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Sept. 22, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:17
September 22, 2006, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hey, folks, great to have you with us.
Fastest week in media delivers us to Friday already.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Oh, yes.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yahoo, and welcome.
Open line Friday, one of the greatest career risks taken by a major media figure in America.
That risk turning over the program to rank amateurs when we go to the phones.
That's you.
We go to the phones, you can talk about whatever you want to talk about.
Doesn't have to be the areas in which I am leading the broadcast.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-288-2, and the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
Well, I'm feeling good here today, folks.
I uh I got my uh two new Mac Pros, the uh the giant tower desktop uh uh units uh that have the new Intel chips in them, got the top of the line, dude.
Three megahertz, three gigahertz uh uh quad Xeon, two terabytes of storage space, four 500 megabyte hard drives.
And wouldn't you uh there is no battery.
Uh this is a desktop unit.
Uh plugs into the wall.
Uh and the uh the interesting thing is that I as soon as I get them delivered, they announced 750 gigabyte hard drives.
But I got two terabytes anyway.
I had to tell you the machine is wicked.
It's just it's just wicked fast.
The company, the uh excellence in broadcasting network, bought Mr. Snerdley one, but got him the stripped down version.
He didn't eat you didn't even know it was coming, did you?
He what do you have in there?
A hundred gigabyte hard drive and two uh two gig 250 to 2 gig RAM.
Yeah, I got 16 gigabytes of RAM in uh both of them.
I got one here and I got one for home, and then I have two more for when I go to New York, uh, my apartment there in the studio in New York.
But the uh I mean it's it's just it's just amazing.
The machine is just literally literally amazing.
I had them both hooked up.
I got them in here on Monday and Tuesday, and I didn't get them hooked up fully even fully operational till uh oh yesterday afternoon and last night.
So I've been having fun playing around with it.
Now also, and I shouldn't tease you with this, but I'm going to anyway.
I just received the DVD of the pilot that I shot uh for uh this potential show that uh is gonna try to sell to the Fox Network, and I can't show it to you, folks.
Uh I can't, I can't put it on the website because if I did just blow everything and it it uh just be patient and wait.
If they make any headway with this, we'll be able to show it to you.
But I got to see it today, and it's good.
If I say so, Maz, you know, I don't compliment myself much uh on this program.
I brought Dawn and Brian and uh Snerdley in here to watch it.
And Dawn's reaction is wow, that would be their worst nightmare.
It's the only hint that uh that I can give you.
But they all laughed uproariously.
Uh, and it is it's just about a 90-second thing.
Took three hours to shoot it.
It was this what we did before we went to the IHOP for breakfast uh afterwards.
That was a hoot.
It was uh it was tons of fun.
Here again, the phone number if you want to be on the uh program today, 800-282-2882.
I want to start off uh with Hugo Chavez, and then we'll move on.
There's just one more thing to do uh regarding this.
Uh and let me set the table.
As you know, Chavez went to a church in Harlem yesterday and was his usual self, called Bush an alcoholic and a sick man that he needed a psychologist.
Uh promised a whole bunch of cheap oil for the people of Harlem.
Charlie Wrangell came out and in a very timid uh manner said uh hey, hey, you don't come to our soil and do this.
Uh leave that to us.
We can criticize our president, but you can't.
Uh and it was it was uh it just a it's a it's a stop the bleeding kind of situation.
It was uh there's a huge backlash going.
In fact, I was watching Fox this morning, and they had Richard Holbrook, who's one of the he's Richard Holbrook is an example of one of the problems that we have uh in the country regarding the the distance and the gap, the separation between the elites in Washington and average people uh in the country.
Holbrook was saying, Why but why are you people of Fox even playing Chavez?
Why why why are you doing this?
I mean, to give this guy all this airtime, it's it's ridiculous.
Um Mr. Holbrook, Chavez and Ahmadinejad are what make average Americans say, what's the point of the UN?
In fact, the whole the almost everybody in the UN makes us ask, what's the point?
They come here and they bash us and they bash our president.
Um course we want to see this.
But one of the things that uh I was reminded of after the program yesterday, all these Democrats are saying you shouldn't he shouldn't be critical, he shouldn't be doing this.
Uh uh it's not his job isn't to stay in his own country and do this and so forth.
Remember, June 22nd, 2005, at a fundraiser in New York City for the Conservative Party of New York State, Carl Rove made a speech.
And here's a portion of what he said.
Conservatives saw the savagery of 9-11 and the attacks and prepared for war.
Liberals saw the savagery of the 9 11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding to our attackers.
Can you imagine?
Do you know what the outrage was to that?
That's what I want to show you.
Rove says this about the Democrats, the Democrats went nuts.
We're gonna play that for you here in just a second.
But as you listen to it, keep in mind that when Chavez says what he said, the response was timid.
It was basically from Pelosi and Wrangell, Bill Delahunt, and Tom Harkin defended for the most part Chavez and said, Hey, you know, it's Bush's fault.
Bush is the one that caused all this.
Bush, Bush has has caused the loss of prestige to the country around the world.
Now you just heard what Rove said.
Here's a montage of Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer, Frank Lautenberg, Hillary Clinton, and Carl Levin, along with John Kerry, an outraged response that the Democrats had to rove.
For him to try to exploit 9-11 for political purposes, once again, just shows you how desperate they are.
There's a certain line that you should not cross.
And last night, Karl Rove crossed that line.
He didn't just put his toe over the line, he jumped way over it.
It's outrageous that he would suggest that those of us who disagree with him politically want to aid the terrorists.
The only way we'll know for sure, as to what his real intention was last night in New York City is whether or not he retracts these comments and apologizes for them.
I thought it was shameful.
They ought to apologize for it.
The president ought to disown it.
And it is just so disgraceful to split Americans, to divide Americans for any kind of perceived political gain.
The White House's credibility is at issue here.
And I believe very clearly Karl Rove ought to be fired.
Yep, that's John Kerry there at the uh in Carl Rome ought to be fired.
So you you see that reaction to what Rove said about them versus their reaction to what Chavez and Ahmadinejad said about Bush.
Then this morning on uh on Fox and Friends, Edie Hill interviewed Chuck Schumer and asked him this.
What was your reaction uh when you uh when you heard him do the El Diablo talk and everybody started laughing and applauding?
Well, two things.
Number one, what he said, I've said this yesterday, despicable, disgusting.
The worst part of him is not what he says, but what he does.
He's really ruining Venezuela.
He's nuts.
He's crazy.
He's a bad guy.
Right.
But he craves attention.
The more attention he gets, the crazier he gets.
You know, he's like somebody who goes to Times Square and Democrats.
Everyone looks at him, but no one thinks much of him.
As for the applause he gets, that's really shows you something about the UN.
Yeah, it could have been talking about Democrats there being craving uh people that crave attention, do anything that Chuck Schumer, I mean, the most dangerous place you can be in Washington is between a camera and Chuck Schumer, because you are gonna get run over in a stampede.
Um well, I just I just wanted to uh just wanted to mention all of this and wrap this up just to show you that when the Democrats really get outraged, it's obvious, and they weren't outraged over Chavez, uh, because behind closed doors probably going yeah yeah, right on.
Uh thinking uh good.
At any rate, uh John Bolton is gonna join us uh on the program here at the bottom of the hour.
After our bottom of the hour break, the uh UN ambassador uh from the United States, John Bolt will be here for a segment.
Uh we've got your phone calls coming up, lots of other sound bites.
And let's see.
Oh, the deal.
The deal between McCain, Graham and the White House, all kinds of uh massaging going on as to who caved and who didn't.
Um I'll do some football picks if you remind me.
Um they're gonna be tough.
There's so many injuries out there, but we'll um we'll we'll do the uh best we can of the picks today.
We'll we'll pick a couple games and do them.
But the um uh the best analysis of the deal here is it looks to me like a deal was struck where both sides could say they got what they want.
But the bottom line of this is it leaves the Democrats twisting in the wind.
Because now they're in the position to have a vote for this or not.
Uh they were hiding behind McCain.
They threw in with McCain and Graham.
They were gonna let McCain and Graham offer them cover on this.
And McCain's now on the side of the president praising the whole deal.
So now the Democrats have to go on record as supporting or not these interrogation techniques and military tribunals to protect the country from uh future terrorist attack.
All that and much more coming up after this.
Open line Friday, the EIB network.
I take it back, folks.
A couple more sound bites here on the Hugo Chavez thing, just to wrap this up.
Uh last night on Joe Scarborough's show, Scarborough Country on MSNBC, he interviewed uh the editor of the Huffington uh uh post.
Uh her name is now I again here I go.
Uh I'm not sure if Cookie spelled this right or not.
R-A-C-H-E-L-E.
If that's correct, it's Rochelle.
If it's not spelled correctly, it's Rachel's.
I don't know what it is, so I'm pronouncing it both ways, not to be disrespectful, but because I don't know, I don't know who she is, and I have which is an interesting point.
How do these people that nobody has ever heard of get guest appearances on TV shows?
Anyway, uh what I said yesterday about Chavez and the Democrats was the focal point of Scarborough's segment, and here's how he opened it.
Why did dictators feel so darn comfortable in America trashing America's commander-in-chief while they're treated like conquering heroes by people like Danny Glover?
Well, Rush Limbaugh blames the media and Democrats, who he says have spent the past three years going well beyond being the loyal opposition, and instead calling the president names that are at least as offensive as Mr. Chavez's attacks.
You know who's gonna be jealous of this speech that Hirgo Chavez gave, ladies and gentlemen, Frank Rich and Maureen down to the New York Times.
There's a reason why these guys feel comfortable and even emboldened coming here saying these things, and I'm not gonna pull any punches.
It's because they're just echoing the president's enemies in this country.
Be they the American left, uh, some members of the Democratic Party, uh, and all of the Democrat left-wing blogosphere, many university uh professors had their sentiments echoed today by Hugo Chavez.
What is different in Hugo Chavez saying we need a psychologist to analyze Bush and the American left saying he's an insane uh lunatic and what have you.
Chavez, this is the sickening part.
The sickening part to me is that Chavez comes here, says it with confidence because he believes the vast majority of the American public is going to agree with him because he obviously listens to the U.S. drive-by media in the way they deal with Bush.
He sees the way Ahmadinejad treated with great respect all over American television yesterday and last night.
He can contrast that with the uh the way George W. Bush is treated as a suspect, as a guilty suspect being interrogated each and every day by the drive-by media.
There's no doubt he feels that he's in friendly ground, friendly territory, particularly inside the bar there and the uh in the Star Wars set.
All right, so then Scarborough turned to Fennett, it's Rachel Sklar.
Scarborough says, uh, what's your take on Bush's view of the American media, uh, Russia's view, I guess and how they may have contributed to the president being bashed this week at the United Nations.
Now listen to this answer, and you tell me if she actually deals with the question or just launches into her own defense or attack.
I think the blame the liberal media thing gets really old.
But what I found very interesting was the long, long list that Rush reeled off of all the so-called offenders of people who had expressed their feelings about President Bush.
I mean, that's a very, very long list.
So what does that indicate?
That indicates a large proportion of people who have things that they have to say about the President, things that they want to say about the administration, and they have grievances.
And as far as I can recall, that's kind of the whole purpose of the First Amendment.
I think it's pretty dangerous for people from the right side of the aisle to make, you know, sweeping, kind of vaguely threatening comments about uh people on the left side of the aisle demonstrating and and expressing their feelings on the administration.
Threatening what I s what I said was threatening to them.
What does she think that I was sending out a coded message to you people to launch attacks on liberal Democrats?
What you know, she didn't defend it.
She did not answer it all.
She says, ah, this is getting old.
What about the First Amendment and so forth?
Yeah, you've got the First Amendment, but there are consequences to speech, Rachel.
There are consequences.
You don't say what you say in a vacuum.
Aft a vacuum, after all, you feel threatened.
How about calling President Bush?
He's the one that's got to deal with a movie dealing with his assassination.
And it's put together by your pals, people on your side of the aisle say you want to talk about being threatened?
You did a book.
Your gang did a book in 2004 describing how to assassinate President Bush.
I guess that didn't get enough play, so now we got to do a movie that's going to come to the United States prior to the election.
And you feel threatened.
I understand that they do uh feel threatened, but uh they feel threatened.
Uh for the wrong reasons.
They're threatened with their own irrelevance and the upcoming defeat that they uh beginning now to sense might uh might happen yet again.
Kathy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, open line Friday, your first up today.
It's great to have you with us.
Thank you.
I I love your show.
I think I've been listening since um eighty-nine.
But um I just wanted to say that uh yesterday I was looking through the internet and Charlie Wrangle, I believe, uh his comments and his protest about the way Chavez spoke.
Um, you know, and he he's saying how bad it was on the one hand, on the other hand, he says, but thank you so much for the oil for the poor.
And you know, if if if somebody offered me uh a new car, and then they insulted my father and called him all manner of names, I'd tell him to take the car and put it where the sun doesn't shine.
So it to me it just says how insincere their their outrage is.
Yeah, you're exactly right.
Um if if Charlie Wrangler was serious, he would tell, as by the way, Chicago mayor Richard Daly has would tell Chavez, take your oil and shove it.
You know, you have uh you have Bill Delahunt in uh Massachusetts who brokered the whole deal and and he came out and said, eh, what he said was silly, but it's Bush's fault.
He said that yesterday about about Chavez.
Bill Delahunt brokered Chavez's oil program for Massachusetts and anywhere else that uh in the country that they would uh would take it.
Uh but not all Democrats, this is the uh uh Thomas Lipson, the American Spectator reminding me of this.
Not all Democrats are as craven as Delahunt, though.
Um the Chicago Democrats of Richard Daly, who who just vetoed the bill imposing uh uh uh uh PAT scales on Walmart and so forth, um also told Chavez to beat it with his offer of four million dollars in cheap transport fuel, and then started probing Chavez's bid to penetrate Chicago's electoral apparatus through voting machine contracts.
So uh not all Democrats have gotten on board with Delahunt, but the ones that uh uh i they're they they weigh a uh the a question and they balance it all.
And they say, okay, here's this guy, and he says these rotten things about our president.
But we happen to agree with him, we just can't say so.
Uh but he's making me look really good to my constituents because they're getting cheap home heating oil for the winter when I can't take care of this myself, uh with the oil companies in this country and so forth.
So they They on the on the balancing scale, they uh they side with the thug.
They side with the dictator.
But liberals frequently have done that with uh Fidel Castro.
They they admire these guys.
And you know, a lot of people don't understand it.
I mean, uh uh uh a dictator is a dictator, uh uh socialist is a socialist.
Why in the world does Fidel Castro get lionized and heralded when he does come to New York?
He didn't even have to come to New York to get lionized and heralded in certain parts of Manhattan.
Why is this?
And there are many reasons for it, but I'm gonna tell you and and you might find this hard to believe.
But many American liberals and leftists envy the total power and control that these people have, and the fact they don't ever have to face an electorate.
Chavez fits that bill, Castro has fit that bill for a very long time, and they envy it.
And they respect a liberal and leftist who's been able to accomplish it.
Back after this, stay with us.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
Open line Friday, Rush Limbaugh.
Over six hundred radio stations, twenty million people and the audience of this program having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
This is a real pleasure to uh have for the first time on the program our ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton on the phone with us from uh New York.
Mr. Bolton, thank you and welcome.
Great to have you with us, sir.
Glad to be here, Roger.
Now I'm gonna my first question to you is really i is not meant to be uh uh uh uh asked with any disrespect.
I I am in contact with a lot of people of the country, the reaction that they have toward the United Nations uh I'm sure doesn't surprise you after the comments of Mark Malik Brown and the circus that we've had this week.
Many Americans want to know what is today and into the future, the real point of the UN anyway.
I think uh there have been a number of occasions when the U.N. has been an effective instrument of American foreign policy.
I think back to the first Persian Gulf War, for example, where President Bush 41 assembled an international coalition to help repel the Iraqi invasion uh of Kuwait.
Uh and there have been other other occasions since then.
I think uh it's obviously it's a mixed bag.
There are some UN agencies that do very effective work, there are some that don't.
That's one of the reasons why the president has pushed for reform in the U.N. so hard, because uh when you have the oil for food scandal as the dominant image of the U.N., uh obviously people are not going to have confidence in it.
Uh well, is there ha has there been any reform?
Is there any real chance for reform?
I know that the president uh has invested great hope in your appointment and nomination for that, but uh has there been anything substantially done to correct the systems that led to the uh oil for food program?
It appears that every attempt to uh reform that place fails.
What has happened is that uh a number of the reform efforts have simply been derailed.
Uh, just to give you one example, reforms, management reforms, personnel, procurement, uh integrity, accounting, and so on, proposed by the Secretary General himself were rejected by the uh the so-called non-aligned movement here at the at the U.N. So uh very little has happened since the summit last year that uh launched this reform effort.
We're continuing our work because we think it's important, but the record to date uh is not impressive.
What is how would you define the non-aligned movement?
We know now that it's Castro, a lot of Latin American countries, uh Venezuela, Iran well, not Iran, basically third world countries.
What's their purpose?
Well, you know, it's uh it's interesting.
Daniel Patrick Mornihan, who was up here as ambassador some years back, uh, once asked uh uh an ambassador from the non-aligned at the end of the Cold War, he said uh since there's no more Soviet Union, what are you non-aligned about anymore?
And uh there wasn't a very good answer to that.
But I think uh one thing they do here is help protect the existing programs, the existing distribution of jobs and benefits, and that's one reason why there's so much opposition to reform.
There are a lot of countries that are completely satisfied with the way things uh work here in New York.
We obviously are not.
Well, do you sometimes feel like a lone wolf?
I know you represent the most powerful country in the world, but it seems to observers who are not there and don't get to see the daily inner workings of the place that the whole world's aligned against us in this place for all practical purposes.
Well, there are different pieces of the U.N. I think that's important to keep in mind.
In the Security Council, obviously we're one of the five permanent members.
We have a veto.
We've made uh progress on some fronts there, not what we'd like to see, but in Lebanon and uh in Darfur.
In the General Assembly, though, k keep this statistic in mind.
We are one of a hundred and ninety-two members of the U.N., so we have one vote out of a hundred and ninety-two.
But when it comes to the budget of the U.N., we pay twenty-two percent.
Yeah, though that we've qualified under future reform.
A lot of people are upset that we pay that big of uh percentage and portion of it, and yet it's on our soul.
What about what about Chavez's idea to move it down to Venezuela?
Well, that was uh that was one of his more creative thoughts uh in in that speech.
It was really a remarkable performance.
Uh maybe he'd like to pay twenty-two percent of the budget.
Well, what about that performance along with uh uh Ahmadina John?
I mean, we have you know, you have uh uh this week when the U.N. is highlighted of all weeks, a lot of people watching it, and it's very tough, uh Mr. Ambassador, for people to take any of what happens up there seriously when those two people are allowed to speak, as they should be, but then the reaction they get, based on what they say, has people scratching their heads and say, why in the world do we treat them like adults?
Why do we treat them with any respect?
What is the point?
Well, certainly their performances were not serious, and I can tell you from the letters and phone calls we've been getting this week from people around the country.
They uh they didn't like that performance at all.
And uh I know how frustrating it is.
We've got uh uh in in the administration, we've got to kind of grit our teeth and uh and say we don't uh we don't think we should take it seriously.
But I I fully understand how frustrated people are, and it it's one of the reasons why uh we've been trying to uh persuade people here in New York that uh business as usual is not going to work.
It's not gonna work in Congress anymore, it's not going to work with the American people after the scandals of oil for food program, they expect reform, and that's what we're working for.
Well, but but do we have to take it seriously?
You have the Chinese aligning with both Iraq, or rather, Iran and Venezuela.
Uh Chavez uh obviously is trying to position himself to lead the anti-American non-aligned movement third world.
He's trying to gain their votes.
He wants a seat on the Security Council, like your opinion on that.
I know we blocked him uh previously.
Uh but uh is is he succeeding in fomenting among populations in Latin America anti-American sentiment that's going to become serious enough for us to have to deal with?
Listen, I think Chavez's uh role in the real world out there in Latin America is much more dangerous, much more troubling than his antics up here in New York.
You know, he he's in a situation where he has enormous revenue from oil.
He's formed a close alliance with Fidel Castro, and all of the things that Fidel has wanted to do over the years uh he has not been able to do for lack of resources, especially after the former Soviet Union cut him off.
Now you've got the possibility of a combination of Castro and Chavez with real resources behind that mischief.
So I wouldn't uh I uh you know, it's very uh disturbing what uh Chavez did up here.
But what he's doing interfering in the affairs of many Latin American nations uh really is quite profoundly disturbing.
Let's turn to Ahmadinejad for a moment.
The man is all over the map, charming people, including uh uh media and uh and some delegates.
Uh in one appearance, he will say we don't even need a nuclear weapon.
We love all people.
We love the Jews, we love the Christians, we love everybody.
On another occasion, he will advocate for the elimination of Israel and threaten uh to proceed with a nuclear enrichment program.
Um what what's the policy for dealing with this?
Well, you know, you put your finger on it at the beginning.
This week was a charm offensive by uh Akhmadi Najad.
He's now gone back to Iran uh canceling actually a few appearances here.
But but look, the Iranian government, uh even before him for the last three years has been throwing sand in the eyes of the people who are concerned about their nuclear weapons program.
Uh that's that's their tactic to avoid real scrutiny, to avoid the pressure they need to be put under to give up that program.
Uh right now they're in a stalling mode uh uh trying to avoid what has got to be the inevitable consequence here that they give up their uh uranium enrichment program.
We're we're giving our European friends a little bit more time to work on that, but if that uh if the Iranians don't come through on that point, we're prepared to move for sanctions here in the Security Council.
Why would they give it up?
Uh why I mean I this is something just in a in a commonsensical uh way.
I don't understand.
Why would any kind of pressure force people like that who definitely want to join the nuclear club to give it up?
What sanctions are gonna harm?
I know War is the last option anybody wants to take, and these are stages that we must go through.
But is there some acknowledgement of the threat this pi this man and if he actually leads this country and makes decisions for it uh poses?
Well, I think President Bush has been all over this for the past couple of years, and he said many, many times in public, and I've heard him say it in private that it is unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons.
You know, they are the world's uh leading state sponsor of terrorism.
We we call them the central banker of terrorism.
They fund Hezbollah and Lebanon to the tune of hundred million dollars a year, they fund Hamas and uh the occupied territories.
You can imagine uh this kind of regime with nuclear weapons and what a threat it would be, not not just in the region, but in the world as a whole, as they also move to develop their ballistic missile program.
It's uh it's a frightening prospect.
So uh by the way, we're talking with uh ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.
What is uh what is the practical impact of sanctions and what uh how far would those sanctions go?
Well, you know, it's it it is a step.
Uh we don't believe it's a panacea for sure, but what we want to do is put pressure on Iran to uh uh make it uh universal that uh countries don't cooperate with them in supplying them weapons and materials of mass destruction, uh and to go after the funds that the leadership has sent overseas to freeze those funds.
We don't want the sanctions to affect the average uh Iranian citizen.
We don't have any quarrel with them.
Our quarrel's with the government, and that's where we would uh target the sanctions.
Uh a policy question.
Uh the situation in Iraq, uh as it is perceived, a as it is reported by uh much of the world's media, including ours, is that it's a failure.
That, of course, is an opinion that uh has been advanced for the purposes of advancing an agenda of a certain group of people.
But it is perhaps let me ask you, has it has uh the situation in Iraq where we were told weapons of mass destruction attempted nuclear uh build up uh now we're hearing almost identical things about Iran are d the situation in Iraq paralyze us in terms of acting?
Uh absolutely not.
You know, the uh President Talibanny of Iraq has been here in New York all week.
He spoke to the UN General Assembly this morning.
Uh I had uh participated in a small dinner with him last night.
And if you listen to him uh uh go through the accomplishments that the the government of what he calls the new Iraq has accomplished, this democratic regime, the the effectiveness of the military and police that have been stood up with uh American and coalition support.
We're not there yet, but the but the real facts, as opposed to a lot of what we see in the media, the real facts show a steady uh progress toward giving the Iraqi authorities themselves more control over security, more responsibility.
That's what we want.
We want Iraqis to control their own destiny, and they're increasingly doing it.
One more question.
I'd love to follow that up, but I know your time is short, and I want to ask you about France.
Uh uh Shiraq has uh again said no to sanctions or very weak ones uh regarding Iran.
How is there going to be any agreement in the Security Council if France and Russia and China continue to give Iran a pass?
Well, look, this is going to be a test to the Security Council.
There's there's no guarantee that it will come to the right result, uh, even with the very aggressive diplomacy that uh President Bush and Secretary Rice and I and others have been engaged in.
Uh and this will tell us a lot about whether the Security Council can be effective in helping us against uh the the two greatest threats to the United States and the world today, the international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
So I don't want to leave anybody with the impression that we're promising success in the Security Council.
We're gonna do everything we can, uh, but but we'll find out just how effective the Council is going to be.
Ambassador Bolton, thanks for your time.
This has been a real uh treat.
Uh I wanted to speak to you for a long time, and I'm glad we were able to arrange it today.
All the best to you.
A lot of support for you out there, you should know.
Well, many, many thanks, and I'd love to come back again.
Anytime, sir.
Ambassador of the U.N., John Bolton, open line Friday continues after this.
Stay with us.
You know I don't care how long I live, things just do not change.
I very politely, uh, in the last commercial break, I said, Don, would you run to the humador and grab me a cigar?
And she said no.
Um so I went and got it myself and I I said, well, maybe she just doesn't know I've got a lot of boxes of cigars in there.
Maybe she just doesn't know which box to grab a cigar from.
So I took the box and I said, This and she said, I'm not doing that.
If you want water, I will get you water.
I will get you a grapewater, but I'm not going to get you a cigar.
Meaning you shouldn't be smoking them anyway.
I'm not going to help.
Corrupt you.
Mike in Northridge, California.
Is that California?
Welcome to the program, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Thanks, Rush.
Appreciate you taking the call.
You bet, sir.
Anytime I hear Charles Wrangell speak, uh, you know, my antenna go up.
I mean, for my money, he's always been a snake, and he always will be a snake.
Snake's a snake.
Snake's always going to be a snake.
But this this whole quote unquote attack of Chavez was really basically just uh.
For me.
I mean, when when when Rangel said that you can't come here and complain about a president uh that we're having problems with, unless you're an American.
I mean, that's basically what he said.
Yep.
And nobody's reported that.
In other words, it's okay to to not like Bush and so on and yeah, they did.
I mean, that was a news conference, and Fox did carry the thing.
I don't know about some of the other networks, but we made much hay out of it yesterday.
That and and Drudge had it on his uh his site.
So there are the some sites and networks that got it out.
Well, they they got it out.
It's just the the one sentence that he said that you know, you can't come to the United States uh and and think that you can criticize our president just because we have problems with him.
Basically, in other words, yeah, okay.
He he's a bad president and so forth, and you're right in your tone.
You went a little too far using the word devil.
Um I I agree with you totally on this.
I I um I said yesterday that that this was a lame attempt at outrage, and it was just to cover the Democrats against the backlash that's no doubt developing out there.
They can see what's happening.
Bush's approval numbers are up 44 percent USA Today and Gallup, 45 percent LA times Bloomberg, the generic congressional ballot, which they think is so crucial, is uh is even at 4848.
This is not the post-election day or post um uh Labor Day scenario they had envisioned.
They're they're a little panicked over this, and they know that they know that when a guy like Chavez speaks, it sounds more like what Democrats have been saying than anybody else.
And and and the last thing is uh is that I wish more people would talk about you know what would an American's freedoms be down in in uh Venezuela if we were to go down there as a group or as an individual and start doing the same kind of stuff down there as Chavez and uh and so forth are doing up here.
Maybe we could go and have a protest over at their one local newspaper that uh can't publish anything that's not ready to print.
Well, you might uh end up in jail.
Or dead.
In uh Venezuela.
Yeah.
Uh probably jail first, and then they'll say you died of starvation because you refused to eat the rats that they fed you.
You do a great job, buddy.
I love you.
Well, thanks, uh thanks for the call, Mike.
I appreciate it.
Some I'm I'm forgetting how this came up yesterday, but uh Dean at the website sent me a note last night.
Uh I think this is bouncing off the fact that Bill Clinton uh yesterday, we made mention of this, said that uh, you know, uh the way I look at this is we got these terrorists out there, I got people out there that want to kill us.
We need to talk to these people.
I mean, you gotta you gotta go talk to them if you tell you talk to them.
I mean, you can't you can't hope to have any peaceful resolution that you gotta go talk to him.
Turns out that Bill Clinton um did talk to Iran and praised him and apologized to them.
Uh last year, it was March 2005, and it was at that that World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
And Clinton today, or Clinton said, quote, Iran today is in a sense the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency.
It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority.
Clinton said that March 2005 about Iran.
Uh and uh now you may not have heard this reported.
I certainly didn't, but make no mistake, the world leaders there heard it.
Here no, and then on Charlie Rose on Charlie Rose in a recent interview.
Iran's the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of President Katami in ninety-seven, the only one with elections, including the U.S., including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals or the progressives have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections.
He's been praising Iran uh any chance he gets when on foreign soil.
Back in just a second.
Stay with Don, it's a running about ten to one opposed to you.
Uh women emailing me say they'd get my cigar versus those who wouldn't.
You're in a minority on this.
Lots more straight ahead, folks.
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