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Nov. 7, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:16
November 7, 2005, Monday, Hour #2
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Say, Brett, if you can't, find me some more of those calls from the libs who heard my opening monologue saying that Saddam ought to demand a postponement of his trial and his country back because of all the great work the Senate Democrats are doing to prove that Bush lied about him and the war.
That was a scary moment.
We got one of those calls in the last hour.
Greetings, my friends.
Welcome back.
Great to have you.
El Rushbo and the EIB network.
And the Ditto Cam is on.
It'll be on for the remainder of the program at www.rushlimbaugh.com.
Also, the Rush DVD, the Rush on Broadway DVD, two hours plus of the one-night sold-out performance on Broadway back in October, finally available.
It's in the EIB store as of today, and it's at $19.95, and all of the net proceeds will go to the American Red Cross.
And unlike the nation, we, ladies and gentlemen, are taking no profit on this charitable enterprise of ours.
There are net costs, and once those are covered, I think the net cost, as I look at the, I did the breakdown the other day, the DVD is $19.95, and the net costs are about $18.
I'm just kidding.
I wanted to see the reaction of the staff.
The net costs are pretty low in here.
It's just the raw materials for the DVD.
And people donated their time putting this together because it is a charitable event.
So quite a lot of the $19.95 will go to the American Red Cross.
And it's up now at the EIB store.
And that's part of the free side of rushlimbaugh.com.
You don't have to be a subscriber to get in there.
But literally, hundreds of thousands have been demanding this DVD since the day after the performance.
And it's now up.
We've got a great cover art on it.
It's real good looking.
And you get a great value here because it is over two hours in length.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, is 800-282-2882.
The email address rush at EIBnet.com.
Let me grab this call from Santa Cruz very quickly because it deals with something else about the website.
Frank, I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome.
Nice to have you with us.
Hey, Maharashi.
Megadudo's from the Liberal Layback Capital of the World.
I know all about it.
I know all about it.
I've been there.
Yeah, stuck on stupid.
Hey, I just wanted to make one request that you write up that monologue, not necessarily all of it, but a short version of it that we could email around to our friends.
Put it up on your website.
There is no short version of it.
That was the version of it.
There's no one word in there that was unnecessary.
PowerPact monologue.
It will be on the website as soon as we get it transcribed.
It'll be up there tonight when we update the contents of the program.
And I'm going to issue this demand, this directive to Coco, the webmaster.
Put it on the free side so that people can have access to it.
And I can't repeat it, folks.
It's in the first hour.
And if you missed it, you'll be able to see it and read it on the website.
But basically, it is how if I were Saddam, I would basically praise and encourage the brave and courageous Democrats in the Senate for endeavoring to get to the truth behind all the lies that President Bush told about me, Saddam Hussein.
My trial is, I mean, my personality reputation have been so poisoned I can't get a fair trial.
The military that captured me didn't mirandize me.
I want to call great witnesses like Senator Durbin, Senator Kennedy, and others testify in my defense as I demand my country back.
And I want to thank and throw my towel in totally, throw my hat in with the Senate Democrats who are doing the courageous and brave work the rest of the world needs to be doing to get me my country back.
It took about 10 or 12 minutes to go through it, but it'll be there, I guarantee you.
Folks, I mentioned this last hour.
The poll here from ABC Washington Post suggests opening for change a year out from 2006 vote.
ABC News Washington Post issues polls suggesting opening for change.
I got a note from Levin this morning.
He flashed me an instant message.
He said, have you seen the media treating this debate on the TV show The West Wing last night as though it's real news?
And they were.
I didn't see the debate.
I don't watch the West Wing.
I have never seen it, but I knew they were going to do a special live performance last night featuring a candidate's debate, touching on the issues that face America today, of course.
And I'm not surprised the media is treating it as though it's a real thing.
It's like Wesley Prudence said in the Washington Times the other day.
The Democrats are so far out of it, particularly those in California, they actually think Gina Davis the president.
So television shows are their reality.
Commander-in-Chief and the West Wing are their reality for a lot of libs.
And the media is itself not dealing with reality.
The media is immersed in a false reality and a false news cycle.
And reporting today is not what is.
The reporting is what they hope happens.
News today, for the most part, is what the media hopes will happen, from the Libby trial to the Democrats' investigation of Bush lying about pre-war intelligence and all of that.
So now, to add to it, we get this story from ABC News on their website about their poll.
A year out from the 2006 midterm elections, the Democrats hold an extraordinary lead in voter preferences, but far less of an advantage in the practical elements it can take to turn out party's hopes into votes.
Leadership, anti-incumbency, and a unified theme.
This is horribly written.
Let me do this.
What does this say?
The Democrats hold an extraordinary lead in voter preferences, but far less an advantage in the practical elements it can take to turn out or to turn an out-party's hopes into.
What is it?
Okay.
They hold an extraordinary lead in voter preferences, but they don't have much of an advantage in practical elements, leadership, anti-incumbency, and a unified theme.
So what's the story then?
They're preferred on issues, but they haven't given anybody any reason to vote for them.
Something I've been telling you all along.
But they're going to look past that in this poll.
Opportunity is there for the Democrats is the story here by Gary Langer.
Capitalizing on George W. Bush's troubles.
The party has a 12-point advantage over the Republicans in trust to handle the nation's main problems.
And it leads in nine of 10 individual issues with some huge gains from three years ago.
In the 10th, Bush's trademark, handling terrorism, the Democrats are even running even.
Indeed, 55% of Americans in this poll say they'd like to see the Democrats take control of Congress in 06.
And if the election were today, registered voters would favor the Democrats in their congressional district by 52 to 37%.
And they go on with all these details.
And I'm sure that if you came across this yourself, you are tempted to go, oh, Brush, you keep telling us this isn't bad out there, but look, it's over.
And I caution you, my friends, not to fall prey to this stuff.
This is, once again, it's a poll.
We know how skewed recent samples of polls showing Bush's approval rating way, way down have been.
But in addition, a friend of mine, after seeing this poll, went and did some research and found an almost identical story from 2003.
And that story said that the Democrats had a great chance in 2004.
This is a story that's at the Democratleadership Council.org website.
Mark Penn is the DLC's pollster and the headline, The Democratic Party and the 2004 Election.
15 months from the 2004 election, President Bush appears vulnerable, presenting Democrats with a real opportunity.
But in order to take back the White House, Democrats must make inroads among suburban and middle-class families with children.
The good news is that Democrats already have a set of principles that appeal to all of these groups.
It's the new Democrat agenda.
Well, what happened to it?
It went down to a screaming defeat in 2004.
So you get this story every election year.
This is a golden opportunity for the Democrats to get back what is rightfully theirs, the running of the federal government.
It is theirs by birthright.
It is theirs by entitlement.
And we have a chance to get it back.
And they do this story every year about this time, about a year away from the next elections.
And then when the elections come and the Democrats lose, we get three months, almost straight, of stories focused on what do the Democrats have to do to get power back.
And they've been doing this since 1994.
What do the Democrats have to do to get power back?
Nobody has any idea.
If they did, there would be an agenda that we could put our finger on and start debating with them.
But they won't announce one.
They don't have the courage to.
It would send people flocking to the other side faster than anything else they could do.
We'll be right back.
Go forward.
Hi, we're back.
Great to have you kicking off a brand new week of broadcast excellence.
And let's go to Phoenix.
Rick, you're next.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hey, Rush, Mega Dittos.
How you doing?
I'm fine, sir.
Thanks.
Yeah, I got a question about Bush's poll numbers.
Hold it.
just a second.
I just saw something up there.
I can't.
I'm not going to take away your time.
Have you people seen this story about pirates attacking cruise ships?
It's not pirates.
It's off the coast of Somalia.
Who runs Somalia?
It's Al-Qaeda.
You know, why can't the, they're not insurgents.
They're not pirates.
They are terrorists.
I'm sorry for interrupting you here, but I'm getting sick and tired of this.
We don't call the terrorists in Iraq what they are.
Now these pirates and the bounding main, all of a sudden springing up out of nowhere, Somalia, anybody might think they might be Muslim terrorists instead of pirates.
And I'm sorry to take your time away, but I just saw that and I had to respond as I did.
Go ahead, Rick.
Okay, back to Bush and his poll numbers in the media.
They had him down at 30, 33, 35%, and he's tanking.
But it seems like a kind of weird dichotomy that your numbers and talk radio itself is going through the roof.
Your message is getting out.
The conservative message that Bush is behind is getting out.
So it just makes no sense that the media.
You know, I understand.
I'm glad you asked about this.
People have asked over the course of the years, Rush, why don't you run for office?
I've always said, you know, there's a huge difference in getting votes and getting listeners.
Countryside strewn with the carcasses of media figures who thought they could get elected to something.
It's a whole different ballgame.
In those polls, I mean, there's so many vagaries in these polls.
There are a lot of vagaries in radio ratings, too.
But in these polls, we already know that undersized Republican samples were used.
For example, in the Rasmussen poll, which does not use an undersized Republican sample, a poll that came out last week, Bush's approval numbers at 45%.
But let's stick with 45 or 35, 37, whatever number you want to use, in a number under 50%.
What you have to understand in there, Rick, is that there's some Republicans unhappy with the president as well.
But not for reasons that the press would have you believe as an outgrowth of their polling data.
A lot of people are unhappy with the president because he's been too friendly with Democrats.
A lot of people are unhappy with the White House because it's not retaliating.
It's not firing back at any of these attacks.
Some of the Republican dissatisfaction in the polls represents a lack of confidence in leadership up there from the administration on down.
Some of them are upset that we're not being aggressive enough in Iraq with the insurgents or the terrorists there.
There's a whole lot of reasons.
And in those polls, you don't find too many Democrats who are saying Bush is doing a great job.
In this program, for example, little-known secret is that pretty sizable element of this audience is Democrats and liberals, and they listen to it.
Listening to this program is not like voting for me to lead them.
This is an entertainment enterprise to them or an informative enterprise or educational or whatever.
So to compare, you know, how talk radio may be doing or Fox News with how the president's doing, there are too many variables there, and you cannot assume that approval of one equals approval of the other.
It just, it doesn't work that way.
My take on all these polls anyway is that not only am I taking the polls, but I think I have a reason why the president and his administration don't respond to all these things.
Let me see if I can state this as clearly as I understand it when I think it.
Many of us, all of us, are media focused.
We are media oriented.
It's how we learn what's going on.
It's how we judge how well we're doing, not just whether the media praises us, but just the overall media coverage, how they cover Democrats, how they cover Republicans.
And as media focused as we are, if we're not careful, that can become our world.
I honestly believe, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, and I don't know it.
It's a wild guess, but I honestly believe that George W. Bush does not live in the media world.
I don't think that he looks at any aspect of his job as responding to anything said in any media other than on rare occasions.
So he'll have news about a bad poll and his administration doesn't acknowledge it.
He's got the media focusing all this attention on the Democrat investigations of the pre-war intelligence and so forth or the CIA leak trial.
And Bush does not look at that and says, okay, by virtue of what the press is saying or by virtue of what's in the media, what whoever in the media is saying, be they in the media or a guest or an elected official, whoever, then I have to do this tomorrow and I have to do that tomorrow and I have to do that tomorrow.
I don't think that he, okay, they're attacking me on Wilson.
I got to attack Wilson.
That's not his world.
I really think when you're looking at George W. Bush, you're looking at somebody who gets up and goes to work every day with no thought of anything in that day being done to retaliate for what's being said about him or his administration elsewhere.
I think he's really focused on his job as he sees it.
He's really focused on accomplishing what he wants to accomplish as he sees it, not as anybody else does.
I think for people who are totally media consumed, and I'm not one of these, any chance I get like weekends, I'm gone.
You know, I am, but I'm more media focused than I wish I was.
I've often said to you, if you really want to change your life for a while, don't watch, read, or consume any news for a week.
And you will end up with an entirely different view of your country, of your life, and the world.
Because you'll be interacting with real people.
You'll be doing real things.
You will not be reacting to an agenda that is set.
Remember, folks, all media is pre-packaged by whoever it is that presents it to you.
They pre-package it just like people who sell things, package whatever it is they sell for the purpose of marketing it to you so you will buy it.
Then you add to that, is there an agenda behind it?
Is there a desire to achieve something or to persuade people?
You throw all that into the mix, and you have a presentation daily in the media.
It's amazing how similar it is in the mainstream media outlets.
As I've always said, if you miss the New York Times, no biggie, read the Washington Post.
If you can find one, have you seen the circulation figures?
Washington Post is down 4%.
All these major newspapers are losing circulation left and right.
So if you can find a newspaper, then Washington Post, read that.
If you can't find that, read USA Today.
If you can't find that, go read ELA Times.
If you can't find that, read any paper.
If you miss all those papers, watch NBC.
If you can't watch that, watch CBS.
Watch ABC.
Watch C.
And it's all the same.
In the mainstream media, it's all the same.
It's amazing how prepackaged and similar it all is.
It's amazing what the take on every story is.
It's amazing on what the lead story every night and every day in the paper is.
It's pretty much the same.
And for people that get oriented and follow that on a day-to-day basis, that becomes their world.
And I know plenty of them, being in the business I'm in, I know people whose whole world is nothing but media.
When people talk to me, it's just you see this about CBS.
You see what's going on in NBC?
You know, who the president of CBS is going to be?
The new sports guy is going to run news.
You think Bush cares about that?
You think George Bush cares that Sean McManus, who's, by the way, is Jim McKay's son.
Do you know Jim McKay?
Jim McKay's real name is McManus, the old ABC sportscaster.
That's his son, Sean McManus.
CBS Sports is now going to run CBS News.
Do you think Bush cares about that?
Do you think Bush watches any of these Sunday shows and cares what Fareed Zakaria says?
Or anything?
No, it's not what he does.
And he doesn't orient his daily agenda of his job around reacting to that stuff so as to change it or to do away with it or to improve it or what have you.
I think he's insulated from it.
And I think it's, if I'm right, I think he's pretty healthy.
People are trying to write stories, but he's discombobulated and he's out of sorts and he doesn't seem to be.
I don't think he's, don't misunderstand.
I'm not saying he's not upset at things that are happening.
I'm sure he's not happy with the CIA leak probe and all that and what happened to Scooter Libby.
I'm not saying that he's able to totally divorce himself from it.
But I'm trying to be more specific in a sense that so many people lives revolve around the injustices or the outrages or the good things, whatever, that they see day to day in the media.
And you get to the point after doing this long enough, you think everybody's world is that.
And when somebody lives a life that is not, and you think they should be like the president, and you see that they don't react or live their lives in that way, you scratch your head and say, well, how can they miss this?
Why aren't they retaliating?
Why aren't they doing this?
And I don't think Bush looks at his job as retaliating against the media, or I don't think he looks at his job as having an agenda battle with the media.
He looks at his job as however it is he defines it.
He's going to set about doing it every day.
So that's, I think, the biggest way to explain a number of the questions people have about the behavior of this administration.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Podcasting Network.
Talent on loan from God.
Back to the phone, South Windsor, Connecticut.
George, you're next.
Great to have you with us, sir.
Hey, Rush America's Anchorman Dittos.
Thank you, sir.
Well, I guess to your point earlier, the media hasn't covered much on this Paris situation with the Muslims.
I think, and I wanted to get your comment on it, I think this is more of what's going to happen in that area in Europe because it's happening in Denmark, some car fires.
So I wanted to get your points on that.
And also, you have something in common with T.O. now.
You both commented on McNabb's performance and have to take consequences, I guess.
I've been waiting for this.
I've been waiting for somebody bring up Terrell Lowens and Donovan McNabb, but I didn't think of that.
Yeah, I guess you might have a point.
Well, more on that some other time.
But after the stuff in Paris, look, there's a lot going on here.
Among the things going on, copycat rioters around Europe are springing up as well.
Now, I think that some of these copycats are not just copycats.
Who is it?
Newsweek magazine has a story.
Will the riots swell the ranks of jihadists in Europe?
Swell the ranks?
Will the riots swell the ranks of jihadists in Europe?
They don't need to be swelled.
They're plenty stocked.
As it is, that's not the right question.
Will these riots inspire more riots by the jihadists in Europe?
You know, one of the dirty little secrets, what they're burning, a thousand cars a night or 1,400 cars a night now, and the riots have spread to within the city limits of Paris.
The fires are raging.
And the French, good old French, the cops are still ordered not to shoot back.
You know, it's just a question of how long it's going to be before the French surrender.
But before this, in these little poor neighborhoods, there was, I think, a story as 100 cars a night being burned.
You stop it for how long?
I mean, it wouldn't take long to go through every car in a neighborhood if you're burning 100 of them a night.
These are suburbs, 20 suburbs around Paris.
Here's another dirty little secret.
Can you tell me, ladies and gentlemen, after Israel in the United States, the nation in the world with the largest Jewish population, it is France.
It is no accident that these militant Islamists, many of them from Africa, Algeria, are immigrating to France.
I think it's easy to have Shadden Freud here, Shadden Freud taking pleasure in the misery of others, taking delight in the misery of others.
But it's hard not to have that here.
And the French, of course, thought that they had purchased an insurance policy against all of this by standing up for Saddam and against the United States.
And they're finding out that it didn't help them at all.
And they're finding out that they're not prepared to deal with this in any way.
And I look at these events and, you know, knock on wood, they haven't happened here.
They have not started happening here.
One of the things that we noted last week is that in much of Europe, what's happening here is that the second and third generations of previous immigrants happen to be the ones causing all the trouble.
Great Britain.
It is the kids, the offspring of long ago immigrants who came for different reasons.
But now these kids, you know how many mosques there are in these countries where there are imams that are able to do what they do with Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and take the young skulls full of mush and fill them with all this.
And it doesn't take much to light these fires.
And really all it does take is a little expression of authority.
Here are these people running around committing crimes and burning cars in these suburbs.
And finally, the cops start to crack down.
And they say, oh, yeah, you want to crack down?
It's going to get even worse.
And these things are growing.
And I think a lot of leftists in the media is looking at this just like they're looking at Somalia and new pirates on the bounding main.
Isn't that clever?
Pirates.
They're terrorists.
You know who runs Somalia.
Warlords like Mohammed Farah Adid Sahib Skyhook, he of Mogadishu fame.
That's who these pirates are.
They are not insurgents in Iraq.
They are terrorists.
They are Islamic terrorists, and they're being recruited from all over by Iran and Syria.
And yet, Bush can't be right.
You have to understand what a guiding principle this is for the American left, which includes the Democratic Party in the media.
Bush cannot be right.
So what's happening in Paris is just a young bunch of ruffians, just a young bunch of street thugs who are, of course, trapped in their poverty and have no hope and have no future and are lashing out because in France you have the haves and the have-not, which of course is a joke because in France you've got nothing but pure socialism.
You don't have to work to get benefits.
You can if you want to, but it doesn't make any difference.
Have very high minimum wage.
And if you don't have a minimum wage job, you'll have a pretty high benefit unemployment rate and benefit.
So there's this France threw its lot behind socialism long, long time ago with the mistaken belief that the finer elements of humanity would rise to the cream of the crop and the surface and we would all find experimental ways to get along with one another in our differences yet side by side and so forth.
And it stems from the liberal arrogance.
The liberal arrogance is that there will be no enemies of liberals because liberals have the ability to make everybody appreciate and love them and be in awe of them.
Liberals, that's why they always think they can appease their enemies.
Why?
They won't want to attack us.
Why?
They will want us to help them rule the world.
Because we're the smart people.
We are the good people.
And it's just amazing to me when you look at world history and you find the number of liberal socialist appeasers who have been profoundly embarrassed time and time and time again.
You talk about people who are stupid rather than the brilliant elites they think they are.
They do not learn from one experience or two or a dozen.
What's the definition of insanity?
You keep repeating the same thing, hoping for a different outcome?
Under that definition, the worldwide socialist movement and left is insane.
Soviet Union, why it would have just worked if we just had, if we hadn't had corrupt people in there, if we hadn't had corrupt people, so Soviet Union would have worked.
Socialism, it's clearly the best for everybody because it doesn't choose winners.
Everybody is equal, equally miserable.
So this thing in Paris, I know it's a little too soon in France to know where it's going to go, but the signs are ominous, if you ask me.
The signs of this are really ominous because does anybody think the French can put out this fire by themselves?
Does anybody think they will?
I don't.
And well, take that back.
There are certain ways they could do it, and those are even worse than not they're going to call in the military.
The French are talking about calling in the military.
Okay, they're talking about calling in the military, and they'll keep talking about calling in the military.
If they ever do call in the military, they'll call in Lawrence of Arabia, the French Foreign Legion, call them in there to do something, and then after whatever they do, they'll apologize for it and give half the country over to the people that they just creamed and say, please forgive us or whatever.
It remains to be seen.
It is going to get is going to get out of troll.
Now it's going to spread inside the city limits of Paris.
And, you know, all these people who have accepted these promises of tranquility and peace are going to demand something to stop this.
And if they're like the liberals and socialists in this country, they're going to blame their own government.
And they're going to blame their own prosperity.
They're going to blame themselves for it rather than the people who are actually committing these crimes.
But the press is eager, depending on which what you read, the press is eager to make sure.
No, no, no, no, this is not al-Qaeda types.
Oh, no, no, no.
These are just young kids.
These are just young kids buried in their poverty, striving to be noticed, striving to right the social wrongs in an unjust world.
Blah, blah, blah.
The kind of garbage talk that makes me want to throw up.
Because Bush can't be right.
Bush can't be right, that there are terrorists all over the world and that they are gradually immigrating to free and open countries in the world for the purposes of raising hell and havoc.
No, no, Bush can't be right about that.
Because you see, in the construct of the liberal world, the terrorists are only terrorists because Bush made them that way.
There were no terrorists until Bush became president.
When Bush became president, that gave us some terrorists because they were mad that he stole the election from the Democrats in Florida.
Then when Bush was re-elected in 2004, because the voting machines in Ohio were tampered with, that created more terrorists.
Then when Bush went in to Iraq and kicked out the dictator and got rid of the rape rooms and the torture chambers and the mass murders, that created more terrorists.
So Bush has created all this terrorism.
Now, to follow suit, you almost have to blame Bush for what's happening in Paris.
And don't be surprised when that happens.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with me.
What are we up to now?
1,400 cars that have been burned in Paris?
Oh, it's up to 5,000 total.
Total, or is it 1,400 for this cycle?
1,400 of this cycle, but 5,000 since the whole phenomenon began.
When does that 5,000 predate?
Is it only 12 days ago?
I thought of the 1,400, 12 days ago.
I just read some of the BBC, and they said 1,400 in the most latest recent riotings.
My point is, 1,400 or 5,000.
We need to start a car fire count, just like the media does a body count of American soldiers in Iraq.
We need to get gleeful when we get to 1,500 cars, then start counting up to 2,000.
If it's 5,000, we get gleeful when it gets to 5,100, whatever it is.
Because I tell you what's happening over there, this is not just the burning of Paris and the burning of France.
But I will guarantee you, even if these are just ruffled French ruffians, youth, if you will, guarantee you that there are jihadists all over Europe watching the reaction to this, gauging it, and making plans based on how much easier they think it might be to get away with this kind of thing in certain countries.
You can't throw out the fact that France has the third largest Jewish population in the world after Israel and New York.
Well, America, but it's just, you can't take all these factors out.
You know, Brussels and Germany are having these incidents.
Now, there's some copycats going on out there, clearly, but you don't know if some of these copycats are made up of people with the same kind of mindset.
And I think it's just, it's a little too risky for all these people to start calling this stuff copycat now, because remember, folks, the template is set.
The news cycle is set.
It's all Bush's fault.
Bush created terrorists.
Bush started terrorism.
Bush created them by going to war and opposing them.
Liberals can, if liberals can just win this country back and just run this country, we can show the terrorists around the world we mean them no harm, just like France has been doing all these years.
Tim in Greensboro, North Carolina, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Mr. Limbaugh, it is a pleasure to speak with you, my friend.
Howard.
Hey, thanks very much.
Very well.
Thank you.
I'd like to address Schumer, what he said.
He's apparently willing to send our country into war based upon intelligence that he himself doubts.
Yeah, let's go back to the audio tape because Tim here is calling about something that we played a little while ago.
The audio soundbite is number.
I just went past it.
What number is it?
Well, now this is crazy.
I know I played it.
Where is it?
I can't find it in the number eight.
Well, I'm looking at number eight here.
No, that's.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.
I was looking because Chris Wallace is in this.
Say, hang on here a minute, Tim.
This is what he's referring to here.
This is yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace talking to Senator Schumer.
I want to play a clip from your statement back in October of 2002 when you voted to authorize the use of force.
Here it is: It is Hussein's vigorous pursuit of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons and his present and future potential support for terrorist acts in organizations that make him a danger to the people of the United States.
Senator, you read the intelligence and you came to the same conclusion the president did.
Yeah, the bottom line is I wasn't as sure of it as the president was, but I believe in a post-9-11 world, Chris, that the president does need latitude to keep our national security strong.
So what are you doing saying anything now, Senator?
If you think the president needs latitude to keep our national security strong, what are you trying to undermine it?
Well, the president cared more than I did about it.
The bottom line is I wasn't as sure of it as the president was.
All these statements come from the Senate floor debate with the Democrats demanding to get on record in a new resolution saying Saddam had nukes, Saddam had WMD, he was dangerous, and we Democrats understand it too.
You can count on us to protect the country.
And they wanted to vote that way because you have the 2002 elections coming up.
So, Tim, what is your point here about Schumer after hearing that?
Well, you know, the liberals are constantly going on about how Bush sent Kins into war to die and he lied and all this.
Well, here Schumer is apparently voting for exactly the same thing, but based upon intelligence that he's not sure about.
Furthermore, he's saying that Bush was sure, which brings him to question whether or not Bush actually lied.
On the one hand, they're saying he lied.
On the other hand, they're saying he believed the intelligence reports.
So which is it?
Did he lie?
Or did he?
No, that's an excellent question.
Schumer's answer should have been like Rockefeller's was.
Well, he lied about it.
I was as sure of it as he was because I believed him.
The president is very persuasive, and he lied.
But Schumer didn't say that.
Schumer said, well, I wasn't as sure of it as the president was.
Well, the president was sure of it.
What is he?
Sure of it or he lied.
That's a great point.
But then there are the lives of children on the line here with your uncertainty, Senator.
And, of course, Senator Schumer from the party which claims to care more about children than they do even animals.
We'll be back.
And that's saying something after this.
Go to Chicago.
David, thanks for calling.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hey, Rush, how are you?
Good, sir.
Thank you.
Excellent analysis, both on the Paris situation and on why President Bush does not respond more vigorously to his critics.
The thing that I wanted to say to you about that is in every instance that the president does not respond aggressively to his critics, whether it's about the pre-war intelligence or anything else, even though he may do it for, as you suggest, rational reasons, it's a terrible miscalculation.
He's got to get out in front and explain why his critics are wrong.
By not doing it, this fiction about pre-war intelligence being exclusive to him and not the intelligence that infected the world community and the intelligence that was given to him by a Clinton appointee, George Bennett, it takes on a life of its own.
Look at the way the Republicans behaved when Bill Clinton was president and he was going to be impeached.
Their viewpoint was that his behavior was so egregious that everybody would get it, and they didn't say anything.
Before you knew it, he was out in front of the whole thing.
Well, I know, but let me just tell you one thing, Arrange.
Time is dwindling.
And Britt Hume said either yesterday or Friday on Fox that he has heard that the White House is now making plans to retaliate and take it directly to the Democrats on this when the president gets back from this trip to Latin America.
We shall see.
But you have great points there.
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