhere, and I wanted to raise consciousness of it.”

So in the mind of the American left, these crimes are happening everywhere. Even if the Smollett case isn’t real, it’s real elsewhere, and we must “raise consciousness.” So Mr. Superintendent, that horse is out of the barn. The left is already… This is part of the agenda, making these things up. Smollett made it up! Smollett’s an anti-Trumper! He’s a Never Trumper! He hates Trump! He made it up because he hates Trump! He wants more money.

He’s a typical left-wing Democrat today! By the way, he paid these guys with a check. (chuckles) The guy’s an idiot in addition to everything else. He paid ’em with a check. I wonder what the “for” was, the note. “Payment for fake hate crime”? What did he call it on the check? It’s like making a prank phone call with your caller ID on. One more sound bite from the police superintendent, Eddie Johnson. A reporter said, “When did you all figure out something didn’t add up here?”

JOHNSON: Well, to be perfectly honest, from the very beginning we had some questions about it. But, as I said, we gave Mr. Smollett the benefit of the doubt all the way up until that 47th hour of the 48 hours we could hold those two individuals. Because we just didn’t have the total package to support that it was a hoax. So when you heard me coming out saying, “We are treating him like a victim,” that was the truth, because at that time, that’s what he was.

RUSH: Well, they believed it. He believed him. The media is signing on to it. The celebrities are signing on to it. Presidential candidates are signing on to it and tweeting what a rotten place America is because of it. But now guess who’s doing a mea culpa? Don Lemon, who may be the dumbest man on television — and that’s a big contest. I mean, there are a lot of contestants in that race, and so it’s hard to proclaim an actual, single, number one, most dumbest guy in TV.

But now he’s doing a mea culpa. (paraphrased) “Well, we knew all along that there was something fishy about this. I mean, what kind of people are hanging around a Subway shop at two in the morning when it’s five degrees?” Well, Don, why didn’t you say any of that when you’re reporting the story? And then we learn that the two attackers are from Nigeria? They’re the last people that look like Trump fans, even though these two guys may be.

But they’re African, they’re African-American. They’re from Nigeria. (Snort!) It proves my point when you hear some of these bites. They knew. They knew this thing may have had all kinds of holes in it, but didn’t matter. Because, you see, what they all know is that the original reporting on the story is gonna get around the world and a whole lot of people are gonna believe it — in this case, days and days before the truth comes out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So the police superintendent, again, to repeat what he says, “I am left hanging my head asking, ‘Why? Why would anyone, especially an African-American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations?’ Bogus police reports cause real harm. They do harm to every legitimate victim who’s in need of support by police and investigators as well as the citizens of the city. I’m offended by what happened, and I’m also angry.” It’s just exactly what is called for, but what are the answers to the question?

“Why would anyone, especially an African-American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations?” These are not hard questions to answer but you have to be able to identify people ideologically to understand it. Senator Kamala Harris: “This was an attempted modern-day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or the color of their skin. We must confront this hate.” She couldn’t wait to believe this! She wanted to believe it was true. She didn’t even question it.

Cory Booker, also a Democrat running for president (one of the four candidates that the police superintendent called out, but not by name), “To those in Congress who don’t feel the urgency to pass our anti-lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime, I urge you to pay attention.” It’s just outrageous what the left is doing to this country and the picture of this country that they’re painting each and every day, the false narratives that they are establishing, many of which they know to be untrue.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I need to replay the sound bites for you of the police superintendent in Chicago, Eddie Johnson. This man did a fantastic job today pushing back against this attempt by Jussie Smollett to create this illusion that a hate crime had been perpetrated against him by supporters of Donald Trump.

And I think it’s important to remember that element of this, because I don’t know if it’s been forgotten by a lot of people, but it’s being overshadowed by the news now that the two guys that did the attack are Nigerian. They’re African. They’re black. Would not think of them as Trump supporters. But now the whole thing has been tied into a pretty little bow here where it was a hoax.

But the real element here that Smollett utilized was an attempt to blame this on the people that voted for Donald Trump, on that percentage of the country. And can you imagine this police chief? This case starts out, they had 100 interviews. They looked at 55 videos. They had to go get a bunch of subpoenas. It took them weeks to wind their way through this intricately woven web of deceit that this guy spins, Jussie Smollett. And the police chief admitted that they believed him for the vast majority of this investigation. They believed him. They gave him the benefit of the doubt.

They used all of these resources to try to substantiate what he said. And they found out that he lied about it all. He made it all up. So now it comes time to expose this! And I have often spoken of the evaporation, the weakening of traditions, institutions that provide a backstop when our society is backsliding. And this man today stood up and actually was an institution. He personified an institution that people do rely on to get things right and to do it fairly and properly without any political corruption involved, without any bias involved.

But stop and think of what this man had to deal with, this whole police department. You’ve got a guy who’s doing two things: He’s running, first, a fake crime. But look at who he’s trying to blame it on. He’s trying to blame it on the president of the United States, Make America Great Again. Two guys wearing MAGA hats and this is Make America Great Again country, you black whatever, and then they start beating him up. And this police superintendent, commissioner, was fearless in the way he dealt with this.

And I just want you to hear the way he did it again. If you missed the first hour of the program and you haven’t yet had a chance to see any of the video of this, his name is Eddie Johnson. He’s the police superintendent. He started the press conference, and he was mad as he could be, but he was contained. His anger here was very contained, but you could tell he was personally offended, he was personally insulted by as much of this as he should have been. We have three sound bites. Here is the first.

JOHNSON: Why would anyone, especially an African-American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations? How could someone look at the hatred and suffering associated with that symbol and see an opportunity to manipulate that symbol to further his own public profile? To make things worse, the accusations within this phony attack received national attention for weeks. Celebrities, news commentators, and even presidential candidates weighed in on something that was choreographed by an actor.

RUSH: Right. He began this press conference by expressing his frustration at all the attention this fake incident got in the first place. He lamented that real crime, real crime hurting real people in Chicago doesn’t get anywhere near this kind of attention. He resented the fact that because an actor choreographed something that the media and entertainment people and then presidential candidates all get involved, to stake their claim to it without knowing what the heck happened.

And he’s letting everybody know that he didn’t. And his department didn’t. They remained removed from this. They weren’t tainted by it. They weren’t affected by it. They acted exactly as a police department is supposed to. By the way, the superintendent is African-American. And that’s why he’s righteously indignant over this, why he says he doesn’t understand why anyone, especially an African-American man, would use a noose to make false accusations. My guess is he does understand, but it’s the bang-up thing to say.

Now, here’s what they’re angry about. They’re worried that the hate crime business is gonna take a hit. And we’ve had a couple callers today that really raised a great question. You know, why hasn’t Smollett been charged with a hate crime? Because he did try to frame Trump supporters for this! He tried to frame President Trump and his supporters for this. I asked yesterday, the day before, why isn’t all of this actually, when you boil it down, a hate crime against Trump?

This is defamation. This is libel. It’s no different than what’s happened to the Covington kids by the Washington Post and the rest of the media. By the way, some great stuff from their lawyer that I want to share with you later. But here’s the second sound bite from the police superintendent Eddie Johnson in Chicago.

JOHNSON: Smollett attempted to gain attention by sending a false letter that relied on racial, homophobic, and political language. When that didn’t work, Smollett paid $3,500 to stage this attack and drag Chicago’s reputation through the mud in the process. And why? The stunt was orchestrated by Smollett because he was dissatisfied with his salary. So he concocted a story about being attacked. To put the national spotlight on Chicago for something that is both egregious and untrue is simply shameful. I’m also concerned about what this means moving forward for hate crimes. My concern is that hate crimes will now publicly be met with a level of skepticism that previously didn’t happen.

RUSH: Mr. Superintendent, I hate to tell you, but that’s already happening. From Duke lacrosse to Trayvon Martin to Baltimore to Ferguson, Missouri, these hate crimes are already — they’re not hate crimes. By the way, why is there a crime with the added adjective “hate” attached to it? You beat somebody up, you beat somebody up. Is it worse that you beat somebody up because you don’t like their race? Well, that’s what we say in America, in our culture, in our criminal justice system, and it’s absurd.

And all it is is an added avenue to go after somebody and tack on more charges. It really just provides the opportunity to continue talking about it and to tar and feather the United States in the process. You heard him say that this was about Smollett wanting more money, dissatisfied with his salary. I’m not sure that’s all this was about. I mean, it could be a factor, but, you know, if you’re gonna orchestrate being beaten up, you’re gonna create a hoax and a fake attack, you can have yourself beaten up by anybody. This guy chose Trump supporters.

And if you read his Twitter feed, this guy hates Trump, he’s poisoned with Trump hatred. So there is obviously a political aspect to what Smollett did here. And I think simply saying that he wanted a raise is actually a way of lessening the charge and causing people to feel not quite as mad about this as maybe they should. “Ah, just some young, immature kid, 36 years old, trying to get more money.” It’s more than that. Here’s the final bite from the superintendent of police in Chicago today, Eddie Johnson.

JOHNSON: Well, to be perfectly honest, from the very beginning we had some questions about it. But, as I said, we gave Mr. Smollett the benefit of the doubt all the way up until that 47th hour of the 48 hours we could hold those two individuals. Because we just didn’t have the total package to support that it was a hoax. So when you heard me coming out saying, “We are treating him like a victim,” that was the truth, because at that time, that’s what he was.

RUSH: So 48 hours, that’s the max you can hold the two conspirators, the guys he hired, the Nigerians, to go out and beat him up. And it was in the last hour of the 48, one hour before they were going to have to release these two clowns that they were able to put the story together. He told that story to let everybody know that there was no prejudicial treatment of Smollett whatsoever. The Chicago PD believed him from the get-go until they didn’t. That’s how close Smollett came here to pulling this off.

I think overall the superintendent deserves kudos for firing back at this the way that he did, without fear of what the media’s gonna say about him, without fear what presidential candidates are gonna say about, he just took ’em all on. He just raked ’em over the coals and basically ridiculed them: media, entertainment people, presidential candidates. You don’t see people willing to stand up to people in public like this much anymore. There’s a lot of cowering, there’s a lot of fear, and especially of media.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Ah, this is funny. CNN’s doing a story on the presidential candidates having to walk back their initial Smollett reactions. CNN, how about you? You know, Brooke Baldwin is the one doing the story here on all these presidential candidates having to walk back the reaction. Hers was over the top! She practically started crying (imitating Baldwin), “I can’t believe this is what’s become of America!” (crying). She’s acting like she never said it! All these clowns in the media are acting like they never had a role in any of this.