TODD: You know about the tremendous tragedy in Columbus, Ohio, of a young woman who lost her life and the other tragedy of a police officer who had a decision to make. There are two young women, and one of those young women is in what I would regard as a disordered state and is not able to control herself and is attempting to stick a knife into the guts of another young woman — which, as a lot of ER physicians will tell you, is worse than a gunshot wound in terms of trying to fix it up.
And a police officer arrives, and this is the choice the police officer has to make: “Do I end a life to protect a life and maybe more lives?” If a person’s in a state of mind, in a disordered state mentally, that they’re willing to take a life, does it stop there? It almost certainly doesn’t. Let’s count together. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. How many feet in distance can you close coming at someone with a knife in that period of time?
Here’s the imagination game. Imagine the white officer, upon arrival at the scene with two young women who happen to be black, decides to not engage, and one young woman in this disordered — heightened, we would say — state emotionally, succeeds in gutting the other young black woman. What would be the response of, let’s say, LeBron James?
Because LeBron James has tweeted out a picture of the police officer who in fact had that decision to make, and he made the decision to use his firearm. The tragedy, of course, is that a young woman will not have a chance to reorder her thinking, and it is my fervent prayer that she was right with God, the ultimate giver of order. But let’s extend this just a little bit further.
When was the last time you really needed something and couldn’t find it, just something like your car keys? Do you remember that feeling of “I cannot find my car keys”? Now, take that to, “I cannot find a cop and I’m in danger,” because this is where people like LeBron James are — he’s a victim, in my mind, of CNN — are leading us. So for all the Twitter blue checks and pampered, China-owned NBA princesses of poof, Michael Woods, interim police chief in Columbus, explains the horrible, traumatic decision officers are sometimes forced to make.
WOODS: When officers are faced with someone employing deadly force, deadly force can be the response the officer gives. If there’s not deadly force being perpetrated on someone else at that time, an officer may have the opportunity to have cover, distance, and time to use a Taser. But if those things aren’t present and there is an active assault going on in which someone could lose life, the officer can use their firearm to protect that third person.
TODD: A friend of mine who’s a cop teaches self-defense and in-combat training. And it used to be that they would have public officials come and try this out so that they could stand in the shoes of cops to see what that is like, and what my friend told me is almost invariably, the public officials would make the wrong decision.
Their shoots would be the bad shoots, particularly if you employ pain — particularly if you are shooting, let’s say, paint balls, if you make a mistake and you get hit and it hurts. To protect themselves from a paint ball, they would take someone down virtually that would make it a bad shoot. You know what? Public officials no longer do that training because, I think, it’s very painful to realize you’re in the business of criminalizing or demonizing cops.
And you know, you just learned, you can’t do the job. LeBron James has enormous physical skill. I don’t know a thing about the man’s intellect. I have never heard him speak. I’ve only seen his tweets, so I don’t want to be unfair. But when you tweet, “You’re next” about a cop who was faced with a decision: Do I let this young black woman kill this other young black woman?
And the race only matters because we live in America, and the country is being divided by race. That’s the decision this cop faced who happens to be white. There’s no hint of him having any form of racism. “You’re next.” This is an NBA player.
How is this possible — given the fact that we have now in the White House ensconced behind a militarized fence with people with guns guarding him — Joe Biden? Joe Biden and now his dementia have been in government forever, and if systemic racism is a real thing, Biden’s a major reason for systemic racism. Listen. Here he is bragging about his accomplishments.
BIDEN: The truth is, every major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress — every minor crime bill — has had the name of the Democratic senator from the state of Delaware, Joe Biden, on that bill and has had a majority vote of the Democratic members of the United States Senate on the bill.
TODD: So that’s Joe Biden back in the day. LeBron James, is Joe Biden next? Systemic racism. Rush had an operating procedure for dealing with victims of CNN, like, for instance, LeBron James.
CALLER: So LeBron James was on TV this morning said he was gonna use his platform to speak out further about these issues. And of course, he’s been a big proponent for Black Lives Matter. So I’m suggesting as a possible solution to use your platform, to challenge LeBron James to lead the way. Sell his mansion in Brentwood, move his family to his old neighborhood in Cleveland. Build a home there, move there, invest in his neighborhood, invest in businesses to create jobs, invest in low-income housing, even offer free housing.
Maybe invest in some schools. Put his children in school in his old neighborhood, –and he recently became married as well. So set an example and give back to his community and then lead the way and then encourage other athletes to do the same. Put money back into their own neighborhoods. They make this money, but he’s spending his money in Brentwood these days.
RUSH: Well. (sigh) This is something that I have always avoided for professional and programming purposes. I do not engage in personal feuds or challenges or causes like cutting up your credit cards and sending ’em to Exxon. I don’t know that LeBron James doesn’t spend some of his money on his neighborhood in Ohio.
I don’t know. I’m not gonna assume that he doesn’t just ’cause he lives in Brentwood. And to challenge LeBron James to do something is just not my style. I don’t think it’s effective. It might make a great media show, but it’s not the way I choose to go about these kinds of things. I don’t look at LeBron James as somebody’s mind I can change. I’m not gonna change LeBron James’ mind.
Like Scalia told me once, he’s not gonna change Stephen Breyer’s mind on anything. He doesn’t even try, and I wouldn’t waste my time trying. But the same people who to listen LeBron James might listen to me or vice-versa. He’s now put himself in the arena of ideas, which is where I live every day. He’s gone from the basketball court to the arena of ideas.
And so I just choose to deal with this in a different way. My target has always been what I call the audience, the people, the population. I don’t waste my time challenging Algore or Tom Steyer or Leonardo DiCaprio or any of these people because they’re in showbiz, and half (if not more) of what they’re doing is showbiz. They really don’t know what they’re talking about anyway half the time.
That’s why I don’t engage these people doing emotional things, ’cause it’s a total waste of time. All that’s gonna happen is that you upset the very delicate emotional place they created for themselves, where they think they’re doing God’s work. They think they’re doing the Lord’s work. They think they’re mattering. They think they’re making a difference.
And I come along and point out that a hashtag (Snort!) is probably about as effective as not saying anything, and they can’t handle it. I became public enemy number one for about five days, maybe five hours, which I don’t care. It didn’t bother me. Don’t misunderstand. But it doesn’t accomplish anything except a media show, and I just have never rolled that way.
TODD: So that was Rush’s modus operandi in dealing (or not dealing) with people like LeBron James. Remember the imagination scenario that we engaged in at the top of this hour? We talked about you can’t find your car keys. What if the neighborhood couldn’t have found a cop when one young woman was intending to kill another young woman with a knife?
What if they couldn’t find a cop? Hey, LeBron? I won’t speak to you ’cause I am a student of EIB, but I’ll speak to people who follow LeBron. If LeBron James continues to threaten cops, you won’t be able to find one when you need one — and if you think not finding your car keys is bad.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
TODD: Let’s talk to Jason in Odessa, Texas. Jason, we’ve got about a minute and a half together. I’m so glad you’re on Rush’s show. Welcome.
CALLER: Hello, Todd. I’ve been a listener of Rush since ’88, since the very beginning. I raised two Rush Babies, and I’m so thankful for him teaching us all how to interpret what liberals are actually thinking. And, you know, I just would like to bounce off of what I challenge my children to do and say that I would challenge LeBron James in his ignorance to do the same thing and that’s go find your own sources of media.
Go find your own sources of facts. I feel like he’s a victim just as much as the rest of us as are — or a lot of us — the present audience of Rush Limbaugh excluded, because we are the most informed audience in America. I would just… You know, obviously we don’t need to educate our audience on where to go get your facts. But I would like to encourage people in the audience to encourage people that they know, go get your facts from somewhere else. Go get your sources from somewhere else. Make an informed decision.
TODD: Or try this, LeBron James. Go pick out a couple of cops who are black. Get couple black cops, do a ride-along. But make it in somewhere where you’re gonna see action, because when you’re in the business of flopping for a living — and look, I know that he is an unspeakably gifted athlete. That’s clear. I don’t know a thing about his intellect. I don’t know.
What I do know is that judgment call he made about that cop was obscene. Glad he deleted it. Take it as an opportunity what we’re all to do, right? We’re all to go out and experience the other. LeBron, it’s not that hard. I think you live in Ohio. Now, did he move to LA? I forgot. Ride along with some black cops. ‘Cause mind you this: If that young woman who was attempting to stab the other young woman had been shot by a black cop, do you think it would have even made the news? I don’t.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
TODD: Brian in Augusta, Georgia, you’re on the Rush Limbaugh program. Todd Herman, your guide host this week. Welcome.
CALLER: Thank you. Glad I was able to get through. Can you hear me okay?
TODD: You’re coming in loud and clear. I love it.
CALLER: Well, here. Just two quick comments on that. One, I’m not sure how Mr. James has become the go-to person civil rights.
TODD: Ha!
CALLER: He’s accomplished at basketball, a great player. Great shooting threes. But I’m trying to figure how that transition happened.
TODD: Yeah.
CALLER: Do you remember one time, he and president were having a riff, and he was speaking on behalf of that. And he made a comment that anybody who voted for the past president was stupid or wasn’t quite smart. Do you remember that?
TODD: Yes. I do remember hearing about that. I don’t know much about LeBron James myself, but I do remember that.
CALLER: Okay.
TODD: So maybe that was when he became a civil rights leader.
CALLER: Well, here’s the deal. He was with the Cleveland Cavaliers at the time. Okay? And if you look this up, the Cleveland… I found it very ironic, because at the time he was making the statement, the Cleveland Cavaliers owner is a major Trump supporter. And Mr. James was on TV exploiting that if you were a Trump voter that you were less than smart or whatever the case was. And I’m like, “Hmm. But you’re not less than smart for playing for him? You’re playing on this guy’s team!”
TODD: (laughing)
CALLER: I mean, that’s the irony. And, you know, you remember Donald Sterling, the previous owner of the Clippers?
TODD: Yes.
CALLER: This is one of my few other points and I won’t go on. I know you’re short on time. It’s very demanding. Well, at the time, remember they intercepted his phone call on his private phone or whatever —
TODD: Yes.
CALLER: — and everybody was so appalled and I’m like, “Have these folks ever been inside of a locker room?”
TODD: Ha! Ha! Ha!
CALLER: Do you remember Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, Doc Rivers? He was the Koch, Doc Rivers was; Blake Griffin was the forward. At the time — please look this up — Blake Griffin was amongst the 10 highest paid people at his position under Donald Sterling. Chris Paul was in the top 10 highest paid point guards under Donald Sterling. Doc Rivers was the second highest paid coach in the league, only behind Gregg Popovich, the Pop, from the Spurs.
TODD: Yeah.
CALLER: If that is being racist, let me go work for that man!
TODD: (laughing and clapping) Oh!
CALLER: Let me go work for him. That’s it.
TODD: I love it.
CALLER: I want to say, if I may add to this, I happen to be a black male. I don’t go with things like this. If I make a mistake I’m accountable for my actions, period. Point made.
TODD: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: I’m a veteran. The lady’s call was so inspirational because you’re gonna see a rising of that. People like her have seen some things. Yes, they saw blatant racist, and she was speaking from her heart, and I was just eating it up. I’m gonna try to record that or whatever I can —
TODD: (laughing)
CALLER: — because I want people to hear that. She was just speaking from the heart. This lady was saying some things. She’s 80-years-old, you can imagine she saw blatant racism. You know it.
TODD: Oh, yes, she did. Yes, she did. And, by the way, I don’t want to give away her age too loudly, but I believe she’s 88. Her name is Joyce in Houston, Texas, district 6 I think she said she’s from — or, no, sixth most dangerous area of the country in that Houston area. Yeah, listen. That’s a reason to be a Rush 24/7 member right there, Brian. Terrific phone call. I really thank you for taking the time to wait and chat with us today. Thank you, Brian.