Patty Glaser, the lawyer for Rush Limbaugh, said that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s attempts to fundraise off of Limbaugh’s comments on sexual assault were “unforgivable” in an appearance on Monday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.
Glaser called the DCCC’s fundraising “just unforgivable, and it’s black and white. There needs to be no hyperbole, there needs to be no stretching. Rush’s comments were deliberately taken out of context for apparently political reasons by people who should know better. This was not an irresponsible blogger. This was a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee made up of people that we’ve elected to Congress. Shame on them.”
Hannity played a clip of Limbaugh’s comments where he said, “consent must be freely given, can be withdrawn at any time, and the absence of ‘no’ does not mean ‘yes.’ How many of you guys, in your own experience with women, have learned that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ if you know how to spot it? Let me tell you something. In this modern world, that is simply, that’s not tolerated. People aren’t even gonna try to understand that one.” Glaser then added that Limbaugh said we need to “reprogram the way we raise men.”
She also cited precedent that taking words out of context can be considered defamation, and that even though Limbaugh is a public figure, “I have to show malice. Could it be any clearer what the malice is? I don’t even think I need to explain that to people who are watching the show. It is a deliberate effort to mischaracterize.”
Glaser claimed that “the initial response [from the DCCC], which we heard today, was accusing Rush of being the bad guy without any substantive response to, ‘wait a minute, you didn’t tell the truth. You have a responsibility to tell the truth.’ They don’t do that at all. First they said they didn’t get my letter. well, we have proof, proof, evidence that they got our letter at 11:35 this morning, Washington, DC time. I happen to be in Los Angeles. So we know that’s not true. And then they don’t deal with the substance of it by acknowledging that they never say, ‘oh, we made a mistake.’ We want an apology, we want a retraction. and we want it as broadly disseminated as the irresponsible defamation was broadly disseminated.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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