https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/04/12/united-airlines-story-dominates-the-news/You Don’t Know What You Think You Know About the United Airlines Story
Apr 12, 2017
RUSH: So United Airlines. The CEO has now come out and apologized again and said after he watched the video he was outraged, found it reprehensible, all of that.
Oscar Munoz, President and CEO of United Airlines.
Mr. Snerdley just walked in, and he was upset over something Governor Christie said. Governor Christie’s the governor of New Jersey, and Governor Christie has lambasted United for doing what they did simply to make money. “Come on, Governor. That’s what the liberals always say when they go out and bash a corporation. That’s not the way to bash this.” Snerdley came in; he thinks Christie was being a hypocrite because United makes New Jersey a lot of money flying into Newark. And, of course, the state of New Jersey does everything they do to get money like every other government entity does.
They never do with a dime less than what they have every year. So I looked at Snerdley and I said, “You know what? We’re kind of getting sidetracked on this United story.” When you look at this — when you look at really what was involved here — they had four crew members that were in Chicago that they needed to get to Louisville for a flight out of Louisville the next morning. And for that reason they bumped four people off the plane and beat up one of them who refused to go and snuck back on.
Now, I looked into it and there are any number of ways to get those four employees to Louisville. They could have chartered a small jet. They could have driven them. They could have found a bus. They could have rented a bus. They could have put ’em on a train. They could have done any number of things instead of what they did. And here’s another thing. Now, I realize that the more we’ve learned about this guy, Dr. David Dao, I mean, he is an intriguing figure. The guy is a doctor. He lost his medical license.
He was getting gay guys hooked on OxyContin to keep them coming back to him, where he would hold them up for gay sex. (So goes the story.) When he lost his medical license, he joined the professional poker circuit and earned about a quarter of a million dollars doing that. Look, folks, it’s fun, and it’s interesting. But do you realize none of that justifies what happened to the guy? Okay, so he’s a kook. So he’s strange. It doesn’t justify what happened to the guy. I’m not suggesting that United is behind this.
But, look, there are some people that want to mitigate what happened by pointing out this guy’s oddities or his frailties. Here’s what United needs to do. To solve the problem going forward, here’s what United needs to. Right now when you go buy a ticket to United or any airline, it’s a contract. By the way, this guy met the terms of the deal. There was a seat on the plane offered for sale. He bought it, he paid for it, and he got on the plane. How many of you people have been bumped from a flight after you’ve been seated?
They usually bump you in the gate area before anybody’s been seated. So that was a little odd. But the guy met the terms of the, quote-unquote, “contract.” He purchased the ticket and he paid the price and for that he got a seat on the airplane — and then they come and they threw him off. What United needs to do is rewrite the contract. What do they call it? Nobody reads the fine print. Make this plain as day. Here’s the new deal with United Airlines if you decide to fly with them:
You agree to pay the price for the seat on the airplane, and you get on the airplane realizing that you might be asked to vacate that seat — and if you don’t, you could get beat up. Then if you buy the ticket, and that happens to you, then you have no recourse because you have signed a contract acknowledging you could get beat up if they try to throw you off the plane and you refuse to go. That’s how this could be solved in the future if United doesn’t want to change the policy. (chuckling) Man, this is boomeranging now.
The ChiCom Parliament has taken this up, because United,, I guess wants to expand its service in China. And this guy… (interruption) What is he? (interruption) Vietnamese, but he wasn’t born there? (interruption) Was he born in Vietnam to Chinese parents or what is it? There is a… (interruption) There is a Chinese link to the guy and a Vietnamese link as well.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Joe in Bridgeton, New Jersey, as we kick it off. Joe, thank you for calling. Great to have you here. What’s up?
CALLER: Wow, Rush. It’s an honor. You’re the best teacher ever. Rush, my question was this.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: What made ’em pick that fellow? Did he draw the short straw out in the lobby, or do you think they had information, did they look up his information?
RUSH: I don’t have any idea. You know, it’s a good question. All we’ve been told — unless there’s something — I’ve gotta tell you, to be very honest with you, I have not immersed myself in the deep down details of this story. I know that there were four people chosen at random. I don’t know what “random” means —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — with United Airlines. I don’t know if they picked numbers out of a hat, if they went to a seating chart, put their fingers on seat numbers. I don’t know if they have passenger names when they did this, I have no idea. (interruption) You do know how they picked ’em?
CALLER: No, no, but that’s what concerns me. You know, were they doing a background check —
RUSH: It was a random computer. I’ve just been told, Joe, that it was a random computer. There were no humans involved in choosing the four passengers to be thrown off and beat up.
CALLER: There we go. Okay. Very good. I guess that’s good news.
RUSH: What were you thinking happened?
CALLER: I was thinking they might have — not that this is a bad thing in certain circumstances, but I think they might have profiled and said, “This guy, he might be shaky on a flight. If somebody’s gotta go, let’s get him.”
RUSH: Well, let me tell you, the guy would have been shaky on the flight. That’s one thing that was uncovered here. Normally this kind of thing, the procedure for bumping people off flights happens before everybody boards. It happens in the gate area. Once they put you on the plane — I’ve been asking people if they’ve ever been bumped or seen anybody bumped after everybody’s been seated, after the plane’s been boarded, and I haven’t found anybody yet who can remember that happening, either to them or having witnessed it on a plane they were flying.
So that’s number one. This story has multiple levels of mystery and intrigue. Like how did the guy get beat up? When he snuck back on the plane he was already bloodied up. And then he got even further bloodied up when they dragged him out after he had snuck back in there. They dragged him out, and parts of his I guess face were banging off the legs of the seats as they dragged him out of there.
As I say, United needs to change the fine print on the tickets, the contract, to include the fact that if they randomly seek to oust you from a plane after you’ve been seated, that you could get beat up if you refuse to leave. And if that happens and if you bought the ticket under those protections, then you have no course of action. This guy’s got two sets of lawyers now.
Folks, he’s lawyered up like you can’t believe, understandably. This is gonna be a huge settlement. It’s not gonna ever go to trial. They don’t want this becoming a class — They don’t want people coming out of the woodwork, “Oh, yeah, you know what happened to me back in 1999? I was on a United flight…” They don’t want any of that. In fact, I’m surprised some ambulance chaser lawyer hasn’t found a bunch of people to whom United beat up or claims that United beat up or claims that United beat up.
Something like this, I mean, it just starts boomeranging, the plaintiff’s bar goes nuts. I mean, this could be approaching the tobacco settlement if they’re not careful. But this guy’s got two sets of lawyers, he’s lawyered up. And I’m telling you this, too. What we’ve learned about this guy — and it should not matter. This is the thing, some people, “They chose the right guy. Look at this reprobate. If they’re gonna kick somebody off the plane, pick him.”
Folks, that doesn’t matter. Nothing this guy did justified him being treated this way. He paid the price. He completed the deal. He got on the plane. They let him on the plane. Okay, so he gives OxyContin to gay guys to hook them on the drug to keep them coming back to him for gay sex. Now, you laugh. They’re in there laughing. I’m telling you, in our culture today, this guy is gonna be fascinating. There’s going to be movies written about this guy. Movies made.
This is the kind of character that not even writers could come up with. Real life out doing fiction each and every time. And that’s just one aspect of the guy. He lost his medical license, yet he had to get on that plane to go treats patients the next day who were waiting. How’d he get his medical license back with everything else we know? There’s enough cultural degradation that people like this are gigantic curiosity figures and will automatically gain a lot of public sentiment and support ’cause of what happened to the guy.
In other words, what kind of behavior that we do not know that we would have to learn about this guy before people would think, “You know what, this guy deserved to get beat up”? And I’m gonna tell you, that’s a high bar. (interruption) Okay. All right. Okay. Snerdley is offering — okay. If it’s learned that the guy is cruel to animals, he’s gonna lose some sympathy, true. If he has, like, punched his wife and dragged her out of an elevator in a New Jersey casino, that might cause him some problems.
If they find out he’s pro-choice, he might lose some sympathy. If they find out that he was at one time an illegal immigrant, that might redound to his favor. I mean, there’s any number, the way our culture is and the way people go about examining the worth of individuals. And you know as well as I do that much of it is based on how much victimization have they suffered, how much suffering have they endured at the hands of evil majorities.
So we’re just at the beginning of this story. I wish I had time to get this next call in, but I don’t. We’ve got a guy from Durham, North Carolina, wants to talk about Spicer and his comments. He’s agreeing with me that everybody knew what Spicer was saying or was trying to say.
But I have to take a break. The next segment I’m gonna get into some of these Trump sound bites, interview with Maria Bartiromo because it’s all about his agenda, how he’s gonna go about getting health care passed, tax reform passed, how he’s working with Congress. You’ll I think be interested if you didn’t see it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I got a little suggestion for the people, crisis PR operation, at United Airlines. Find out if this guy voted for Trump. If Dr. David Dao voted for Trump, you might, you might have an avenue here to mitigate some of what happened.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’m gonna tell you what I honestly think about this. Not that I’ve withheld anything. I’m not gonna make a specific prediction, but I’m gonna wager here that we don’t know the half of it yet. I’m gonna wager that we’re gonna learn some things in time that are gonna cause everybody to rethink what they think they know happened on that airplane and in that terminal.
I say this because it always happens. I say this because I know how the media works. I say this because I know how stories are created, how they are amplified, how they are updated and so forth. There are certain things about this guy that are known that are not being factored in. Like this guy has a history of exploiting situations in which he finds himself. I’m not gonna make any specific predictions, but I want you to remember that on this day, April 12th, I make the prediction that what we think we know about this, what everybody is slam dunk certain of, is not going to be what really happened when we find out everything. You just wait.
This is so typical of the way things get reported in our media today. You have all the ingredients. You have Big Corporation automatically a suspect in the eyes of the left and the media. You have an innocent passenger who happens to be of minority persuasion. The ingredients are all there. And I’m not, as I say, going to hazard specificity, but I’m just gonna tell you that when this — and I don’t know how long it’s gonna take, but the day is going to come where there’s gonna be a bunch of revelations that you’ll go, “No kidding! I would have never guessed that.”
You just wait. What you think you know about this right now is not going to hold up. There’s a bunch of stuff that is yet to be learned or maybe it has been learned but it isn’t being reported.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And back to the phones we go. Arthur in Somerville, New Jersey. Great to have you, sir.
CALLER: Yes, good afternoon, Rush. Regarding the United incident, suppose the pilot had gotten on the microphone and said that because of a passenger not willing to get off the plane, we’re all going to be delayed three hours. What do you think the reaction —
RUSH: Oh, I think the passengers would have beat the guy up.
CALLER: Oh, okay. Right. In other words, what are you supposed to do? In the future now, if somebody doesn’t want to get off the plane, what are you supposed to do, say, “I’m sorry, everybody go home”?
RUSH: What do you mean, the crew?
CALLER: No. Suppose another incident occurs where a passenger for whatever reason doesn’t want to get off the plane. What happens? Does everything just stop? Or do they get the person off the plane? What, do they shoot ’em? How do they get ’em off the plane?
RUSH: I’m not sure what you’re asking. Are you suggesting that what United should do in the future is if somebody refuses to get off the plane that they’re just not gonna do the flight, just announce the flight’s canceled?
CALLER: What do they do if the person doesn’t want to get off?
RUSH: They call the cops. The airline can’t arrest anybody. They have to call the cops.
CALLER: Right, exactly, they have to call the cops to get the guy off. So what happens, you know, in the meantime, everybody’s delayed.
RUSH: Exactly.
CALLER: How do you think the people are gonna react to that? As you said, if they had made that announcement, the passengers themselves would have hit the guy over the head with a bat and thrown him off the plane.
RUSH: It’s possible. If the captain says, “Ladies and gentlemen, there’s an unruly passenger,” and then name the seat number, “who refuses to deplane and until he deplanes, we can’t push back. And until the passenger is off the airplane, we can’t move.” So yeah, the passengers at some point would take matters in their own hands and turn against the guy. Well, they have to call the cops. The CEO may say they’re not gonna call the cops, but if they need to arrest somebody, they can’t. Only the cops can. That’s another little factor here.
Folks, I’m just telling you, I don’t know what it is, but there’s a whole bunch of this that we don’t know yet, and when we find out what we don’t know, the entire complexion of this story’s gonna change. You wait. It always happens. We’re talking about the media here, for crying out loud.
Now, I’ve also been looking into the bump procedure. We have said earlier on the program today that it’s computer random. I’ve been thinking about. If it’s a computer, it isn’t random. They know, for example, who their best customers are. They know who their gold card or whatever, members of their little flight club are. They know, for example, if somebody on the flight has a connector to an international flight. They’re not gonna bump those people, I guarantee you. They’re not gonna bump people that buy first class or business class frequently, even though this airplane didn’t have those. This was a puddle jumper jet.
But they know who their customers are. (interruption) A mom and two kids, right, they’re not gonna bump one of the kids. They might bump mom, but — (laughing) — not gonna bump one of the kids. So when they say it’s random, it’s random, but. They know who their best customers are. They know if they got a first time flier. They know if they have somebody that doesn’t usually fly United on there. They know who would be the least damage in making mad.
So they’re not gonna make a great, constantly good paying customer mad. They’re not gonna throw an international traveler off if he’s got a connection. Now, granted, you’re not gonna fly international out of Louisville, but I’m just saying, they know who’s on the plane, and they know what their customer level is. So saying it’s random computer generated is not a cop-out, but it’s a way of claiming that there’s no human bias involved in who gets chosen.
Do you think that the airline and every passenger manifest, do you think that the passenger manifest contains such things as “This passenger has a history of trouble making on board?” Well, I don’t know if they’ve got it. I’m sure there are experts out there that, “Oh, yeah, Rush, I’ve been thrown off and they told me that they had evidence that I was gonna create trouble up there.” I don’t know how much is known. But, again — (interruption) If whoever finds out? Oh. Oh, the public won’t care about that. If the public’s gonna get concerned about what secret databases contain information they’re about five years late to the party here.
Folks, I’m just so confident that we don’t know the half of this and that there is factual news that we will someday learn that’s going to be change the way the majority of people see this episode. You watch. No I don’t have an inside track. I don’t know anybody involved in this. I don’t know anything. I’ve never heard of anybody involved. I just know the media. I know the rush to judgment tendencies. I know the mob mentality. I know all of the biases involved here.
A, you have a corporation that is destroying the planet, United Airlines. You have a corporation, period, evil, distrusted, despised, mean-spirited, doesn’t like people, doesn’t care if its customers die, like the tobacco industry or whatever. This is a general profile that leftists have of corporations. So you know that going in. We have enough experience to know that sometimes people the media choose to champion turn out to be unworthy of it.
I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head, but there are plenty. If I took the time to research it, I could give you some. I’m sure I could find some great examples of just this kind of thing where a story happens that captivates the attention of the public and in a short period of time the full story ends up being reported, and it changes entirely the perception people had of the people involved and of the reporting in general.
Well, how many stories have we had of politicians accused of doing one thing or another, turns out they haven’t done it? Look at Ray Donovan, labor secretary with Nixon or Reagan. His reputation was totally destroyed in court. He was exonerated by a jury in 30 minutes, but the media destroyed him in the months leading up to it. He said, “Where do I go to get my reputation back?” These things are relatively, relatively common.
