http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/07/11/untangling_the_truth_about_race_can_get_you_in_deep_troubleUntangling the Truth About Race Can Get You in Deep Trouble
July 11, 2016
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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, we lit 'em up here on Friday. If you pay any attention to the TV or internet on Saturday, Friday night, all weekend, you know we lit 'em up. Let me ask you a question here, folks. Greetings, by the way, great to have you, Rush Limbaugh, brand-new week, broadcast excellence. It is 800-282-2882.
We know that Barack Obama often speculates what kind of man a son of his would be. For example, Barack Obama at one point said that, if he had a son, he would look like the Trayvon Martin, right? We all remember this, correctamente? So I have a question. Since the president likes to speculate about having a son, what do you think, would Barack Obama's son have been a member of the New Black Panthers or Black Lives Matter, or maybe both? What do you think?
Well, I'm just throwing it out there. I mean, I didn't start any of this speculation. You know, I learn, experience guided by intelligence, or intelligence guided by experience. (interruption) Well, maybe. I don't want to throw that out there. That's a foreign group. These two groups are actually active and involved, and the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, told them to be patient or whatever she said to them, don't give up after the incident in Dallas. So I'm just curious what the president's son would do. It's speculative, of course, because he doesn't have a son. But he did say, if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. So would his son be a member of the New Black Panthers or Black Lives Matter? Or maybe both.
Here we are in the Washington Post: "Why So Many Critics of President Obama Insist That He Hates Police Officers." What do you think the answer to this question is gonna be here in the Washington Post? It's because of me, folks. It's because of me. This is a story about when the cops arrested Skip Gates for something or other, and Obama didn't like it and said the cop was stupid. And that led to a beer summit out at the White House with the cop, Skip Gates, and President Obama, as they attempted to solve the problem of the stupid cop. Right?
"The following April, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh suggested that perhaps a 'tequila summit' was also in order, because of comments Obama made about Arizona's just-passed law that cracked down on immigrants in the country illegally."
They're quoting me here: "'Barack Obama, ladies and gentlemen, he's got something in for the cops, there's no question,' Limbaugh said. 'You go back to Cambridge. This guy's got some problem with police officers.' Why? Because Obama worried that Hispanic-Americans in Arizona would be harassed 'if you don't have your papers, and you took your kid out to get ice cream.'" Given the Arizona law that they wanted to pass on immigration, if you didn't have your papers and you're Hispanic, the cops could hassle you.
"So that's his argument, to create a phony hypothetical where families getting ice cream are hassled by stupid, bigoted policemen. This is gonna require a massive tequila summit before this is all over," I speculated. The tequila summit never happened by the way. So you kind of get a taste of this for how the Drive-Bys are dealing with all of this over the course of the weekend. And for whatever outrage there was aimed at me Friday night and Saturday, I'm now a man forgotten, and they have turned their attention and their fire to Rudy Giuliani.
Now, Rudy had the audacity... The one thing that you can't do in very tense, highly charged situations like this? You cannot utter the truth at the wrong time. We had an interview with Heather Mac Donald, whose new book is out on this, and I strongly urge everybody to read it. It's called The War on Cops, and I referred to it as "essential" on Friday, and it is. And I asked her. I said, "Okay, you have facts on your side.
"The majority of blacks in this country are not killed by cops. They're killed by other blacks. It's undeniable." She's got the stats, Justice Department stats. They're local police department stats. It's all over the place. It's not made up. The majority of blacks in this country are killed by other blacks, not the cops. But nobody thinks that. It's the exact opposite everybody thinks. I asked her, "What would you do if authorities called on you to help bridge this gap -- this vast, wide gap of misunderstanding?"
She said, "I would try something we don't try much, and that's the truth." Well, Rudy Giuliani tried the truth on CBS This Morning, and he's catching hell. He's catching hell for things he said on TV yesterday. He's catching hell for going after the squeegee guys again. He's catching hell for "stop don't frisk," or "frisk don't stop," whatever. He's catching hell for the "broken windows" policy! He's catching hell for everything because he said...
And I'm paraphrasing it. I don't have it right in front of me. He said, "If black lives really mattered, then they would be concerned about all the black lives lost in inner cities like Chicago that result from black crime. But I don't think Black Lives Matter cares about any of that." He went on to call 'em an inherent racial or racist organization by virtue of their title, Black Lives Matter. If you're gonna start segregating things like that, doesn't that make you racist? Now, they're coming after Rudy full throttle, full throat.
But he made an accurate statement: "If Black Lives Matter, why don't the lives of young children matter?" There's one shot every 14 hours in Chicago. Why don't they ever go there? Why is no effort expended to deal with that? Why is Black Lives Matter constantly, solely focused on police shootings when they happen to be the minority of instances in which black citizens are killed? Now, on the other side of that, you know the power of perception. In politics, people say the perception is reality.
And because the PR battle has been won by the left on this, the facts at this point in time don't resonate and don't matter. The popular perception among leftists and minorities is that the cops are on a killing spree, and that if it weren't for cops, black lives wouldn't be lost hardly at all. Almost all of them are lost because of cop shooting. It just isn't true. So you have to deal with that perception as a reality, though. I mean, even though it's not true, how many people believe it to be true?
And some of the people that believe it to be true are decent, common, ordinary, everyday citizens who happen to believe that it's true. It isn't, but they think it is -- and they act accordingly, they vote accordingly, they speak accordingly. How do you reach 'em? They're not militant by nature, not the people I'm talking about. Just people that consume the news, people that consume news during highly charged times, such as these.
The president said that untangling the motives very difficult here. "Obama Says Motives of Dallas Cop Killer Micah Xavier Johnson 'Hard to Untangle.'" You think they'd be hard to untangle if they thought talk radio was involved in this? There wouldn't be anything "hard to untangle" about this at all, would there? They're not "hard to untangle" now. The guy pretty much opened up about what his grievance was.
The police chief in Dallas indicated that he was gonna go on an even bigger rampage, that he had a stock or a cache of weapons to pull this off, and people are looking at various things and institutions, events, that could have inspired him. But the president said on Saturday, "I think it’s very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter," who killed five Dallas police officers, despite -- despite -- the fact that the gunman told the cops he wanted to kill white officers.
Ah, no. No, no. It's not that simple, the president says. It's very, very difficult to untangle.
He "made the comment at a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, where he also issued another call for gun control in the wake of the Dallas shootings. He said, 'I think it’s very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter,' Mr. Obama said of the gunman, Micah X. Johnson. 'By definition if you shoot people who pose no threat to you, you have a troubled mind.'" Stop and think. Has Obama once asked us to pause on the basis that it'd be very difficult to untangle the motives, let's say of shooter Dylann Roof?
The guy that blew up the theater, shot up the theater in Colorado? In fact, they zeroed in on the Tea Party! I mean, within, what was it, 30 minutes, Brian Ross of ABC was trying to link that shooter to the Tea Party. I mean, did they even try to untangle that? They just acted on their bias and their prejudice. So I guess, folks, short of a months-long investigation, we might never know Micah Johnson's motives for killing five white policemen. Very tangled. No, we don't know! The president said (summarized), "No, no! No, no, no.
"We can't wait the word of the shooter. The shooter was a deranged, obviously unhappy person. No, no." "The president says, "It's hard to untangle." That means massive investigations are going to be required. Even in San Bernardino, we were told to back off and wait a second; it's not so simple here. Yeah, we kind of were. Well, we knew what motivated that one as well. The president went on to say that "police would be safer if the US enacted tougher gun laws.
"'If you care about the safety of our police officers, you can't set aside the gun issue and pretend that's irrelevant,' Mr. Obama said." Wouldn't outlawing guns for law-abiding citizens make the cops job even harder since the bad guys would be emboldened knowing that almost all citizens would be defenseless? Wouldn't that make the job of being a policeman even harder? "
t's been 'a tough week' in the US, [but] the president said America 'is not as divided as some have suggested.'
"'Americans of all races and all backgrounds are rightly outraged by the inexcusable attacks on police, whether it's in Dallas or anyplace else,' Mr. Obama said at the summit of NATO. 'That includes protesters. It includes family members who have grave concerns about police conduct and they've said that this is unacceptable. There's no division there.'" Police conduct? What does police conduct have to do with this thing in Dallas? There were...? Police conduct?
What is this? "Americans of all races and all backgrounds are rightly outraged ... That includes protesters. It includes family members who have grave concerns about police conduct..." Wait a minute. Is there some aspect of this story I haven't heard? Did the police provoke this guy in Dallas? (interruption) Oh, he's talking about Minnesota, Baton Rouge? I'm getting them confused. I thought he was talking about Dallas, since most of this is about Dallas.
But he didn't say Dallas or anyplace else. "Mr. Obama also addressed what he views as his legacy on race relations as America's first black president, saying he's speaking out about racial disparities to forge 'a country that is more just and more united and more equal.'" Let me... Well, if that's his goal, how's he doing? If that's his goal, how's it working out? I don't know. When Obama brings Black Lives Matter to the White House and honors them as better organizers than he is, or was?
Anyway, it's a lot to weed through. There just is. I mean, there's lots of weeds out there, folks, and untangling this is a difficult thing because the truth can get you in deep trouble. The truth can cause people that don't want to hear it -- because they've other motives, other agendas. That can cause them to go ballistic on you, and people hold back because they instinctively understand. They don't want to make themselves targets. Here's another one:
"Attacks on Police" Inspired or Directed by Militant Groups?" This is the AP. Let's dissect this one. "Police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota were followed by calls from black militant groups and others to seek vengeance against officers. Almost immediately, several officers were attacked, including the five slain by a sniper in Dallas. Now authorities are investigating whether the Dallas gunman was directed by those groups or merely emboldened by them."
See? This is what the president meant by, "It's not as simple as you think. We gotta take some time to untangle this." But I'm just telling you that if Micah X. Johnson... If it had been discovered that he listened to talk radio, the headline would not be a question and it wouldn't be something they were investigating. They would have already concluded that he was inspired by what he had heard on the radio. But since it might be that he was inspired by what he heard from militant protest groups, "Well, well, well, well, back off. We don't know for sure. We must be very careful take our due time to untangle this."
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And they are still fit to be tied over Rudy Giuliani. They're still... "Rudy Giuliani slams Black Lives Matter movement amid calls for unity." "Rudy Giuliani sticks to his guns." "Rudy Giuliani in controversial fiery comments." Let me something else that he said. Rudy said, quote, "If I were a black father and I was concerned about the safety of my child -- really concerned about it, and not in a politically activist sense -- I would say 'Be very respectful to the police. Most of them are good. Some could be very bad. Just be very careful.'"
And he's catching hell for that, folks!
I don't know about you. That's exactly what I was taught. I remember when I was a little boy. I had to be 10 or under, and we had to... We were in Arkansas. I forget... I don't know why. We were all in the car. My great-grandmother lived there, so maybe it was that. We were coming back and my dad got pulled over by a state trooper in Arkansas. The trooper walked up, my dad lowered the window, and every answer he gave, "Yes, sir." "Yes, sir." "Yes, sir." "Yes, sir." "Yes, sir." "Yes, sir." "Yes, sir."
And when it was all resolved -- and it took a while. It was speeding. I don't remember what it was. I don't even remember if there was a ticket. I just remember saying, "Why did you say, 'yes, sir,' so many times?" He said, "Son," his exact phrase, "'sir' them out. Just say, 'yes, sir,' to everything. Just say it. Just say, 'Yes, sir.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Yes, sir.'" There was no racial component to this. There was no anything. But that's the way... I mean, I saw it in action, and when I asked about it, that's how it was explained.
"They are the authority. The only thing you want to do is argue with 'em, Son. There's nothing to be gained by doing it." He also told me the same thing about judges. He was a lawyer. And the lessons involved were always about respecting genuine authority when you were faced with it. If you're a lawyer and you're gonna go try cases in court, the judge is it, no matter what the judge does. If the judge does something you think crews you, there are mechanisms after court to deal with it.
But the judge is the authority, and you must conduct yourself that way. It's just the way it is. Now, that's not a similar situation to overthrowing an oppressive government, of course. That's why I'm making a point not to confuse the two. But in this case of the police, I don't know about you, but that's how I was raised, and it had nothing to do with race. My dad didn't say, "If a white cop stops you, if a black cop stops you, if a black trooper..."
He said, "Just 'sir' them out," and his point was being respectful and be polite. The objective here is to get through it and end it as soon as you can and do not be confrontational with these. It's all it was. And I've never forgotten it, of course, and of course it's how I've done it. I can't remember the last time I was stopped, though, which was decades ago -- which, of course, will change today. Could I just... But Rudy's out there saying essentially the same thing. But that goes back to my point.
The perception is that being respectful and polite is not going to work. Whether they are right or wrong, there are lots of black Americans who think that's bogus. "That's something that people who never gotten in trouble with the cops say, but it doesn't work for us," and they really believe it, and they might have instances where it hasn't. The problem is this has all been blown up now to the point where people think every encounter with the cop ends up with somebody being shot -- or the vast majority of them -- neither of which are anywhere close to the truth.
In fact, a black economist at Harvard is shocked at what he learned when he looked into this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, speaking of which, how are kids today learning how to deal with cops? What are they seeing on TV being done by protesters? What are they listening to lyric-wise in the music that they listen to? How are kids today learning how to deal with cops? What are they learning about cops? What are they being told about cops? All this stuff matters.
And I know from the Black Lives Matter groups to the protesters, "Well, yeah, but it's organic, Rush. The reason we say what we say about the cops is not because of anything other than how we are treated. It's different than the way you're treated," and so forth. I don't know, folks. There are ways to defuse situations and they're not being taught. On balance, there are many, many ways to defuse situations, and in fact, the opposite, exacerbating them and blowing them up seems to be a more easily learned lesson than the opposite.
Now, I found this in the New York Times and I couldn't believe it. Oh, by the way, do you know what CNN just ran? I can't believe this. I didn't have a chance to hear the story, I just saw the chyron graphic on the screen. The man that was shot in Minnesota last week, last name was Castille, had the video of him bleeding out. You remember that. It turns out that he was pulled over by the cops 52 times between 2012 and 2016. That's all I know.
I don't know if the CNN story was designed to show, "See? All this bias. See how the prejudice exists here. This poor man who'd never done anything was pulled over 52 times." Or I don't know if their angle was, "Hey, the guy had his run-ins with the cops. There may be something else to learn here." Given that it's CNN, I can't believe it's the latter. But we'll see. They're doing it right now. I'll have to check when I have a moment.
But what is your reaction to that, when you hear, okay, no excuse for the guy just being shot in cold blood, if that's what happened, but the police find out who somebody is in the car, okay, this guy's been pulled over 52 times in the last four years, they should know probably what the reasons are it for. Anyway, the story from the New York Times today.
"Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings -- A new study confirms that black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement. They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where and when they encounter the police. But when it comes to the most lethal form of force -- police shootings -- the study finds no racial bias."
The study was done by a Harvard economist, the youngest Harvard African-American professor to ever be granted tenure. His name is Roland G. Fryer Jr. He says: "'It is the most surprising result of my career.' ... The result contradicts the mental image of police shootings that many Americans hold in the wake of the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; Laquan McDonald in Chicago; Tamir Rice in Cleveland; Walter Scott in South Carolina." It goes on to list these shootings.
"The study did not say whether the most egregious examples ... are free of racial bias. Instead, it examined a much larger pool of shootings, including nonfatal ones. ... Official statistics on police shootings are poor. James Comey, the F.B.I. director, has called the lack of data 'embarrassing and ridiculous.' Even when data exists, the conditions under which officers decide to fire their weapons are deeply nuanced and complex. Mr. Fryer is the youngest African-American to receive tenure at Harvard and the first one to receive a John Bates Clark medal, a prize given to the most promising American economist under 40.
"Mr. Fryer said his anger after the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray and others drove him to study the issue. 'You know, protesting is not my thing,' he said. 'But data is my thing. So I decided that I was going to collect a bunch of data and try to understand what really is going on when it comes to racial differences in police use of force.'
"He and a group of student researchers spent about 3,000 hours assembling detailed data from police reports in Houston; Austin, Tex.; Dallas; Los Angeles; Orlando, Fla.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and four other counties in Florida. They examined 1,332 shootings between 2000 and 2015, systematically coding police narratives to answer questions such as: How old was the suspect? How many police officers were at the scene? Were they mostly white?"
Anyway, the bottom line is they found -- there's all kinds of graphics that go with this, which I can't share with you on the radio, charts and that kind of thing. But the bottom line is that black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement; they're more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed the ground, or pepper-sprayed. But when it comes to shootings, couldn't find any racial bias.
It's exactly what Heather Mac Donald says. It just doesn't exist. There is no data to support what is believed to be true by groups like Black Lives Matter, the New Black Panthers, NAALCP, you name it. Jeremiah Wright. The data isn't there. The cops are not randomly, wantonly killing black suspects. A black Harvard economic professor ticked off after what happened to Michael Brown. What do you think this professor thought happened to Michael Brown? Do you think he believed "hands up, don't shoot"?
Here's a Harvard professor motivated to find out after Michael Brown. Michael Brown, everything about that that was reported from "hands up, don't shoot" to the guy was surrendering, turned his back, none of it was true. To this day none of it remains true, and yet that and the Trayvon Martin episode are the reason Black Lives Matter exists at all. They formed when George Zimmerman was exonerated, and then it got exacerbated and grew after the Michael Brown situation in Ferguson. It was a total lie that was spread by leftist activists.
This is why I claim that there's a political party seeking to benefit from all of this, which, again, is undeniable. That got me a lot of discussion over the weekend, but I don't care, it happens to be the truth. So right there. So we got two sources here, we got Heather Mac Donald and her research and her book War on Cops. And now Roland G. Fryer Jr., economics professor at Harvard, surprising new evidence shows no bias in police shootings.
What that means is the number of white suspects versus black suspects is almost equal, almost the same. He could not find a preponderance of evidence to show that the overwhelming majority of shooting victims at the hands of the cops are African-American. It just doesn't exist. So you have to ask yourself, why is the media so intent on portraying an opposite picture? Why is the media so eager to try to convince the country that after the cops shoot a black suspect, "It's happened again, it happens every day." The media is out there trying to make you think that it's an everyday, multiple-times-a-day occurrence, and they succeed in persuading a lot of people to believe it.
There isn't any evidence to back it up. I know what some of you are saying: "Well, one time is too many." Hey, not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a brand-new soap opera narrative that has been created and invented and has been given life, and it's all based on nonfactual data, it's all based on lies. And it's creating all kinds of havoc. It's roiling our society. It's furthering this division that exists in our country.
We got so many different divisions now, you can't keep track of 'em. We got racial divisions. We have economic divisions. We have employed and unemployed divisions, male-female divisions, gay-straight divisions, LGBT, gay-straight divisions. You name it, no matter where you go, there's a division, there's a divide. Somebody's benefiting from all this, or trying to.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To the phones we go. We're gonna start St. Louis. Nick, great to have you, sir. Hi, and welcome to EIB Network.
CALLER: Mega retired IRS agent dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Well, great to have you with us, sir. Hello.
originalCALLER: How you doing?
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: Two experiences from my childhood about authority, and I'm just a couple of years younger than you. One time I got brought home by the police because I was out after curfew -- something which is not enforced anymore, by the way. My father thanked the police officer profusely, and for the next three months I was cutting that officer's yard and washing his car as my punishment for my offense. And I never stayed out after curfew again.
RUSH: What? You had to...? You had to wash his car and mow the yard?
CALLER: My father made me do it. The cop didn't make me do it; my father made me do it.
RUSH: But the officer let you do it. The officer --
CALLER: I think he agreed with my father, and, you know, if that's what my father wanted, he was only too happy to oblige.
RUSH: Clearly a different time.
CALLER: Yeah. Another situation was, one time I was acting up in school. The principal, who was a nun, broke a yardstick over my head. She sent the note home to my father about the incident. I was sent to the convent for a couple weeks to wash dishes as my penance for that offense. So --
RUSH: And you became an IRS agent. (laughing)
CALLER: I -- I respect authority. But to this day, I will not sass a police officer or a nun.
RUSH: I hear you. I hear you. I had a piano teacher break a ruler over my hand once. And, you know, with my mom and dad, the principal, I don't care. The authority figure... When I was a kid, the authority figure was always right. Whatever my complaint, the authority figure was always right. Yeah. My grandmother, my maternal grandmother actually tried to make me afraid of the cops. I had to go visit her. We had stopped in a...
It was a -- well, like a diner in Bloomfield, Missouri. We're sitting in a booth. I'm like eight or nine years old, and a highway patrolman walks in. My grandmother said, "He's gonna get you! He's gonna get you!" "Why? What did I do?" "He's gonna get you." "Oh, my God!" I saw those guys, and I was scared for a while. I mean, that's... I'm not advocating that. Don't misunderstand. But the respect for authority, it was drilled into us our entire lives.
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