Friday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh said the mainstream media was now turning on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the same manner they went after 2008 Republican Party vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Partial transcript as follows:
LIMBAUGH: Yes, my friends, it’s an interesting… (laughing) Take a look. I’m telling you as I was telling Mr. Snerdley this morning, “The media has gone all Palin on Trump now. They’ve gone all Palin.” Folks, there’s no doubt what is going on. The media is trying to take Donald Trump out. And I’ve told this story a number of times. Please indulge me as I tell it one more time, because there are new listeners, not just every day, there are new listeners every half hour on this program. We have the data to document that.
Back in 2008, I got conned into hosting a dinner party at my house, and there were some people there that I had not met before. But I had it on good authority that they were okay. So they showed up, and everything was fine — until we began to discuss the campaign. And two of the guests at the dinner suggested that it was time to throw Sarah Palin overboard. They claimed to be Republicans, and they were going to vote for McCain. But it was time to get rid of Palin. It might have been before… No, she had been chosen. She was the VP nominee.
Their point was, “Rush, you’re wasting your time trying to save her. The media has destroyed her. There’s no saving her. She’s done!” I said, “What? You mean we have to come up with nominees that the media approves and won’t destroy, and that’s the only hope we’ve got?” And one of these two guys said, “Well, essentially, yeah! If they can take anybody we nominate out, what good are they?” So I said, “At what point do you think it might be necessary to step in and start defending these people against these slanderous and libelous attacks?”
He said, “It’s pointless. If the media wants to take you out, they’re going to take you out. So we’ve got to move on. Besides, Rush, she’s an idiot anyway to let this happen.” They went on and on. So I got so mad, I walked out of my own dinner party. I think I had to fly out… Where was I going? I might have been flying to California for a golf trip. I forget which. But I left early, stormed out of there. Kathryn followed me out on the front porch, driveway, shaking. (laughing) Couldn’t believe what had just happened: I was leaving my own dinner party.
I’m telling you, I wonder how long it’s going to be… Well, it’s already happening, even before today. But we do have a number of Republicans — Meg Whitman being the most famous and noteworthy recently — who are suggesting not only is it time to throw Trump overboard and get rid of Trump, it’s time to sidle up to Hillary Clinton. But I’m telling you, there seem to be so many people on our side that are deeply affected by what the media does.
They still believe that the only way we can ever win is to have a nominee or a candidate for whatever election is up that the media doesn’t destroy. And, of course, I said, “Well, then if you get that kind of nominee that the media doesn’t want to destroy, they’re really not going to be that good.” Here’s an example: We have what is no doubt a hostage payment in violation of American policy, foreign policy, FBI policy. You name it. You don’t pay ransom! You just don’t do it. We did.
Obama’s denying it. He said (summarized), “There was nothing nefarious about this deal.” There wasn’t? There wasn’t anything nefarious? So the Iranians want $400 million; they have four or five of our sailors. They tell us they’ll release them when we pay up. But we can’t use US dollars because of sanctions — meaning to do this, we have to break the law, if we can’t use US dollars. So Obama then goes and arranges somehow to get $400 million from somewhere. Now, normally maybe there’s a… What do you call it? What do businesses call…? The petty cash drawer.
Maybe there’s a petty cash drawer in the White House that’s got a couple of billion in there, and Obama can use it in a discretionary way. (interruption) Yeah, “Obama stash.” Anyway, he comes up with $400 million, and then it’s in foreign currency. Some of it is Swiss Francs. Some of it is in Euros. I forget what other denominations or what other currencies are used, but it totals $400 million. We put it on a pallet. We put it on a plane. We fly the plane over there. The plane lands under cover of darkness.
The hostages are on the tarmac awaiting the arrival of that airplane and that cash before the Iranians will release them. One of the hostages was told, “You can’t leave here until that plane arrives.” The hostage says, “What plane?” “Never you mind,” the Iranians say. “But there’s a plane coming, it’s got some stuff on it, and until it gets here and until we offload the stuff on it, you can’t leave.” Well, the plane lands; they offload the pallet of $400 million, again under cover of darkness — and again, nobody knew it at the time.
You would think a prisoner-release program like this would be something that the Regime would be bragging about, as in, “Look at what we did! We got our hostages back! We got our hostages back and nobody died!” Yeah, and then people started saying, “It’s a ransom payment.” “No, no, no! It’s not ransom. In fact, it’s an advanced payment. We have a lot of deals going with Iran. In fact,” Josh Ernest, White House Press Secretary, said (paraphrased), “this is actually brilliant on Obama’s part. You know why? Because this could have been much more.
“This was an advanced payment for Iran on some of their infrastructure rebuilding.” I said, “You mean like the stimulus package that we had of close to a trillion dollars back in 2009 for the exact same reason? Rebuild our roads. Rebuild our bridges. Rebuild our schools. The fact is that none of that stimulus money went to any of those. Isn’t it amazing how often “infrastructure” is used to justify the expenditure of a lot of money that otherwise wouldn’t make any sense?
In this case, it happened to be Iranian infrastructure: Roads, bridges, schools, and so forth. Well, in the midst of all of this, Donald Trump claimed that he saw video of the cash on the pallet being unloaded. Now, we know that it happened. We know the cash arrived. We know the cash arrived under cover of darkness. We know that the Iranians accepted it. We know the Iranians called it “ransom”! We know we paid it. The White House is admitting we paid it. They’re just saying, “It wasn’t ransom.”
So we know an airplane with $400 million in cash currency landed in Iran, that that pallet was offloaded and given to the ayatollahs. We know that that happened! Trump says he saw a video of it. Turns out, he was mistaken. He saw a video of something on Fox News but it wasn’t this. What is the news today? What is the news? In the Drive-By Media, what is big story today? It is that Donald Trump lied about seeing a video of $400 million being paid as ransom to the Iranians for the release of hostages.
Trump tweeted it out. He’s since… I don’t know if he’s apologized or he’s admitted that he saw something else. He was mistaken in what he saw on Fox News. But regardless, we know that it happened. The big story of the day is Donald Trump mistaking a video on Fox News as the Obama plane delivering Obama’s $400 million in hard currency ransom. The big story is not Obama paying ransom for hostages, because the big story is Donald Trump mistakenly saying he saw a video.
The big story is not even Obama denying that it was ransom, even though it was. The big story is not Hillary and John Kerry and the press secretary all lying about it. They’ve all said, “It wasn’t ransom!” They’ve all said, “There’s nothing to see here.” They’ve all said, “It wasn’t nefarious.” But that wasn’t the big story. The big story is that Trump tweeted out that he actually saw a video of this happening. The big story is not that one of the hostages says that their plane didn’t take off until after the money plane had landed.
I mean, the hostage has reported that they were on a tarmac, they were ready to leave, and the Iranian strongmen said, “You can’t leave until the plane arrives.” “Why?” “Well, you just can’t. There’s a plane coming in here for us. It has something on it. And until we get that something off of it for us, you can’t leave.” That’s not the big story. The big story is Donald Trump saying he saw a video of all of this happening.
The big story is not Barack Obama using the plural “payments” at the Pentagon yesterday. What, payments? This was not ransom, but it was part of payments? Payments for what? Did Congress authorize these payments? Is this the $1.7 billion in total, and is this part of or in addition to the $150 billion that we have unfrozen for them? Regardless, that’s not the story. The big story is that Donald Trump claims to have seen a video of what we know happened.
The big story is not asking where Obama got the $400 million. The big story is not asking how Obama laundered the $400 million and turned it into Swiss and Euro currency. There seems to be no interest in any of that. The big story is that Donald Trump mistakenly saw a video of all of this happening. The big story is not that anybody else who found a way to launder money and use it this way, would have already been charged with something and maybe in jail. No, no, no! Of course not. That’s not the story. Don’t be ridiculous.
The big story is Donald Trump says he saw a video. By the way, I thought videos were the magical answer to everything. Videos explain what happened in Benghazi. Trump said he saw a video. Now the press insisted on saying, “There wasn’t a video! What’s he talking about?” In this case, there wasn’t a video, and Trump is an idiot for lying about it. Well, there wasn’t a video that caused whatever happened in Benghazi. There wasn’t a video that caused that. But the media didn’t care about that! They went along for the ride. “There was a video!”
The big story is not what every single American on foreign soil is now at risk for kidnapping because the Obama regime has paid ransom. That’s not a story. It’s not a factor. We’re not even warning anybody, “Be careful, you could be next,” because the big story is that Donald Trump said he saw a video of this all happening. We know it happened. And the big story is not the video on YouTube done by Iran to brag of the payment! There is a video. The Iranians have the video on YouTube bragging about the ransom they collected.
Trump, mistaking the video. That’s the big story of today and is offered as further evidence of why Trump is unfit to be president.
(h/t RushLimbaugh.com)
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