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July 11, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:57
July 11, 2013, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
No, not until today.
I have been paying any attention to this.
Well, I've been paying attention to the trial.
I haven't been paying much attention to this judge until today.
Now, I always, you know, my instincts told me to fix what's in on this thing from the very first moment Obama and Eric Holder got involved in it.
But today, I mean, this is outrageous what this judge allowed today.
Folks, it's all up to the jury now, and it really depends on what they do because in the Zimmerman trial, I mean, every, I don't know, fear or fear, every fear that we've had about this appears to be manifesting itself.
Greetings and great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh and the EIB Network.
Three hours of broadcast excellence straight ahead.
Prosecutors in the George Zimmerman murder trial want to ask jurors to consider lesser charges of third-degree murder and manslaughter because they know that they haven't made their case on first-degree murder.
So they went and they said, well, you know, we want to let the jury decide on because the alternative was acquittal or first-degree murder.
And the prosecution today said, no, no.
Manslaughter and maybe second-degree murder, third-degree murder.
Actually, it was a second-degree murder charge, not first-degree.
And then to compound this, are you ready for this?
It looks like the judge is going to permit the jury to consider a charge of child abuse because Trayvon Martin was 17 years old when this happened.
The attorney for Zimmerman stood up and was beside himself.
He said, they're pulling this.
This is out of their hat.
This has been buried deep.
We didn't know this was coming.
We need some time to prepare for this.
The judge didn't seem too sympathetic at all to this.
The judge seemed more than willing for virtually anything that would convict this guy of something to happen.
Now, I had a little time here, not a whole lot, when this started to shake out.
As best I could determine, and given the time constraints I had, I'm open to being shown wrong about this.
But as I checked the statute on this child abuse business, I think in order for Zimmerman to be convicted of this in something other than the Banana Republic court, he would have to have known that Trayvon Martin was 17 years old.
You heard that too?
Well, I don't think Zimmerman cared how old this guy was when this was all going on.
He certainly don't think he knew he was 17.
Certainly didn't think he was involved with a child here.
Prosecutors said that they would ask that the lesser charges be included as they hammer out jury instructions today.
Prosecutors also seeking a child abuse charge against Zimmerman since Trayvon Martin was 17 at the time of his death.
Now, never mind that Zimmerman's lawyers can't defend against either of these new charges.
They've rested.
They rested their case.
So this stuff comes out after they've rested.
They have to ask the judge for special dispensation here.
Zimmerman's attorney, been on TV all morning, strongly objected to the prosecution's proposal that third-degree murder be included in the instructions.
Defense attorney's name is Don West.
He called the proposal outrageous, given that it is premised on the idea that Zimmerman committed child abuse since Martin was underage when he was fatally shy.
He said, oh, my God, just what I thought this case couldn't get any more bizarre.
West questioned how Zimmerman could be charged with child abuse while Martin was on top pummeling him.
You're not allowed to defend yourself against children.
The judge's name is Deborah Nelson.
She said today that she would allow the jurors to consider manslaughter.
Arguments on third-degree murder had yet to be made.
That's why the defense rested.
There were no arguments made on third-degree murder.
Look, I don't, my dad was a lawyer, but that's the extent of my knowledge here.
I just think it's outrageous.
And this is what happens in show trials.
The only important thing in a show trial is pleasing the people in power and giving the unwashed masses a lesson.
Show trials have nothing to do with dispensing justice.
They're all about dispensing social justice, which is usually the polar opposite of real justice.
Now, I don't know.
I would think we've got grounds for an appeal here.
But I mean, who wants to see Zimmerman dragged through the courts again, even on an appeal, even though he might have to do it?
I don't know, folks.
We've all known.
I was on Fox yesterday afternoon on their show at 5 o'clock, and they asked me about this.
And I told them that the media, since day one, has been invested in a guilty verdict here based on race.
Most of the media people that I've met, sports, news, you name it, given their age and generation, the civil rights movement seems to have had a profound impact on informing them of life in America.
And they are of the belief that racial injustice is just as prevalent today as it was during slavery and that we have yet to really make amends for it.
And they consistently look at minorities as really constantly, always discriminated against.
They've got unbridled sympathy.
That's really what it boils down to.
They have unbridled sympathy, and I think it's actually insulting.
They look at minorities as incapable of handling themselves, incapable of navigating the canals and the rivers and the fjords of life.
It really is a put-down way that they look at, it's a contemptible condescension that they have toward minorities while claiming to love them and being in their corner and being their champions and so forth.
But to arrive at that position, they've got to believe these people are pretty much incompetent and incapable.
And that's what is never-ending sympathy.
So this case comes just like the Duke LaCrosse case.
It was made to order.
It fit the bill.
And it didn't matter the nature of the evidence.
It was yet another opportunity to prove that America is imperfect and needs to be perfected.
It's yet another opportunity to prove that America is not yet the land of justice and freedom for all.
And that the people continually denied are blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities, people of color.
And so the media champions, here comes a case, even to go to the extent that call Zimmerman a white Hispanic.
New York Times, we researched it.
Only five instances in United States history in the media of somebody being called a white Hispanic.
Zimmerman was number five, and the other ones were in inconsequential references.
CNNs picked it up.
Now he's a white Hispanic, all for the purposes of promoting racial polarization.
All for the purposes of promoting a racial divide.
So as is much the case, and is often the case with liberalism, it's the seriousness of the charge that motivates.
It's not the nature of the evidence that matters at all.
In fact, the nature of the evidence must always be ignored.
I first learned of this, by the way.
My life has been a never-ending education of liberalism.
During the Clarence Thomas Anita Hill hearings, I kept hearing advocates for Anita Hill wringing their hands talking about the seriousness of the charge.
Yeah, well, what about the evidence?
That doesn't matter.
The seriousness of the charge.
Oh, actually, it was before that.
First time I heard it, there was a professor at Columbia named Gary Sick, appropriately named.
And in 1990, he published a book.
And the book claimed that George H.W. Bush was flown secretly to France on an SR-71 spy plane to negotiate with the Iranians, struck a deal where the Iranians would keep our hostages through the 1980 election, thereby making Carter look bad and enabling Reagan to win.
1990, 10 years after the fact, of course, this was all about the George H.W. Bush re-election in 1992.
The Speaker of the House at the time was a man known for stealing airline food, Thomas Foley from the state of Washington.
Well, he was.
I mean, he'd fly commercial flights and he'd steal people's food and disembark with it.
He really loved the plastic knives and forks that came with it.
Anyway, he goes to the microphones and the camera said, seriousness of the charge is such here that we are required to investigate.
Seriousness of the charge by who?
A whacked out Columbia professor?
But yep, that's all it took.
The seriousness of the charge.
It's the same bogus BS here.
The seriousness of the charge.
Racial discrimination.
Racial hate crime.
I.e., same thing up with the Duke La Crosse case.
It doesn't matter what happened.
The Duke case doesn't matter.
Everybody involved was embarrassed profoundly.
Doesn't matter.
They were dead wrong.
Same thing here.
So now the trial happens and the prosecution, everybody knows it.
And in the news, fails to make their case.
On second-degree murder.
Uh-oh, time for emergency procedures.
Guess what?
You know what?
We want to go for, he broke his finger in a hangnail.
And we want to include just whatever we can get a conviction on, even child abuse.
George says, oh, that's interesting.
Oh, okay, we'll consider that.
And Zimmerman's lawyers don't know what to do.
And we're in a show trial.
This isn't about justice, folks.
Eric Holder goes down there and ratchets up public opinion with Reverend Al.
The president says, if I had a son, he'd look like Tremont.
Thereby injecting race into a story that may not have been about race at all, probably was not about race.
We certainly do not have white on black crime here.
We have made up white Hispanic so-called crime on black here.
The only reason this trial was taking place is because the media is invested in a guilty verdict, and the race hustler industry, including the Attorney General, flew down there the minute this case happened when Zimmerman wasn't charged.
And they went down there.
Remember, the original police chief wouldn't charge.
They didn't have enough evidence to charge.
There was nothing to charge here.
And the race hustler industry got involved and brought public pressure on the law enforcement officials down there and even on the state attorney.
And in order to satisfy the demands of the all-powerful federal government, they charged Zimmerman.
The original law enforcement bunch, first exposed to the evidence, didn't charge Zimmerman.
There was nothing to see.
And then the Reverend Sharpton and the other race hustlers got in business and flew down there.
Eric Holder flew down there, thanked Reverend Al, as he called him, for his community outreach and service.
The regime saw an opportunity to turn something into a profoundly racial case for the express purpose of ripping the country apart.
I don't know how to describe it.
I really don't know how else to describe it.
Last night on CNN's Anderson Cooper 175, correspondent George Howell interviewed the former Sanford, Florida police chief Bill Lee.
He was the guy that said there was no probable cause for arrest, and he was the guy that was fired or removed from the case.
So the CNN correspondent Howell said, your lead investigator, Chris Sereno, suggested manslaughter on that initial police report.
Why is it that for 40 plus days, Zimmerman walked around a free man?
The laws of the state of Florida and the Constitution require you to have probable cause to arrest someone.
The evidence and the testimony that we had didn't get us to probable cause.
You know, if we had people that were witnesses that could tell us that the self-defense claim or the way George Zimmerman said things happened that contradicted that, then we certainly may have probable cause.
Guys said, probable cause.
We didn't have the evidence.
Now that the state attorney, the state attorney, the state attorney.
You know, folks, I interviewed yesterday for the newsletter, and I actually think I'm going to play segments of it.
I interviewed for the newsletter yesterday, a man named Conrad Black, who is one of the most erudite and educated men that I've ever met.
He's got a new book out called Flight of the Eagle.
Here's the title: Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership.
I strongly, and I'm going to do a segment on this later.
I strongly encourage you to get this book.
It's a big book.
It is heavy reading, but it is marvelous.
It is an absolutely terrific, wonderful book about American history.
Flight of the Eagle, the grand strategies that brought America from colonial dependence to world leadership.
Conrad Black has led an incredible and storied life.
He was a media mogul.
He was chairman of the UK Telegraph newspapers in Britain.
He founded the National Post in Canada, where he remains a columnist.
He writes for National Review Online, the Huffington Post.
He's authored multiple books on Nixon and FDR biographies.
He ran Hollinger, but he also ran up against the United States justice system.
He was accused of financial crimes in 2005.
All 17 counts were dropped, rejected by jurors, or unanimously vacated by the Supreme Court, but he nevertheless served, I think, 42 months in jail and had every asset practically taken away from him.
And he's done research and books on the justice system in this country, and the prosecution conviction rates like 99%.
It just, when the prosecution, the state attorney, the DA, whatever, when they say something, the media automatically believes it.
I got to take a break here, folks.
I'm sorry, but I do.
We'll be back and continue.
I will not lose my place, so don't sweat it.
Back to Conrad Black and that story in just a second.
I want to finish the Bill Lee soundbites because I think the idea of the prosecutors asking for a charge of manslaughter, third-degree murder, child abuse, it's an admission they overcharged in the first place.
Anyway, back to Bill Lee, the Sanford, Florida police chief.
The CNN correspondent said, tell me about the outside influence.
There were civil rights leaders came to town in protests, and you know, people see this situation differently, but there's a segment of people who said from the beginning that this case, had Zimmerman been black, he would have been arrested.
He would have been behind bars.
What do you say about this suggestion from people?
The Sanford Police Department conducted an unbiased and professional investigation race that did not come into play for the Sanford Police Department.
When you look back at what happened, was there a lot of pressure on you to make an arrest?
There was pressure applied.
You know, the city manager asked several times during the process, well, can an arrest be made now?
And I think that was just from not understanding the criminal justice process.
It was related to me that they just wanted an arrest.
They didn't care if it got dismissed later.
And you don't do that.
Bingo.
They just wanted the arrest.
They wanted the optics.
Didn't care if the arrest was dismissed.
They just, because the pressure was being brought to bear from all the way down to the White House on down and from the Department of Justice.
And these are a bunch of yokels in Florida compared to the people in Washington.
And pressure was being brought.
They were begging, would you just charge the guy?
Just arrest him for just a, don't care what you do later.
And now we are back with former Sanford, Florida Police Chief Bill Lee, who has just told CNN last night that it was related to him that the city manager, the mayor, the city fathers, the city mothers, the city children, they just wanted an arrest.
They didn't care if it got dismissed later.
They just wanted an arrest because the pressure was intense, all the way from the White House and the Department of Justice, not to mention the militant race hustler community down there agitating.
I mean, these people, it's a small town.
They don't want their place blown up.
So they buckled.
Can you just charge a guy?
Gosh, just arrest a guy.
Come on.
Come on.
I don't care if you dismiss it.
And the police chief said, you don't do that.
I don't have the evidence to charge the guy.
So then the CNN correspondent said, well, is it fair to say, Mr. Lee, that the investigative process, in a way, got hijacked?
Yes, in a number of ways.
That investigation was taken away from us.
We weren't able to complete it.
And it was transferred to another district or a different state attorney.
And that outside influence changed the course of the way the criminal justice process should work.
There was political pressure on one hand, would you agree?
Sure.
There were outside influences on the other?
Yes.
Did you get a fair shake?
I don't think so.
I upheld my oath.
You know, I upheld my oath to abide by the laws of the state of Florida and the Constitution.
And I'm happy that at the end of the day, I can walk away with my integrity.
It's a small town, folks.
It's a small town, and the state attorneys there, that's what Florida calls their district attorneys, they just wilted with the pressure being brought to bear from national concerns, the White House, the Department of Justice, the race, militant race hustler movement.
And they just wilted.
And that's why we're where we are.
Now, obviously, we've had overcharging.
The prosecution can't make the case on second-degree murder.
They know it.
So they go to the judge after the defense rests.
By the way, we want to go for child abuse, too, and third-degree manslaughter and all this other stuff.
Judge, the judge, small town judge, okay, fine.
Well, I don't know what the judge decided.
I hadn't paid much attention to the judge.
Her name is Deborah Nelson until today.
And I watched today, and I was just outraged.
The reason I reminded Conrad Black got railroaded by the American judicial system.
Spent 42 months in jail for crimes he didn't commit.
Supreme Court unanimously ruled they weren't even crimes.
He spent 42 months in jail, wrote about the experience, did a lot of research on the American judicial system, and found out that most people convicted are not convicted at trial.
It's the result of pleas, plea bargaining, because nobody can stand up.
Nobody's got the resources.
Very few have the resources to fight, go to trial.
Anyway, his experience in this is informative to people.
And it is true, folks.
What has been there?
Law enforcement leaks or makes announcements, and whatever they say, they are automatically believed.
I mean, it's human nature.
I don't mean to be critical of law enforcement.
I'm one of the biggest supporters of uniformed security forces, be they military or domestic police.
But the fact of the matter remains that whenever prosecuting attorneys, state attorneys, districts, whatever they leak or say anything, the media automatically believes it.
The media, and most people do too.
Well, why would they bother charging somebody if they're not guilty?
That's just the natural thing for people to assume.
And despite controversies, people genuinely generally believe that the judicial system is pretty fair and balanced and impartial, except for the people that have been in it.
But people that haven't been into the bowels of it, they just happen to believe it's Superman.
It's truth justice the American way.
And it is interesting that the law enforcement authorities can leak information about a suspect that could – look at that.
Well, a great example is this poor guy that did the video that Obama and everybody blamed for causing riots in the Middle East.
This poor guy is still in jail without bail.
So it's a very powerful bunch of people to come up.
Conrad Black had to sell his house in Florida to live.
A number of his assets were frozen and literally taken away from him before the trial.
He had, I don't know, 80% of his net worth taken away from him before the trial.
Under the guise he might have been a flight risk or whatever.
He's Canadian.
He's still not allowed in the United States.
But I don't want to spend a lot of time on his legal experience.
You can read about them if you want.
I'm not here to defend him on that.
I'm just describing to you who he is.
He's a conservative.
He's a famed media mogul.
He owned Hollinger, which was a company that owned a lot of media properties, including the Jerusalem Post, the Canada Post, which he founded, the UK Telegraph, hundreds of newspapers that the man owned.
But he's just Renaissance man.
He's a prophetic and writer.
He's just one of the most erudite people you've run into, and he has written the most amazing book.
And its release, timed, of course, to our Independence Day.
The book is called Flight of the Eagle, The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership.
And he has divided, and it's big.
It is a huge book.
It's not something you read over the weekend at the beach.
But boy, is it wonderful.
I recommend it to each and every one of you.
He divides Flight of the Eagle into four parts, essentially.
Just as his organizational technique.
Four phases, if you will, of America's rise.
The aspirant state, which was 1754 to 1836.
Predestined people, 1836 to 1933.
The indispensable country, 1933 to 1957, and the supreme nation, 1957 to the present.
And I don't often do this because it runs the risk of cannibalizing.
We interviewed him yesterday.
I did for the next issue of the Limbaugh Letter, and we always roll tape.
So I've got some samples, some excerpts of the interview, and I want to play one of them for you now since I'm describing, I want you to hear me, was on the telephone.
But this segment is from the opening phase of the interview yesterday, which ran in total 45 minutes.
This is a huge undertaking.
I mean, to explain how this country came to be, because it's unique in all of mankind.
You've undertaken a massive project here.
I'm just fascinated by how you tackled it.
No, I'm flattered by your interest.
But I think you can see that even in the earliest phases, the more visionary of the founders of the country saw what America could become.
Benjamin Franklin, as early as the 1740s, when he was only in his 30s himself, and long before there was any thought of independence in the American colonies, said that in 100 years, the population of America would pass that of Britain.
And at that point, his view was the Americans would then become the leading force in the British world.
And indeed, if it hadn't been for the revolution, I believe that would have happened.
But he saw, and Washington saw, and to some degree, all of the founders, Hamilton, particularly on the economic side, saw what America could become.
You know, I think that's profound, Congrat, that they knew what they were doing.
They were not just building something for themselves in their time.
They knew they had a presence about what they were doing.
And most of them actually turned somewhat reluctantly to revolution.
Now, the fact is, on the straight, to use current parlance, the realpolitik side, Rush, the manner in which Franklin in particular conducted policy in a way that assisted or helped to persuade the British to expel the French from what is now Canada,
and then enlisted the French to help the Americans expel the British from America, and then...
How these people, these colonists, managed to manipulate the two greatest powers in the world was a straight matter of extreme cunning that goes far beyond merely touting the virtues of human liberty.
I mean, the fact is the average American citizen had no more rights than the average British citizen.
So that war wasn't conducted entirely on that basis.
But since it was held that the monarchy was abusive and a republic would not be, it was presented that way, and it was plausibly presented that way.
And it's not for me to say whether Franklin or any of the rest of them had any divine inspiration.
Franklin himself was not a particularly religious man, and neither were most of the founders.
But however their inspiration was derived, it wasn't just pounding the table on behalf of human liberty.
They were cunning operators.
So when you get great cleverness supplemented by unimpeachable principle, you get an unbeatable combination if you've got, frankly, if you've got enough armed men to make it so.
That was fascinating.
Great cleverness supplemented by unimpeachable principle.
But in talking about the founders, I've asked constitutional scholars if, in their opinion, the founders and the authors of the Constitution had any idea what they were opening up, that their document would be subject to never-ending debate, court cases and trials forever.
And he said they knew exactly what they were doing.
And it's been copied in other countries, exactly.
But they knew exactly what they were doing.
They weren't just building something for themselves and for their time.
They had a presence about what they were doing.
It was a fascinating interview.
I may play for you one more clip from this.
I got to take a brief time out now.
Again, the title of his book is The Flight of the Eagle, The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Lieutenants to World Leadership.
If you've ever wondered how it happened, that's what Mr. Black here has endeavored to research and explain.
Should also mention he's been one of Canada's best-known financiers for 35 years, and he's a member of the British House of Lords.
And he had to renounce his Canadian citizenship.
The Canadian prime minister at the time, Jean Cretchin, refused to allow Black to remain a Canadian citizen if he was going to accept British peerage.
So he's now Lord Black of Cross Harbor.
Even though he still lives in Canada, I believe Toronto, maybe Montreal, regardless.
Brief timeout.
We'll be back and continue in mere moments.
Don't go away.
You Googled it, and it's true?
And just because you Googled it and it's true, you think it's...
All right, okay.
Hi, greetings back.
Welcome back and greetings.
Rush Limbaugh to EIB Network.
I'm going to play one more Conrad Black soundbite from the newsletter interview yesterday, even though I'm running a great professional risk here, cannibalizing an interview that will be published, upcoming issue of the Limbaugh Letter.
By the way, Conrad wrote this book while incarcerated.
Most of the book he wrote while in prison here in Florida for 42 months on crimes.
He was tried in Chicago.
He was incarcerated on crimes later vacated, the vast majority of which were vacated by the Supreme Court.
Here's the next bit.
It's the last one I'm going to play.
Given your knowledge of this country, have we ever, and I want, because everybody's historical perspective, most people begins with the day of their birth.
Have we ever been through what we're going through now before?
Yes, yes, and worse, in fact.
The decade running up to the Civil War was a terrible decade.
I mean, where you had the leaders of the Senate with the best will in the world, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Stephen A. Douglas, very distinguished men, but bringing in the concept of squatter sovereignty, each territory as it reached the threshold that made it eligible to become a state would decide itself if it would come in as a free state or a slave state.
So the old Missouri compromise line was scrapped, and what you had was miniature civil wars in each territory before they became a state, Kansas in particular.
And you had the Chief Justice Tommy determining with the majority of the Supreme Court that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, that an emancipated slave had no rights whatsoever, even though once emancipated he should have been just a citizen.
Rubbish, he still didn't have any rights in the Dred Scott decision.
And you elected people as president, rather like the more recent selection of some judges, where there's just no paper trail on them, so you couldn't tell what they thought of abortion or something.
Well, you know, in President Fillmore and President Pierce and President Buchanan, now Fillmore wasn't elected.
He became president when President Taylor died.
But these were people who had no track record at all in terms of what they actually thought of how to manage the slavery issue and keep the country together.
And they were completely ineffectual leaders.
And I have to say, I don't think the last three presidents have been particularly good presidents.
I could put it more strongly in the case of one or two of them.
But they aren't like those three.
And it isn't as dismal an era.
And it has to be said that there were some serious mistakes made in the 20s, too.
I mean, you know, you had this farce of prohibition.
You had the mistake of isolationism.
You know, it's slamming the gate on immigration.
And then you had the toleration of the stock market bubble that was instrumental in producing the greatest economic depression in world history.
And President Hoover, though he was a very brilliant man in many ways and a fine man, produced an economic policy that was the worst that could have been found, raising taxes, shrinking the money supply, and raising tariffs.
And so those were much more dangerous eras.
When FDR was inaugurated, every bank in the country was closed, except in two states where withdrawals were confined to $10.
The stock exchanges, commodity exchanges were closed.
The financial system collapsed.
That is Conrad Black.
And it's from the interview that I did yesterday for the next initial limbo letter on his book, The Flight of the Eagle: Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership.
And he was there talking about an era in a decade prior to the Civil War, which in his mind was worse than what we're going through today, which was the question I'd asked.
We'll be back, friends.
Stay with us.
By the way, don't be misled, ladies and gentlemen.
Mr. Black in the interview acknowledges that the United States is in a serious period of decline.
Don't be fooled by that previous answer.
And it turns out that you can eat as much salt as you want now.
It doesn't matter.
Oh, yeah.
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