RUSH: Sherrod Brown kind of took my name in vain on the Senate floor, moderately so after Senator Grassley talked about the New York Times reaction to Tom Cotton’s op-ed.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look at this. Breaking news from Reuters: “Facebook Has Removed Posts and Ads from the Trump Campaign for Violating Their Rules Against Organized Hate.” The Trump campaign, according to Facebook, is engaged in “organized hate,” and they have removed posts and ads from the Trump campaign. Now, you and I all know that the organized hate comes right out of the Democrat Party.
You and I know the Democrat Party is the largest hate group in America today. It’s not even close. The idea that there is hate on our side, it’s as pervasive as the word “conservative” is, and they’ve come to mean the same thing, among other people. It’s a branding problem. So whatever we end up calling these people they do this, it can’t be “conservative” anything.
It’s gonna be a big deal to get people to drop it because some people think “conservative” is crucially necessary to anything that they’re trying to do.
Anyway, I mentioned this audio sound bite. This from the floor of the U.S. Senate. After Senator Grassley from Iowa went to the floor of the Senate to speak about free speech being stifled by the New York Times and other news media over what happened in the New York Times newsroom after Tom Cotton’s op-ed was published…
We didn’t talk about that here because, frankly, the New York Times doesn’t exist, as far as I’m concerned. I know they do, but I think they… (sigh) I just hate ’em. I hate talking about ’em. I don’t want to spend any time on ’em. They’re the epitome of the problem, and I resent that they have come to acquire as much power as they have, but they have.
They shape the entire agenda of the American so-called news media. So they accept an op-ed from Tom Cotton. Tom Cotton, the senator from Arkansas, Republican, writes an op-ed encouraging the use of federal troops to quell riots and looting. And they run it. And it causes a meltdown among the Millennial-aged staffers at the New York Times.
They literally started behaving like little kids. The op-ed page editor, a guy named James Bennet, was fired (they said he resigned), and then they ran days of apologies and explanations of how it happened and how their process fell apart and how it will never happen again and how this kind of thing is an embarrassment to us at the Times — and it was a perfectly fine op-ed.
It was simply a differing point of view over one premise: Using federal troops to quell violence and restore order amongst these riots and lootings. It’s happened before, and Cotton was encouraging it and supporting it. And the New York Times literally melted down. It was the most eye-opening for people that are still on the fence about media.
It was the most illustrative way to explain what’s wrong with media that I’ve seen in a long time. This guy, James Bennet, I mean, he must have resigned five or six times, apologized 10 or 12 times. He said he’ll never do it again. Even in the afterlife, he won’t do it! He’ll never make this mistake. (impression) “I’m so sorry I did it! (sobbing) It’s a terrible mistake. I… Nobody but me did it.
“It wasn’t the editors at the Times. The whole system broke down. It was all my fault!” It was the most embarrassing thing. It was like… I don’t know what it was like. I’ve never seen anything like it before. So, anyway, Chuck Grassley is talking about all of this on the floor of the United States Senate, and when he finishes, Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio…
BROWN: Senator Grassley, going to the floor and talking about the media that way, when his majority — they owe their majority to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, and they swear allegiance to a president of the United States who has lied thousands of times, and then attacks the media every time they disagree with him or call him out, attacks the media as fake news — is just… just shocking to me.
RUSH: It’s shocking? It’s shocking they would dare be critical? The New York Times does indeed not believe in free speech. That is the one thing to learn, the one thing to know, if you value free speech at all. The modern Millennial generation doesn’t give a rat’s rear end about it, folks. They do not believe in it. They don’t believe in your right to free speech.
They don’t believe anybody has the right to say anything that offends them. They don’t. I mean, it’s abundantly clear. There are a lot of universally accepted freedoms and liberties and norms in the U.S. Constitution that are not gonna survive if these people continue to dominate and acquire more and more power. Mark my words.