Rush Will Match High eBay Bid on Historic Senate Smear Letter
October 15, 2007
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me cover with you the latest on the eBay auction of the Dingy Harry smear letter. Let me check it here: $45,100. The auction will last until Friday at 1 p.m., and you can go to RushLimbaugh.com and see the link there. We have a little eBay widget there on our home page, which constantly updates the number of hits and the current bid. We're getting a lot of e-mails. And, by the way, folks, I forgot to announce this on Friday. Of course, I'm going to match whatever this is. Of course, I always do. Whatever it ends up, I'm going to match the dollar figure, and I have suggested that Senator Reid and the 40 other Democrats who signed the smear letter to Mark Mays, the CEO of Clear Channel, also match the donation that's going to Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. It provides college scholarships for the children of Marines and law enforcement officials killed in action. I've suggested they should show their support for the military also by matching whatever the high bid is.
When we left here Friday afternoon the bid was at $5,500, and over the weekend it just climbed, and climbed, and climbed, and now it's at $45,100 and climbing. And we are getting -- I want to acknowledge this -- tons of e-mails from people who want to buy copies of the letter for donations to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. We are getting a huge number of e-mails from people who want us to make copies of the smear letter for sale or for auction as well. I'm talking thousands of e-mails. Because the price on eBay has gotten to the level now that a lot of people are automatically excluded, just don't have that kind of money to bid even if it does go to charity, they simply can't afford to bid for the original at this point. Now, we're considering this, but in a way different than you might think. The smear letter is an official correspondence from the United States Senate. It is on Harry Reid's official Senate majority letterhead and it was signed by 40 Senators, co-conspirators.
In the course of their working day, you've already paid for this letter. This is one of the points to be made about this. This was official Senate business, and you were not getting official Senate business done, you were getting this distraction regarding a smear of a private citizen for what you are paying these people. So you've already paid for this letter. Your taxes support these distinguished nincompoops, and there's no reason that you should be asked to pay for it twice. Why should you have to pay? This is what we're going to do: We want to raise every dollar we can for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, but unlike the libs, we're going to treat you as adults, not children who need to be told what to do. I mean I would love to see a copy of the smear letter in every household in this country. I'd like to see a copy of the smear letter magnetized to everybody's refrigerator in this country. If you have more than one refrigerator in your house like I do, then as many refrigerators you have, get as many copies of the smear letter.
So here's what we're gonna do. If you go to my website or the eBay auction page, just download it. Just download it and print it. We're going to let you have it. It may take awhile to get this up and running because I'm springing this as a surprise on the web people. But just go to my website or the eBay auction page, download the letter, it's four pages, and print it out. If you have a color printer, you'll get an exact replica. If not, you'll get a black-and-white version of it. We have reproduced it in full quality color, both places, my website and at eBay, so you can keep it as a memento. Then, if you'd like, we leave it up to you, if you want to go to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation's website we'll put a link on our website where you can get to it, it's already up there, you see the logo, and you can make a donation of whatever amount you want, five dollars, $50, $500, whatever you want to do. If you don't want to make a donation, you can't afford one, you don't have to do that. It's your letter already. You have already paid for this. You have already paid because the senators who wrote and signed this letter were doing it on official time.
We could go the other way and make this available for donations, but I want to leave that up to you. We're not going to force you to make a donation if you can't afford it or don't want to just to get a copy. I want as many copies of this letter all over the country as possible. Now, in addition, about the original, a number of people have asked about the condition of the letter. We've had it under guard, as you know, if you've been paying attention, in a Halliburton metal briefcase since its arrival and it's in the same condition that we received it. It has not been folded, and it has not been damaged in any way. It's generally pristine. There are a couple flaws in it, but I don't really consider them flaws. This is what makes the thing original, and you can see both of these flaws, by the way, if you enlarge page two of the letter at the eBay auction page. On page two there's a light blue pen park about two inches long next to the top paragraph. It's as though some senator of advancing years had a hard time holding the pen steady. Or maybe it was signed after five o'clock. We got an office pool on who made this blue streak. Our office pool money is on Senator Lautenberg at this point.
There's also, and you've probably seen this if you've looked at this any time in color, there is a small yellow smear on the paper in the left margin of page two. We think that Senator Kennedy may have been eating a hot dog when he signed. I don't know. It looks like it's a little Sharpie, a yellow Sharpie or highlighter. That's how it was when we got it, and we didn't do these things to it. Nobody has touched this. You see it as we got it. Neither of these smears -- uh, smudges, ladies and gentlemen, impede the value of the document in any way. But in the interest of full disclosure, we thought you ought to know because people have been asking about it, and it's a good question.
