Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 podcast.
You know, folks, I'm beginning to wonder here, everybody's always talking about outsourcing.
Is it maybe time to outsource Congress?
This is embarrassing to watch this.
I don't care what you think about the port deal.
This is just embarrassing.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome to the award-winning thrill packed rush limbaugh program here on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Three full hours of broadcast excellence today.
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I am not kidding.
Outsource Congress.
They've gone from playing politics, and then they go to panic, then they go to a stampede.
Now it's a lynch mob.
It is just a lynch mob, and the and the Democrats and Republicans are in a race here to see who can be more opposed to the port deal, the best and the fastest.
And in this contest, the Republicans have won.
And they're sitting there beating their chests like a bunch of Tarzans.
And everybody's watching this.
And in the meantime, Dubai is getting irritated.
Dubai is threatening retaliation against American strategic and commercial interests.
If Washington blocks its uh takeover of operations at several U.S. ports, as the House Appropriations Committee yesterday marked up legislation to kill the port deal.
The UAE let it be known that it's preparing to hit back hard if necessary.
Close uh source close to the deal said members of Dubai's royal family are furious at the hostility, both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have shown toward the deal.
They're saying, Oh, all we've done for you guys, all our purchases, we'll stop it.
We'll just yank it.
Retaliation from the UAE.
It could come against uh lucrative deals with aircraft maker Boeing, and by curtailing the docking of hundreds of American ships, including those from the Navy each year, and it's port.
It's uh over there.
It's uh not clear how much of Dubai's behind the scenes anger would be followed up by action, but Boeing has made aware of the threat, is already reporting uh reportedly lobbying to save the ports deal.
The Emirates Group Airline will decide later this year whether it'll buy Boeing's new 787 Dreamlighter or its competitor, the Airbus A350.
The airline last fall placed an order uh worth seven uh actually nine point seven billion for 42 Boeing 777s, making Dubai Boeing's biggest 77 uh 777 customer.
The uh the Sheiknum, the United Arab Emirates, may buy as many as 50 wide-body 787s from Boeing and Airbus during the next four years, according to um Aerospace Enterprise officials.
So they're mad over there, and I don't understand it.
I mean, I do understand it.
I don't blame them being mad about this.
Uh uh, and they've also said that if this if this doesn't, if this doesn't go through, the days of us helping you in the war on terror are also over.
They're sitting there and they don't understand this.
They probably understand it to uh to a point.
Let's go to the audio tape.
The audio tape will set this up.
This is after the Senate appropriations committee vote on the Dubai.
They didn't even wait for the 45 days, and the 45 days supposed to have a uh much further scrutiny of the port deal.
Find out exactly uh what it is, find out any risks involved.
They didn't even wait for the 45 days, and this is purely because it's an election year.
The substance of this issue is not being dealt with.
Emotionalism, rampant emotionalism and fear is what's driving this, and not fear of terrorism.
Fear of elections coming up in November of this year.
The the Republicans on in both the Senate and the House, just paranoid that the Democrats got out in front of them on this on a on a on a national security issue, and I gave them the recipe for smoking the Democrats on.
The Democrats are not concerned about national security.
The Democrats are doing what they always do.
They're posturing, they're making it up.
They're camouflaging themselves as a way to smoke them out on this and expose them for who they are.
Nope, don't have time for that.
We got to get out in front of them now.
We got to show, and we got constituents out there.
I know you've got constituents out there.
Well, I mean, nobody's thinking about this.
Everybody's just reacting to it.
I've never seen something as as reactionary as this.
So the audio soundbites will tell you the tale.
This is Jerry Lewis.
After the uh uh House Appropriations Committee vote on the Dubai ports, the chairman of the committee, Jerry Lewis, he's a Republican from California made this announcement.
This is a national security issue.
This is a national security bill.
We want to make sure that the security of our ports is in America's hands.
And uh so with that uh they sent a message to the Republicans today are telling the White House President Bush this deal isn't gonna happen.
We're gonna reject this deal.
We don't want any part of this deal.
They're up there sending messages back and forth, even now, those are the news alerts that are flying around even as we as we speak.
So the Democrats yesterday, they got all bent out of shape because they got outmaneuvered by somebody named Jerry Lewis.
They got outmaneuvered by the Republicans and they and and they can't stand it.
They're just fed up with this.
It's not especially the Democrats in the Senate, because they thought that they were the ones that were the face of this bill.
They were the face of the opposition.
The Democrats, and now here the Republicans had beat them in this race.
The Republicans have stolen their thunder and they're not happy about it.
We have a montage.
Chuck Schumer and Senator Dick Turbin.
We believe that a majority of senators, an overwhelming majority, would vote to end the deal.
Enough of them have said that already.
And we're not going to rest till we get a vote on this issue.
The Republican leadership in the United States Senate does not want to face a vote on the Dubai port deal.
Not this afternoon, not this evening, not tomorrow, maybe not ever, but they will.
They're going to be held accountable to the American people.
Yeah, the Senate is here's Durban threatening other senators.
They don't want to vote him, but we're going to make them vote because we're going to be accountable to the American people.
This is just if you don't know how you're being manipulated on it, if you don't know how you are being railroaded on this, if you don't know how poorly you are being represented in in all of this.
I mean, there's a Here, we got to monetize Dingy Harry.
Dingy Harry had to get in here.
He had to compliment Schumer.
He had to say to Chuck Schumer, you, you are the face.
You are the face of Dubai port deal opposite.
If you hear this stuff, you understand what this is really all about.
My friend from New York, who has been out front on this issue from the very beginning.
Senator Schumer came to the floor and offered an amendment which was going to be offered.
And his having been out in front, I'm glad that he's the he's the personality.
He's the he's the face of this amendment.
He deserves it.
He was the first one to notice this issue.
Stop the thing.
Stop the do you see what this is about?
Whoa, who is Jerry Lewis?
Chuck Schumer is the guy that made this happen.
He's the face of the bill.
He was the first one out there.
He's the one that called everybody's attention.
Chuck Schumer's the hero in this bill, and I, Dingy Harry, I'm going to make sure that it's Democrats who are the face of victory in opposing the port deal and sinking it.
Here's the rest of Dingy Harry's uh little soundbite.
Press and uh anywhere else.
So I I admire the work that he's done on this issue.
We, Mr. President, can't turn over control of these ports to a foreign country.
That's what this is.
This isn't a foreign company, it's a foreign country.
We stand ready to vote on this port matter after a very short debate.
Okay, now once these guys start talking, it you know who's not far behind, and that's John McCain.
John McCain had to get in on this, and he's all upset that the Senate is moving so fast on this.
He says it's the Senate supposed to be the saucer that cools the drink, cools the coffee.
Here's his bite.
What I saw happen yesterday and what I've seen transpire here makes me very, very concerned, and an even to a degree saddened at the way that the Senate has degenerated and deteriorated from an atmosphere of a willingness to address issues in the fashion that the Senate has to,
which has to do with sitting down, discussing, agreeing, and and moving forward.
We are not the other body.
I see this institution deteriorating and degenerating to a point where sometimes I am not only embarrassed, but sometimes a little ashamed.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, I have to agree with Senator McKay.
I'm ashamed of all of them.
The House side, too, that's what he means by the other body.
Uh and and it's because this is pure politics, they're not paying attention to any ancillary ramifications of this.
They're not the effect it will have on uh on Dubai, the effect it will have on perhaps losing an ally, the effect it will have on the war on terror.
It's just especially if you've taken the time, which I don't think these people have even yet done.
If you take the time to look at the deal, if you take the time to actually look at what's going to be the end result, we are not going to have, as Dingy Harry lied, a foreign country running our ports.
It's terminals in the ports.
It's nothing like what they are saying it's going to be, and everybody is just having their fear ginned up and ratcheted up here.
Uh all for the the selfish concerns of election year politics.
And the Republicans are just as guilty as the Democrats.
Republicans, in a way, I mean, the Democrats were out front on this.
They were going nuts on it first.
The Republicans in a race...
If you want to find something good, and I always try to find something good in everything, folks, because there always is something good to find.
Something good to find is the Republicans have turned the tables on the Democrats, and if...
If there is any uh uh victory, if there is anything to be gained in this, uh, it is this little political maneuver that uh they've pulled off, which has demonstrated clearly that they were the ones.
The Republican Party's not gonna sit here and stand for our ports to be overrun by a bunch of terrorists.
We're just not gonna put up with it.
Uh one more uh one more McCain, and we'll take a break.
Um this speaks for itself, and if it doesn't, I'll translate it for you.
The senator from New York came to the floor and said, and I quote, just before the vote, reserving to the right to object, because he was reserving the right to object to uh a unanimous consent agreement, as we do business here by unanimous agreement, before we set it aside on this amendment.
On this amendment, on this amendment.
That was his statement.
It's part of the record.
And then, when he was recognized, he reached into his pocket, reached into his pocket, and pulled out an amendment.
Now, Mr. President, it is the right of every senator under the rules to propose an amendment.
It is not the right of every senator to mislead his colleagues.
It is not the right of every senator.
How can we do business?
How can we do business on this floor if our colleagues mislead us?
All right.
So what McCain is saying here is that uh Schumer has committed a crime against the Senate that he lied in order to sneak in his amendment.
And McCain is steamed.
This is from the floor of the Senate this morning.
The amendment uh deals with lobbying and and uh uh other things.
They're sneaking the port deal thing in a so in a in a in a deal uh bill that has to do with lobbying and gifts and and uh and all that sort of stuff.
And this is Schumer just basically trying to get his port deal rammed through the Senate without the speed or the deliberateness and the deliberations and the uh the the reason, the analysis that uh Senator McCain uh says the Senate is so well known for.
Uh we'll have Schumer's reaction to this when we come back.
Sit tight, folks, the EIB network rolls on.
By the way, NASA, big announcement this afternoon, two o'clock, but Matt Drudge obviously knows somebody at NASA and got their whole statement.
It's on his website.
Apparently there's a moon up there, many moons circling around Saturn, and they found some uh liquid water on a moon in Saturn.
Everybody say, whoa, how can this be?
It's frigid up there.
Apparently they think this is what they found.
They've got a they got a satellite, drive-by satellite up there taking pictures, and they think they see uh old faithful type geysers uh in this in this moon up and uh up on Saturn.
Uh uh, I don't who knows.
Uh well, uh I no, I don't think there are any endangered species up there.
I I think we're probably here at the very beginning of uh of something up there.
I I think what we should do is uh uh find a way to immediately get a bunch of SUVs and air-conditioned buildings up there and warm that place up.
Hi, welcome back.
America's anchor man L. Rushball, talent on lawn from God, NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water, Liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon insulatus.
The uh or in yeah, that have to be how it's pronounced.
The uh rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many questions about the mysterious moon.
Well, one thing we've learned, folks, where there's water, there are ports.
And where there are ports, there are terrorists and longshoremen.
Here's Chuck Schumer's response to the assertion by Senator McCain that he's basically thwarting the procedures of the Senate.
Many of us have come to the conclusion, the same conclusion that Jerry Lewis in the House came to, and I guess 62 of the 64 appropriations members, bipartisan in the House appropriations committee came to that this deal should be stopped.
We don't have the luxury of waiting.
That appropriations bill may not get over here till April, the supplemental.
It may not be voted on till May.
The deal will be consummated and done, and then they'll say you can't undo it.
There'll be constitutional and legal problems.
We have to act now.
Our job, my job, as I represent 19 million New Yorkers, is to see that they're secure above all.
I believe that we must vote on this amendment.
secure your job as you represent New Yorkers is to see that they're secure.
Well, welcome to the party.
Because for the last three or four years, I haven't gotten the impression that the Democrats care a whit about that.
And I don't think that they care about it in this.
I don't think that has a thing to do with it, Senator.
Now you can say it does, and I know you will continue to.
But it doesn't have a thing to do with it.
Now I just checked my email.
And I got, I know, I know you people are mad at me about this.
I know you're you you're you're and I understand why.
Go ahead.
Be mad at me.
Guy writes in and he says, well, you know, you can't have it both ways.
You sit there and attack members of Congress for not doing what we want them to do and then are doing what they...
What we want them to do, because the polls are 80% against this.
Can't have it both ways, Rush.
Uh I'm not trying to have it anyway or both.
I'm just I'm just suggesting to you that the reason all this is happening is not what you think it is.
The reason all this is happening is fear.
Election year politics.
This is gutlessness.
This is not courageous.
What you're watching is not courageous.
It's the easiest thing in the world for these guys to do.
What Peter King has done, he's the Long Island Congressman who accused me of being in the tank for the Bush administration and said that I was the reason that there was any uh slowdown in uh in opposition to this bill.
Blame me for that.
In the House, they're gonna tie this bill to an amendment or make it an amendment to a bill that funds the troops.
So they're gonna force Bush to choose you want the tr you want you want the port deal, or do you want to fund the troops in the uh Iraq and Afghanistan theaters.
Uh, I mean.
This is just so it's irrational.
All the while they think they're being gut uh courageous and and and uh showing a lot of guts.
I think it's just the exact opposite.
Barbara, Barbara Boxer to listen to this.
We have to stop.
We have to stop this deal from going forward.
Listen, that deal was greased.
That deal was greased.
The president's off for it.
He said he didn't know anything about it, but 50 seconds later he was all for it.
This is our only chance today, unless there's an agreement to have a standalone bill.
They're arguing here about the Schumer amendment that he snuck in there, and that's what got McCain all peed off uh uh yeah, teed off.
And uh it was close.
And here's Boxer said the deal was greased.
Yeah, let me tell you who greased it.
Bill Clinton greased the deal.
That still isn't being discussed in all this.
Bill Clinton is the guy, George Bush's brother, who's out there lobbying for this deal while his wife is out there uh uh pontificating against it, all the while their family is financially enriched because of the payments Clinton's getting as an unregistered agent or lobbyist for a foreign concern.
He hadn't even done that.
That's required by law.
He's out There advising these guys.
He's the one that suggests you call them up.
In fact, if I were Dubai, I'd I'd sue Clinton for uh malpractice.
Because he told him, hey, you go in and propose a 45 day wait.
Dubai said, okay, well, we'll do a 45-day one.
Now, the 45-day wait has been used by Clinton's well, the Republicans and Clinton's own party to sabotage the deal.
They didn't have to do this, uh, but they did, trying to calm everybody's uh concerns about this.
Maxine Waters uh even weighs in on this, and we'll let you hear what she has to say about it.
We come back from our bottom of the hour break.
We've got more on girls gone wild, uh uh the spring break.
We had that discussion yesterday, and lots of stuff in the stacks.
It's not gonna all be ports deal stuff, but uh they had to lead off the program with it.
We will continue right after this.
Learn it, love it, live it.
Fired up, revved up, the top of my game behind the golden EIB microphone today here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
All right.
Now, to show you how it's it's it's it's it's the this disintegrating out there, particularly on the Democrat side.
This on C-SPAN's Washington Journal today.
Uh Maxine Waters was the guest, and this is what she said about the port deal.
We thought that after 9-11, this president who made uh the cornerstone of his presidency, the war on terrorism, really was on top of uh what uh could be done to secure the homeland.
Don't forget, he led the leadership on creating the homeland um department uh and uh we started to live under orange and yellow and red uh signals uh and alerts uh because this president uh said that we had to be on top of it.
And I know you feel duped uh to find out that even after 9-11, and supposedly lessons learned, here we are in the middle of negotiating a contract uh with the country uh that is suspect.
What what what what is she saying?
Is she almost like a that that 9-11 never really happened, that Bush just made that up and it's a trick.
I can't follow this anymore.
All right, here's uh let's go to the phones of Hartford, Connecticut.
Um listen, I I'm not a person prone to violence, so I I needed you to calm me down before I do something I'm gonna regret.
Peter King needs to put on a flat jacket and go to Baghdad and explain to my friends and relatives who are in uniform why he painted our president, our commander-in-chief, into a corner and forced him into a position where in order to keep his word to the American people and veto anything that's got the port deal attached to it, uh, he's gonna have to pull out the rug from underneath our men and women in uniform.
Peter King needs to haul his greasy butt over to Baghdad and explain that to my friends and relatives who are getting shot at every day why he deliberately tried to get the funding pulled out from under them.
I think I think uh Peter King, thanks thanks, uh Neil, very very uh well said in a highly trained uh broadcast specialist way.
I think uh uh Peter King feels rather heroic today.
Uh I mean, just it look.
An honest analysis of what he did, you'd have to say smart.
I mean he got what he wanted.
This is uh the way our system works, what he did.
The best way to explain this.
Um the House Appropriations Committee voted 62 to 2 yesterday to approve and amendment uh to block the deal.
And to it that this amendment is to an emergency spending bill that would fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and additional hurricane Katrina relief.
That bill expected to be considered on the House floor next week, and of course it will pass overwhelmingly, because it's primarily a deal to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and more Hurricane Katrina aid.
Nobody's gonna vote against that.
And an amendment to that bill is what Peter King put in there, uh saying that there will not be any Dubai ports deal.
And that's why King's running around bragging, and he said, hey, the president's got to make up his mind here.
He wants the port deal, or he wants to support the troops.
So um, I mean, to to people who uh oppose the port deal, you gotta this is a great maneuver.
This is a fabulous parliamentary maneuver, brilliant thinking and so forth.
The White House is saying, Oh, yeah, well, uh, we're not retracting our veto threat.
We might we might still veto it.
Where will you guys be?
But they you know, you get into showdowns like this, and it could be great entertainment and great fun, but there's a lot at stake.
But it's the it as I continue to say, folks, it's the motivations behind this that that just really really bug me.
Really, really do.
This is this the the way these people are acting is like kids.
It's is they're they're just totally emotionally, totally it's like it's like dealing with liberals all over the place.
Here, we have a couple Peter King sound bites.
Last night he was on CNN with uh Wolf Blitzer.
Wolf said, is it too late to find some sort of compromise?
This notion of a subsidiary, an American subsidiary, perhaps perhaps taking charge of these six ports.
Uh is that something that you still think could be worked out?
That train has left the station.
And I think that uh uh Dubai Ports was too c uh too reluctant and too slow to take advantage of that.
Uh I got the impression that the White House didn't realize until the last uh one or two days how severe this issue was, and there's no way I see the House changing its mind on this issue.
I really think that uh DPW was was really too slow to move.
They were in a way arrogant, they were locked in, they did not have any comprehension of the political realities, nor do they understand the legitimate concerns that the American people had.
How do you know?
You did if you didn't there was a 45-day period, we're in it now, where you're supposed to address all of that.
Uh what do you mean they're too slow to move?
What are they supposed to do?
Come up to Capitol Hill and bear all to you guys?
I mean, th they were up there yesterday testifying that the the CEO of the outfit of DPW.
And he wasn't wearing a headdress or a turban, and they didn't have an Arab name.
But I know that's just a front.
I know that's just they're just trying to tease us.
Fool us.
Actually, he had a white guy, white hair and everything as the CEO.
Looked as respectable as Marlon Perkins did back in the uh Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom days.
You remember those, Rachel?
Rachel doesn't, she's too young.
Do you remember those days, uh, Brian?
I don't remember those days.
Um more from Peter King.
Well, really, what are they supposed to do?
Forty five-day wait?
That 45-day wait was used as a as a race by the Republicans against the Democrats to see who could cross the finish line first.
I stopped the port deal.
I did notice me, I stopped.
You got Chuck Schumer of the.
No, no, I'm the face of the port deal.
I was the first to say it was a bad deal.
Well, too late because I'm Jerry Lewis, and I got the votes before you guys did in the Senate, so the Republicans stopped the deal.
No lie that you wouldn't have done it, says Schumer if it weren't for me.
And Dingy Harry gets in here.
That's right.
Senator Schumer should be the face of this opposition.
We men in the Senate must and McCain's saying, Slow down.
It's too late.
There's uh Peter King said trains left the station.
So Wolf said, well, what about the White House threat?
The uh threat directly from the president early on.
He boldly came out and said, I will veto any such legislation that would torpedo this deal.
You think he still would veto uh legislation?
I don't see how he can, because this amendment is going to be part of the uh supplemental appropriation which pays for the war in Iraq.
I don't see how the President of the United States, as commander-in-chief, can veto the appropriation that he needs for the war to be carried on.
So it's gonna be very difficult.
I I don't see how the president can do it, because in effect, he would be putting uh the United Arab Emirates before the welfare of the American troops, and this president I know does not want to do that.
So let's go to Hardball last night.
Chris Matthews talking to uh Christopher Hitchens.
And uh the what's the question?
So when we put our flags and our shipping, uh we were doing what what what's the relevance to all this, Chris?
So sad to see these black chauvinists at the top of the show.
And xenophobes, if it matters, this is not an Arab company.
It's not run by a Rabs, all this paranoid horror-show talk you get all the time.
It's a multinational effort, probably run by the United Kingdom, probably by others.
It's just it's really using uh the most abject uh lowest propaganda uh for the cheapest purposes.
And as for national security, don't I mean, don't start.
This is no none of the people making these asinine remarks know or care anything about national security.
Well, they may care about it, but I agree with them.
It's this is not what this is about.
Uh I think they they may know about national security, but the he what he knows is the Democrats haven't cared a whit about national security since the Iraq War started.
And it really intensified uh in the last year.
Their obvious lack of concern about national security.
That's why they don't win elections.
Everybody knows they can't be trusted with it.
So uh you know, but he's he's he's exactly right.
That's not what this is about.
Now another guest was on this show defending the Democrats um uh uh for taking advantage of an opportunity here, and Hitchin said, Yeah, it's called opportunism.
The other guest is the uh Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, uh, and uh he was asked to respond to what you just uh heard Hitchens say.
Well, you know, I don't think you can blame the Democrats for kind of piling on here.
I mean, it's an opportunity.
Well, you use the opportunities you have if you're in the condition that the Democratic Party is in by school.
That's called opportunism, not to interrupt you.
But the charts called opportunities It's called opportunism, and what he means by that is that there's no real statesmanship going on here.
It's just political opportunities.
Election year politics is what it is.
Anyway, uh Jeff in Indianapolis, I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Yeah, uh, thank you for making my car.
It's kind of strange that you you focusing on how much money Bill Clinton took from uh the people in Dubai.
Well, let's just remember that there's Republican former Republican Senator Bob Doe hi as a lobbyist for that group to lobby the deal on Capitol Hill.
Yeah.
See, I mean, it's people on both sides.
Well, I think Bob Dole's probably a registered lobbyist.
Bill Clinton isn't.
Bill Clinton was doing it on the sly, under the table, so to this, maybe under the bed.
Who knows where it was going on?
The point is he's got a wife in the Senate who is voting and commenting and doing all kinds of things on this, and she is essentially taking the same money that Clinton's getting because they're a family.
It has to be reported on her financial disclosure forms.
But it was it was uh Clinton agrees the deal if anybody did.
I'm I'm not saying it disqualifies the deal.
I'm just saying you let anybody else do what Clinton is doing in the exact same circumstances, and it would be the headlines of this story.
Right along with the so-called security threat that is posed by all this.
Have you seen on Drudge the uh book sales?
Uh latest book sales out there by uh fr from Nielsen.
The Carville Bagala book called Take It Back since January has sold seventeen thousand seven hundred and thirty-four copies.
I my two books sold that many an hour.
Uh seventeenth have you seen the cover of this book?
Have you seen the c you know uh uh I know both these guys, but um people that don't might go look in a bookstore and look at that, and you see that picture of the cover of those two guys, and then the title take it back, and they you know, bu book buyers may be having a broke back moment when they look at that.
I mean, here's supposedly two titans of the Democratic Party dressed in jeans and open something something and they don't look friendly.
Look, they they look irritated or or agitated.
Which is I know normal state, but at least you might want to fake it.
You know, when you want smiling face on a cover of your book so people can cour Well, I think well, I think maybe well, maybe they are smiling, we just can't tell.
That let's see.
This this uh liberal blogette, uh blogette babe, uh wonket.
Anna Marie Call that the liberal blogs think this is just she and this daily cause, they're just the biggest things under her book um uh has sold five thousand three hundred and eighty-three copies, and I think her book was released late last year.
And this um the the the vice president, vice mayor of Cooksville, this uh guy that runs the Daily Cause uh has sold two hundred and fifty-three copies of the books called No, two hundred and fifty-three.
Uh it's called Crashing the Gate.
Now, he says, this is unfair.
My book hasn't even been released.
There were fifty-one hundred um uh pre-sold.
So it but the Nielsen numbers as of now two hundred and fifty-three copies sold.
So you got two bloggers, combined sales of just I mean, not even fifty, five hundred in two books.
It puts uh it it puts all that in, I think, the the proper perspective.
And then the the Carville forehead book uh speaks for itself.
Quick timeout, folks, back with much more, including your phone calls after this.
Hi, welcome back.
Nice to have you.
L. Rushbow, the EIB network.
Mike, Washington, D.C., you're next.
Nice to have you with us.
Hey, Rush, good to talk to you, man.
Thank you, sir.
Look, this this is getting insane here with the protectionism that's going on.
If you start closing off ports, then you start closing off, you talk about closing off airlines.
What next?
We start keeping foreign investors out of pretty much everything in this country.
What trucking industry, financial industry, pharmaceuticals, tech companies.
And this is getting insane.
I was watching, I think on Fox the other day, and I heard uh this guy, Ed Fulner of the Heritage Foundation talking about a book asking questions, is it the government's business to do things in legislation?
This to me is going far beyond the government's business on what this country needs.
If you started getting lawmakers telling certain companies they cannot invest in this country, that goes against the very principles that we are founded on.
No, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I mean, that's there's a there's a whole bureaucracy set up that examines all of these deals, all of these uh um opportunities that uh if foreign investors want to get in.
Last uh yesterday we learned that um the latest to come down to Pike is that the uh U.S. airline industry wants to be able to first time accept foreign investment.
Um and they're having trouble.
Uh you know, that this will never fly.
If the port deal is gonna be uh bombed out, that'll never happen on the on the same basis.
Well, I look let me be clear about something here.
Congress has every right to do all this, and there's a uh the White House is not exactly exemplified itself here.
They've not made themselves uh uh innocent in this whole thing.
They came out, I mean I think there's just too much stupidity everywhere.
There's stupidity in Congress in the way they're dealing with this, but I I sort of understand why the president came down and threw down a gauntlet.
I don't care what you do.
You can do 45-day wait, I don't care.
I'm still, you're gonna get this deal is going through.
I mean, you threw down a gauntlet.
Well, you know, the the traditional battle for power between the executive and legislative branches is a traditional part of our political system.
So the president comes out and says, screw you.
This deal is happening.
I don't care if we wait 45 days or not, I don't care what the 45 days shows up, this deal is happening.
Congress says, screw you.
You want to make sure it happens, then here's what you gotta do.
And we're gonna make sure it doesn't happen.
And so Peter King comes up with his uh with his uh with his technique.
Uh you know, and plus Congress has something very powerful on their side, and that's all of you.
I mean, the constituents of these guys are you know pounding their doors down and ringing their phones and probably jamming up their computers with email.
No to the ports deal.
So the members of Congress are flexing their muscles here when they've got the power, and this is this this is this is this is traditional.
So neither neither side here has been um exemplary.
What what what I think is uh uh something about this that really is a point to be made here is that this 45-day review period was demanded and it's being ignored.
And because of that, we're not gonna really learn what the security issues were.
We're because we're not gonna do the obviously we're not gonna do the review.
The review's just been killed.
So the whole point of having the 45 days to figure out okay, what is this really all about?
How did this happen?
Who are these people?
We're still not gonna know.
This is this is that all because the both parties are in a race to see who can be the first to cross the finish line thinking, I did, I won, I snapped the point deal, I snacked the point deal.
And I I have to also admit all the things going on out there.
I've been trying to get away from this issue, it won't go away.
Today is evidence of it.
But to think that this deal is occupying so much of what's going on in the country when there are so many other issues out there that are seemingly more important, uh relevant, timely, but it is, and I'll tell you why that is, because this is raw emotion.
And this is this is taking on the aspects of a spectator sport.
And the gladiators are up there in Capitol Hill.
The Emperor's up there in his box suite in the owner's box in the White House, and we are the spectators.
And we're watching all this as though uh it's uh an event.
Quick timeout because I'm out of time.
Back in just a second.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have details coming soon of a major, major, major breach in security at a huge and major, major United States port.