BRETT: I am wondering very specifically what we’re going to hear from the president tonight in this joint address to the 200 members of Congress (laughing), because after all, there’s only gonna be 200 members in the House or the Senate plus Chief Justice John Roberts present in the chamber because of covid and security concerns.
I’m wondering what President Biden is going to say about the current state of affairs in America’s cities, and no doubt… I think we’ve crossed the threshold now of the one-week anniversary of the conviction of Derek Chauvin there in Minneapolis, and we continue to see incidents taking place across the country and certainly nights of unrest and destruction of property and all those things that come with folks who are — who I think are — not as interested in protesting to send a message, but rather are more interested in the destruction of property.
And those are people that are not honest brokers when it comes to trying to bring about reform. Reform can be debated and discussed, considered, you name it. But the reality is, as we look out there across the country, we’ve seen, essentially, coming up on a year of rioting. I think we’re 11 months into the rioting. If you go to May 30th, it’s now April the 28th.
I think you’ve seen about a year of rioting take place. Especially in Portland, you’ve actually had just about a solid year of rioting. But I’m wondering what the president’s going to say tonight about that. He’s on the announcement of the conviction of Derek Chauvin referred to America as a systematically racist place. Vice President Harris echoed and extended those remarks as well.
So what is it that this president’s going to say about policing? What’s he going to say about policing and the role of policing in our culture? The difference between a year ago and now is that the police, men and women in law enforcement — “across the fruited plain,” as Rush would say — have witnessed politician after politician turn their back on the men and women on the front lines of policing.
I mean, certainly there is no greater offender than Bill de Blasio there in New York City. I mean, Bill de Blasio was the original guy who was anti-place in a profound way. Now you’ve got an army of district attorneys around the country who are ardently anti-police; high-profile mayors (Lori Lightfoot, Bill de Blasio) and governors (Gavin Newsom, Andrew Cuomo), of course, who are anti-police and anti-policing.
And what’s happening now is the police are starting to vote with their feet. They’re starting to resign their portions. I think retirements are you positive 75% in New York City. And these are experienced men and women of law enforcement. And let me tell you what they’re doing. They’re leaving jurisdictions like New York, California, Chicago, and they’re going to jurisdictions where they will be respected by people who want law and order and law enforcement to be an important component of public safety.
So what will President Biden say about law and order? What will he say about law enforcement? Well, we know what his department of “just us” has been saying. Merrick Garland, the attorney general of the United States has come out and instituted a number of investigations into pattern and practices in police departments. Those things usually lead to, of course, consent decrees — and Rush talked about consent decrees and the federalization of local police.
RUSH: Do you realize how often this is happening all over the country? The vandals, the rioters, the looters, none of them are being prosecuted! Why do you think that is? Well, because at the root of it is Black Lives Matter, and everybody is scared to death of ’em, literally scared to death of ’em, and so it’s just the path of least resistance.
“Okay. We catch somebody looting? We catch a bunch of people looting? No prosecution.” There’s this firm out there that has raised $30 million to bail some of these perps out of jail. Do you know how much they’ve spent? As of yesterday, $200,000. So there’s $29,800,000 hasn’t been spent yet that has been raised on bail for Black Lives Matter and other type perps.
Where, where’s that money? Where’s that money go? I’ll guaran-damn-tee you that money’s going right to the Democrat Party. It’s going right to the presidential campaign. It’s going right to the Democrat National Committee. What do you mean, “Where’s it going?” The only place it can go! All of this talk about these police departments and how racist they are and how bigoted and how out of control they are.
Didn’t Obama and Eric Holder have the Department of Justice take over something like 36 of these police departments under consent decrees? They took over police departments from Oakland to Baltimore — I think they tried in St. Louis, Ferguson, dozens of cities in between — and you know why they did it? These consent decrees are well known.
It was the way Obama wanted to federalize local police forces. He and Holder had this as an objective, “federalizing” mean give the federal government control over as much as possible, including local policing. Thirty-six American police departments were taken over by the federal government. They were demanded. They were told that they had to do certain things, and if they couldn’t, that’s consent decree would apply, and they were given impossible conditions to meet.
And so a number of these police departments — and I’m not kidding: Oakland, Baltimore — ended up under the control of the federal government. So how can there be any police racism or brutality after police departments have been under the enlightened control of the Obama-Holder administration? How does that happen? How is it that places that have been run by the Democrat Party for decades…
How is it that there’s any racism anywhere in these cities, much less just the police department? The Democrat Party promises to end all of that, and they promise to punish all the people responsible for it — us, Conservative Republicans — and yet we don’t have a presence in any of these cities where we have any ability to shape the law or regulations! This is all on the Democrat Party.
And I’ll tell you, I think a lot of these statues coming down and all of this stuff going on is Democrats doing the best to get rid of their symbols of failure. The Democrats are doing everything they can to divert everybody’s attention away from what has been decades of failure — failed promises, failed implementations of policy. ‘Cause virtually everything they’ve been promising, particularly minority communities, hasn’t come to pass.
The minority communities are angrier today than they’ve ever been, after $4 trillion transfer of wealth to the Great Society programs and the War on Poverty, all of those things that LBJ created. Listen to Shelby Steele. He will tell you that the black community, in terms of education, in terms of jobs, in terms of standard of living, they were all doing better — including in Harlem!
They were all doing better before the War on Poverty, before the Great Society. And he will tell you that the Great Society was not and the War on Poverty was not, they were not about actually improving the lives of African-Americans. They were all about improving the political prospects of politicians who supported the legislation. It was the greatest example of “I care” you’ve ever seen.
It had gazillion-dollar price tags to it. It had all kinds of blame. It had all kinds of promises. But as we know now, we can watch the country burn in various blue cities after various blue cities and various blue states, and we can see by the evidence in our eyes that there hasn’t been anything that the Democrat Party has engaged in that has made one person in the minority community they claim to serve happy.
BRETT: One of the hugely important stories when it comes law enforcement — and Rush is exactly right on about this in terms of making people happy. One of the unifying political issues out there is the ability to be safely on the streets, in your city, in your town. That’s just a fact. You know, Rudy Giuliani famously turned around New York City. He gets elected in ’93, gets reelected in 1997.
Do you know that when he was reelected in ’97, he had an approval rating of 70% in New York City, because he had cracked down on quality-of-life crimes and crime. You look at De Blasio. What is De Blasio’s approval? I don’t even know what De Blasio’s approval number is. It’s like negative six or something. He’s completely underwater. White people, black people, men, women, LGBTQ plus, you name it.
People want safe streets. They want to be able to walk on the streets safely. They don’t want criminals running the streets, and you have major cities in the United States of America — Los Angeles up almost 187% in a murder rate this year, and you have these district attorneys that won’t charge criminals.
You have, of course, these police officers desperate to trying to be allowed to enforce the law now being told, “We have to defund! We have to abolish!” I’m broadcasting today from Charlotte, North Carolina. We have a politician on the city council who is saying it’s time to get rid of armed police including the SWAT team because you can just talk it out with people.
What happens when that doesn’t work?
Who do you then call in?
Who do you call when the last police officer has walked off the job in a town or in a city — or a sheriff walks out in a county? Who do you turn to for assistance? Who are you going to call when God forbid there’s an incident at a school or a hotel or a park or some mass-gathering event? Who do you call to save the situation? Who do you call to stop an act of terrorism? These are the questions the progressives do not want to answer, ’cause it’s easier to cast blame than to offer solutions.