By the way, we're up to audio sound by five in order.
As I inform the broadcast engineer what's uh coming up.
Uh we're back on the Rush Limbaugh program, and this is the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
A thrill and a delight to be with you.
Special welcome to those of you watching on the Ditto Cam at uh rushlimbaug.com.
As uh soon as we can, we'll get to your phone calls in this hour.
The telephone number is 800 282-2882, and the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson has just posted the following statement on his website.
It is it says uh statement from Fred Thompson regarding Harry Reed's attacks on Rush Limbaugh.
Congressional Democrats are trying to divert attention from insulting our military leader in Iraq and pandering to the loony left by attacking Rush Limbaugh.
He is one of the strongest supporters of our troops.
Yet Democrats claim he's not being strong enough.
I wonder who General Petraeus and his troops think is most supportive.
Fred Thompson.
I didn't talk about this last week, but uh Nitt Romney issued a statement, much like he issued against who who did he throw under the bus.
Oh, Larry Craig.
He issued a statement, that's represensible what Limbaugh said was horrible.
Whatever he was, he said.
And then later in the day, somebody from his office called the office, called our office.
We just found out that this was uh this is a smear, and uh uh uh Mitt will uh will will say this uh if if he's asked about it.
Uh he hasn't been asked about it, so his statement still stands.
McCain sort of halfway through me under the bus uh by saying, if what Limbaugh said is reportedly reported to be correct, blah, blah, blah, then it's disgusting and horrible and so forth and so on.
So um I want to thank uh Senator Thompson uh for issuing this uh statement.
A rare act of courage.
You know, people have asked me, and I'm uh be blatantly honest with you here, folks.
I peep people have asked me, how come there hasn't been more uh Republican elected Republican support?
Actually, there has been quite a bit.
Jack Kingston, uh Lindsey Graham, John Kyle has come out uh with uh with a definitive statement now, Fred Thompson.
But you have to under you have to understand when these things happen, I'm gonna give you a little political lesson here.
When these things happen, it's sort of like the analogy is if you're with a bunch of friends and a boat you're in sinks, and you're drowning, they will stay away from you because they're afraid they will take uh that you will take them down with you if they try to save you.
So they see if you can save yourself first.
This has happened to me, by the way.
I fell off a raft on the Sacramento River during some whitewater rafting and uh ended up and I was laughing when I went over because it was stupid thing I did to cause myself to fall off little raft.
Uh and I caused the raft to capsize, everybody in it but four or five people in it.
And when I went in, I was laughing so much I swallowed some water and I was I I surfaced and I was really panicking, and those guys were staying totally away from me.
Because they know of, you know, some somebody floundering it's going down is gonna grab on whoever and take him down with them.
The same thing here in politics.
When something like this happens, you are on your own for 48 hours.
You really are.
See if you can survive.
Well, look at Trent Lott.
Look at look at uh all these things.
You are on your own for 48 hours to see if you can survive it.
And then if you can survive it, then the support will start trickling in.
And and but it's it starts at a trickle.
Because the fear, the fear is not the facts, the fear from an elected official standpoint, particularly Republicans right now.
You've got the lie out there, but it doesn't matter that it's a lie.
It's in the drive-by media, and the politicians, my gosh, this is what America thinks.
If I go defend this guy, I'm gonna get tarred and feathered with the same thing.
They're gonna say the same thing about me, so they back off.
And uh you anybody in this situation is on their own.
I, of course, triumph in these situations.
I am a loner, and I don't I mean, I got a close-knit circle of friends, and I've got a great support group.
Uh don't misunderstand, but I understand it's something like this.
Uh for the first 48 hours, you're on your you're on your own.
You gotta you gotta see if you can uh survive it yourself, and and then once you show that, then it gives people a little confidence.
Plus, in the 48 hours that ensue after the initial charge, in this case smear, um, if you do a good job of getting the truth out to enough people, then uh then they're then they're they they they come on board, and that's what's happening now.
And in those first 48 hours, some people who do not think and do not care to get the facts and do not check into it will immediately do what they can to distance themselves from somebody in the situation I was in last week, precisely so as not to be impacted by it themselves.
It's you know, politics is a beanbag, and it's dog eat dog and everybody for himself and so forth.
And so the big mistake that people make, they find themselves in situations like I found myself in last week is waiting for everybody to come to their defense.
Uh it generally isn't going to happen.
Then you throw in other human characteristics like I'm sure there are a lot of people who love to see me go down, who are not on the media matters team, who are not on the left per se.
I mean it's very competitive world out there.
And this this I understand.
So uh that's how it's manifesting itself.
So it's been um it's been a week.
Do you realize it has been a week since this all started?
And it's still dominating the news and so forth in an incorrect.
When in fact, the New York Times, after a week, has been dragged into this.
The New York Times, the Washington Post have not mentioned it.
USA Today have not mentioned it, but Carl Hulse in the New York Times apparently got dragged into this story.
Uh he has he totally parrots the Media Matters smear without any detail because detail would expose the Media Matters lie.
So uh, and that he doesn't want his buddies to get mad at him either.
I mean, he works New York Times.
If he does anything in the story that defends me or gets the facts right, all he's gonna do is get grief from the media matters people.
How are you selling us out?
We would demand a correction, so forth and so on.
The Stalinists.
Uh the difference between the Patraeus move on ad is that no Republicans have signed on to uh Harry Reed's letter, and not even all the Democrats did.
The Petraeus ad, a lot of Democrats signed on to it, and a lot of Republicans did too.
So the tit for tat didn't work.
Uh Harry Reid is another failure here on this.
He couldn't even get all of his Democrats to sign his letter to the CEO of Clear Channel Communications, asking them to make me apologize, and uh, and so forth.
Uh you have to say only 41 senators, another defeat for Harry Reed.
Versus how many how many votes they get for the uh Petraeus resolution, 72?
They get 41 for the resolution condemning me or the letter.
And back to Carl Hulse in the New York Times.
Um and it's also, by the way, in the Herald Tribune International.
So the incident has now gone international, ladies and gentlemen.
I told somebody last night my objective uh was to take this international, not to keep it confined into the domestic arena.
I want this to go international, and I went to bed feeling great last night, woke up, found it's gone international.
New York Herald, the International Herald Tribune, which is owned to the New York Times.
It's the same story the New York Times as in the Herald Tribune story.
Here it is.
This the relevant part.
After the liberal media monitoring organization, Media Matters, sounded the alarm about Limbaugh's comments, Limbaugh said on subsequent shows that he had been talking about only one discredited man who claimed to be a wounded veteran.
I was not talking about anti-war active duty troops, Limbaugh insisted.
Yet analysts for Media Matters noted that Limbaugh's first reference to the discredited man came nearly two minutes after his plural reference to phony soldiers.
Now, this is illustrative of two things.
The absolute lack of desire on the part of Media Matters to get anything right, and number two, their total ignorance.
Let's do the timeline.
On Tuesday morning of last week, we air a morning update on Jesse Macbeth.
And I read that morning update was on 600 of my radio stations during the morning drive broadcast hours on Tuesday morning.
The phony soldiers comment happened on Wednesday on this program.
And what happened, so the timeline is they're saying I didn't even talk about Jesse Macbeth till after I made the phony soldiers comment.
I talked about Jesse Macbeth The day before, in a morning update, this call comes in.
The phony soldiers comments.
Of course I'm thinking about Jesse Macbeth and all the others.
The state attorney and uh U.S. attorney for the state of Washington, Western District, had just indicted eight, or convicted eight.
Uh phony soldiers had a press release on Friday the 21st.
There had been a story on the Fox News Channel's website on the 20th of May about Macbeth.
The story on the 21st from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District State of Washington was announcing the conviction of Macbeth, and that's what led to us doing the update on Tuesday morning.
The phony soldiers comment comes on Wednesday.
All of this has been explained to everybody involved here.
All of it has.
The timeline's been explained here.
It's being ignored like everything else.
Instead, they interpret my meaning and they interpret my words.
In two words, ladies and gentlemen.
The New York Times had no desire to get this right.
They didn't call you, did they, H.R. New York Times Carl Hulse didn't call.
Let's see the headline.
Yes, the headline of the Carl Hulse story in the New York Times today.
Limbaugh latest victim in war of condemnation.
So the headline writer kind of gets it, but the story does not uh replicate that.
One more thing before we go to the uh to the break.
I mentioned in the last hour.
We had a call, in fact, uh talking about some things he'd remembered me saying about my trip visit to Afghanistan back in 2005.
And I had before his call just received an email from uh Jeffrey Mull.
As a dear Rush, with regard to the real attacks from phony critics, and everything else being said about phony soldiers and your support for the troops.
I have never been more honored to fly anyone in a C-130 as I was when we had the privilege of flying with you during your trip to Afghanistan in 2005.
Your commitment and support for the troops is without reproach.
Thanks again for your support for the troops and service to this country.
So I read the note, told a little story from my memory about flying around with Jeffrey on the C-130s from the Texas Air National Guard, and wrote him back.
Jeffrey, I can't tell you how much I appreciate this.
Where do you live now and how are you?
Got a note back instantly uh right before the uh previous hour ended.
I'm great, I'm never better.
I live in Granbury, Texas, which is south of Fort Worth.
My day job's at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics.
I'm working on the F 35 JSF program.
Still a C-130 pilot, Texas Air National Guard.
I will be returning with my unit to Afghanistan in December.
I play a lot of golf.
I try to spend as much time with my wife and two daughters, Reagan 4 and Ryan 1.
Jeff.
Going back.
I don't know.
My my memory is this is going to be his third tour.
Uh, but these are the people that I've met, uh, and these are the people that know that.
And by the way, I am my my the 24-7 email, the general email box is being flooded uh with email from military personnel and their families, who are who are outraged uh by all of this.
So uh again, thanks uh thanks, Jeff.
I got sit up in the cockpit of the uh C-130 Herc flying over You don't think it's gonna get off the ground.
You want me to read some of the letters?
All right, all right.
What are you shrouding about in there, Don?
What did what you what?
They're trying they're trying to get me off Armed Forces Radio.
All right, I'll I'll I'll read some of them.
I'll I'll get a I sent a couple of them up to the website for uh Coco to publish.
So um I'll go get them from there and uh I'll read them during the court.
But I want to get some of these audio sound bites.
By the way, I'm gonna turn back to the printer here.
I'm told.
Let's see.
Uh let's see, this is um McConnell.
Isn't that right?
Let me read that.
Let me let me read this.
I'll go to the break.
I'll come back and I'll tell you what this is when we come back uh right after this.
Ha!
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the cutting edge of societal evolution.
All right, uh, Mitch McConnell, uh, the uh Republican leader in the Senate will be on Neil Covudo's uh Fox show at 4.30 this afternoon, your world with Neil Cavuto, uh, to weigh in on this uh this this smear of me.
His uh his uh spokesman, Mitch McConnell spokesman Don Stewart issued the following statement.
Rush Limbaugh was rightly taking aim at those who literally impersonate soldiers.
Something that members of both parties will no doubt join him in condemning.
Republicans appreciate their Democrat colleagues' vigilance and concern about the proper treatment of our troops, and we call on them to reaffirm that concern in a concrete way by delivering on their commitment to fully fund the troops in the field.
Mitch McConnell will essentially say this, and who knows what else this afternoon, 4 30 on Fox with uh Neil Cavuto.
Now, uh, ladies and gentlemen, uh I have been I've been people have been sending me website after website that documents phony soldiers, real phony soldiers.
Not just the eight that we learned about in the press release last Friday from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Washington.
Uh but apparently they are all over the place.
Uh the New York Times ran a New York Times magazine cover story on one of them.
And turned out she was lying through her teeth.
She'd never been to Iraq, she hadn't been sexually harassed or any of this sort of thing like she alleged.
Um, it's a considerable number of genuine phony soldiers out there in terms of defrauding the VA, making up stories of atrocities that they saw.
I've got from just one website, I'm holding here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, eleven pages.
And I'm going to put this link at Rush Limbaugh.com when we update the site so you can read this stuff for yourself.
It's far too lengthy and detailed uh for me to go through.
Uh but here's one from just uh Monday, September 24th.
Phony veterans try to cash in on uh on VA benefits, and this is uh basically the uh U.S. attorney story uh out of the state of Washington.
Former police officer gets 90 days in jail for faking military call-up.
Uh Washington man pleads guilty to unlawfully collecting veterans benefits.
I mean, it's just it's the the number here is uh is is staggering.
There are indeed a whole bunch of phony soldiers out there.
Uh but this program has never impugned the service of a genuine soldier, regardless that soldier's opinion on anything.
Here's Eric in Nashville.
Eric, I'm glad you called, sir, glad you waited.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Tennessee didn't to you, Rush.
Good to talk to you.
Thanks very much.
Well, say hi to my mom, Sandy and Louisville and my uh buddy John down at Texas.
Uh listen, this is being bandied about by uh folks as a First Amendment issue.
Okay, in the way that some people want to talk about it as First Amendment issue.
And as many First Amendment, you know, tests of the First Amendment that we've seen paraded up and down the halls of government over the years.
Uh, you've got a unique opportunity here to test the First Amendment, but not the free speech part of the First Amendment that uh that we've been talking about.
I'm talking about the last nine words of the First Amendment.
It's petition Congress for redress of grievances.
They've attacked a private citizen, they've tried to smear you based on lies, based on fraud.
And I I think you have a unique opportunity here, Rush.
I've got this metal picture of you strolling up the center aisle of the United States Senate and setting these people straight.
And I think I think you've got a unique opportunity to do something like that.
Well, there's there's only there's only one problem with that.
No, no, no.
Uh I'm sure it's true in the Senate, but nobody but a member or a member of their staff or a page is allowed on the floor of the House of Representatives at any time.
I've been there, I've seen the House in action, could not go on the floor.
Unless, you know, unless unless a member, you know, wants to make a special citation, there's some special joint session, something special going on, like a head of state coming in.
Um the I think I think we are redressing them now.
I think you are a lot of people are starting to weigh in on uh on redressing them now.
Uh it is a dream.
I I I have I have fantasized about about being able to do that.
But look, this is What day three, day four, day three that I have had my invitation out to Senator Reed to come on this program behind my microphones and say to my face what he said on the floor of the Senate on Monday afternoon.
He hasn't appeared.
I don't expect him to, but the offer is made in all sincerity, and it is made here again today.
They're always saying their ideas get frozen out.
They don't get discussed fairly on talk radio.
Here's a chance.
For Senator Reed to come on, say these things to my face, and we can talk about this smear, and we can talk about the truth behind this.
If he'll just come.
And we're back on the cutting edge of societal evolution, Rush Limbaugh at 800 282-2882.
We'll get to your phone calls here in just a second.
A couple soundbites coming up first.
One of the latest tactics of the Media Matters group and the rest of these smear artists...
And uh and and General Ashley Wilkes, uh Wesley Clark, who went and lied through his teeth today about me on MSNBC, claiming that I have a long history of criticism and disrespect for members of the U.S. military, just lying through his teeth.
His point was, well, hey, why we condemn Petraeus, we got to condemn Limbaugh.
So we the Congress needs to get into this referee situation.
One condemnation's got to be met with another condemnation.
And of course, the left is now pushing this.
They're trying to make my phony soldier comment on par with their betrayus ad.
Of course, their betrayus ad was a full-fledged, well-thought out and produced and created ad from Moveon.org.
They're taking two my words, phony soldiers, and are using hundreds of words to manipulate it into a smear.
They are trying to interpret what I meant for everybody else, and they're trying to tell everybody what I meant and what I was thinking when I said it.
Here's the difference.
They're going to say both sides went too far.
The left, they're not trying to retreat a little bit.
Well, Mithra Limbaugh, I think both sides went too far here.
The betrayal fair clearly was over the line, but so were you with your phony folder comment.
One small reality here, folks.
The Betrayus ad was created by them.
And so was the phony soldier smear.
I didn't do anything.
Sitting here minding my own business bothering nobody.
They created both.
Now they are saying, well, both sides have gone too far, and we need TifferTap, Mr. Limbaugh.
You guys went too far on both.
Both of these things are you guys from Media Matters Moveon.org, Mrs. Clinton's office, Sidney Blumenthal, whoever the hell is behind all this.
You guys did both of this.
And you're biting the dust on both of them.
Let's go to Jack Kingston, Congressman from Georgia, is on with Neil Cavuto yesterday.
Cavuto said, Jack Kinkson, Republican, who just introduced a resolution in support of Rush.
Congressman, what are you doing here?
We're basically pushing back.
This is not about patriotism.
It's about politics.
It is about Rush Limbaugh, it's about talk radio, it's about the fairness doctrine and the fact that the Democrats are trying to get back at us for the general betrayal saying, which none of them, to my knowledge, denounced until they had to.
So what we wanted to do is have a resolution that commended Rush Limbaugh for everything he's done, supporting troops, his visits to Afghanistan, his support of the Marine Corps, families, and also to say certainly anybody has a right to disagree with the war, whether they're in uniform, active or inactive, if they're never worn a uniform.
Um when he referred to phony soldiers, though, uh i i he was very specific that he was talking about people who actually are claiming they were in combat or claiming they were in Iraq when they never, in fact, were.
Jack Kingston on uh Fox yesterday afternoon with Neil Cavuto.
Uh Cavuto then says, Well, what what do you make of the fact, though, that some conservatives have argued there's a witch hunt going on here, taking things Rush says or going after Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly, in other words, to take sort of take their remarks, whether they're in or out of context and just run with them.
Well, Neil, going back to uh President Clinton, the left has never liked talk radio, and the fact that we do have a a cadre of conservative Commentators out there who aren't necessarily on radio but television as well, who will give both sides of the story.
They prefer the more filtered conventional media, and so they've been attacking it through the fairness doctrine and um talking about talk radio as hate speech and things like this, and so this gives them an opportunity to wrap themselves around the flag, attack Rush Limbaugh, and uh attack talk radio all at once.
Rush Limbaugh is in the business of talk radio.
He has callers from all spectrums of the political debate coming in, and he's a private citizen.
That's a key point.
Thank you, Congressman Kingston, who authored a counter resolution in the House of Representatives to counter the Democrat resolution condemning me, which I don't know, MSNBC reported today, the Democrats have moved it to the back burner in the House of Representatives.
I forget the reporter's name on MSNBC, but that's what he said.
Let's go now.
Last night Fox and uh Fox and Friends couldn't have been last night.
So I'm not sure if it was yesterday or today.
Fox and Friends is their morning show.
Steve Ducey, the weather guy interviewing it was this morning.
Congressman Steve Ducey interviewing uh uh or Steve Deuce, the weather guy introducing Congressman Joe Sistac and Mike Pence, and uh Ducey said, Congressman C-Stack, let me ask you about this.
According to Rush Limbaugh, the Democrats are taking him out of context.
If you look at the transcript, you can see that in response to a caller that said, hey, look, they're finding soldiers in the media to talk against the war.
He said those are phony soldiers.
That's not what the caller said.
Phony soldiers.
This is not this is this is you know, Congressman Seastack, you ought to be embarrassed.
All of you ought to be embarrassed.
You are making fools of yourself, especially to members of the military and their families.
Here was Mike Pence and his response to the C stack.
I read the transcript too.
A literal reading of the transcript shows that Rush Limbaugh did not call veterans who oppose the war phony soldiers.
In fact, the term comes from an ABC news report that aired the Monday night before the Wednesday that he used the term.
He did a commentary on Tuesday on the subject.
I see this all as a precursor to an effort by the Democrats in Congress to reintroduce the fairness doctrine.
I mean, what on earth business is it of the United States Senate uh to be policing the airwaves of America?
And I I really do believe this whole incident, the circus on the Senate floor Monday argues for the legislation that uh we've introduced in the House that would put the fairness doctrine out of reach of any future President or any future Congress.
Thank you, Mike Pence.
Uh, who has led the effort in the House on this uh uh anti-fairness doctrine legislation that the Democrats no doubt, if they win the White House will attempt to uh redeploy.
Melanie in Omaha, I'm glad you uh called welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, Rush.
I've been wanting to talk to you since I was twelve.
Well, how old are you now?
I'm twenty-seven.
Fifteen years, hubba hubba.
By the way, Melanie is one of my all-time top ten favorite female names.
Oh, well, good.
It is.
Uh Rush, I want to thank you because actually, since you're the subject in Congress right now, they're not shoving anything else down our throat.
You're kind of a diversion for them.
So thank you.
Actually, uh I'm glad you said that.
Because I have I have some news here for the Democrat left.
They've been, they actually have been doing things in the uh in the uh in the Senate.
Uh while this has been going on mentally.
By the way, thanks for the call.
Um the Senate yesterday, I believe.
Yes.
The Senate yesterday passed the annual defense authorization bill by a vote of 92 to 3.
Uh you libs in the Kook Fringe.
Did you hear that?
The Senate passed the defense authorization bill for new fiscal year, 92 to 3.
Now, there's a caveat to this, and it's uh it's in you got you gotta know this too.
Uh while they overwhelmingly approved a six hundred and forty-eight billion dollar defense authorization.
It faces a veto by President Bush over a provision or an amendment that protects homosexuals and unders uh others under federal hate crime laws.
So we talked about this last week.
They've they've they've tacked a new hate crime amendment to the defense authorization bill that President Bush says he's going to veto.
So they are throwing things in the works to try to interrupt funding, not just for Iraq, but for the whole defense budget.
And they passed it because they had this amendment in there.
And then the appropriations process isn't a whole different thing from the authorization process.
You can authorize the money to be spent.
Now, the appropriations process is where the real debate will begin.
And what the likely thing to happen here is that Senate Democrats will probably again challenge the president's war policy with debate of the $459 billion defense appropriations bill scheduled to start today, maybe later, with a separate $189 billion emergency war funding bill.
Now, this is the bill that three members of the House, Mertha, Obi, and forget who else, attempted to propose, they did propose a surtax on income for everybody except the poor, middle and upper income people.
2% surtax on uh on on lower and middle class income, 12 to 15% surtax on income of the of the wealthy.
Now, when these three, and by the way, some Democrats proposed this as well, too.
Uh it was shot down.
It was dismissed as half-baked, and that was the view of Democrat leaders.
So this uh, you know, they're they're they're still monkeying around with this.
They are still trying to find ways to defund the troops through the meandering legislative process.
Uh Jim McGovern was the was the third in the tax surcharge uh idea.
It was OB Merther, Mertha, and uh and Jim McGovern.
Uh and and they were doing everything they could here to uh get Bush to veto it so that the money doesn't go forward.
So the battle continues.
They're still they're still trying to defund the troops, folks, they're still trying to lose the war.
This is the bottom line.
It is they who hold no regard for uniform military personnel.
It is they who continue to try to undermine the mission.
They say they support the troops, just not the mission.
You can't.
You support the troops, you support what they do.
What they do is the mission.
So your Democrat Party, your left wing in this country is still doing everything it can to undermine the success and the mission of the U.S. military, despite this flap that's happening with uh with me.
I gotta go quick timeout, we'll be back and resume right after this.
Okay, we're back, Rush Limbaugh here, and the excellence in broadcasting that we're gonna want to read uh Fred Thompson's statement, Republican presidential candidate that he uh oh, by the way, on the Fox News channel right now, they're they're they're debating this.
They got their little panel round table, and Bob Beckle is just all a Twitter because I have referred in the last hour, about an hour ago, uh, and maybe in the first monologue segment of this hour that I referred to today's modern liberal Democrats as not being driven just by ideology, but that they are Stalinist-like.
They are using the fear imposed by the state to intimidate, to try to intimidate private citizens from saying and thinking what they can't say and think.
They are associating themselves with uh political operatives out there, media matters, and uh essentially interpreting my meaning for people, interpreting my thoughts.
They are they're trying to do everything they can to control as much of people's lives as possible.
They're not being honest about what they really think or believe.
The truth is not important to them.
What's important to them is what they want.
And so I said they're styliness like it's all Beckle is all a Twitter over this, and now they're back to, well, you know, the moveon.org was this, and so Limbos said this.
We we it's appropriate for Congress to disapprove, but look at for anybody else that's gonna go on one of these TV shows this afternoon or tonight.
Here's the thing about this.
Move on.org, which is media matters.
I mean, it may not be the same organization, same thinking, the same kind of people.
They created the betrayal said.
I did nothing.
They also created the phony soldier smear.
They want balance between their two mistakes.
I didn't do it.
I didn't do what they said.
I didn't think what they say I was thinking.
It's absurd.
They create both of these scandals.
And now they want tit for tat treatment.
So it's it's laughable.
It is it's becoming laughable.
I wonder if I wonder if Harry Reed is beginning to regret that he did this.
And in 10, it didn't work out, gang, like he thought it was going to work.
Yeah.
He's endeared.
It did not.
It did not.
It did not work in terms of shutting me up, silencing me, or it did not work, Mr. Snurdley.
He's always been endeared to the kooks.
The kooks aren't going anywhere.
He's been a bit he's he's what he now knows is he's got a bigger target on his back in terms of reelection in Nevada.
You know, there's there's I mean you don't I guarantee you that and I'll bet you some Democrats in the House and Senator going to the leaderships.
You know, that's back off of this.
I mean, it's people are starting to say, what are we doing?
Worrying about a single private citizen.
We got real legislation to work out up here.
And I am doing a service preventing them from getting a vet.
Uh there's no uh no question about it.
Uh but here's Fred Thompson's statement.
That he put on his website this hour.
Congressional Democrats are trying to divert attention from insulting our military leader in Iraq, it would be Petraeus, and pandering to the loony left by attacking Rush Limbaugh.
Limbaugh is one of the strongest supporters of our troops, yet Democrats claim he's not being strong enough.
I wonder who General Petraeus and his troops think is most supportive.
It's a great question.
You think Petraeus would rather have me on his side or Tom Lanthos?
Or any of these forget that.
Have me on his side or some of these looney tune fringe groups that make up the Democrat base.
Uh a searing point made by Fred Thompson on his website, Jim in Pennsville, New Jersey.
I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Uh yes, Rush.
I'm currently serving in the New Reserve, and I just returned from Kuwait in May.
Uh, and I never heard uh I didn't hear the morning update the uh the day prior to your conversation with that one caller who brought who started the whole conversation.
And so all I heard was just your conversation with that caller, and it never once occurred to me, knowing your history of support for our for servicemen, they never once occurred to me that you were you were condemning all servicemen who who disagreed with the war.
Of course not.
That's that's a of course they wouldn't.
You have to manufacture that.
They had to dig pretty deep to come up with that one.
Uh no.
That's a that's that they they saw it as an automatic opportunity.
They know they've got willing accomplices in the media, and they can get that out there.
And when you go do a Google search, guess what you're gonna find?
You're gonna find this.
When you read the New York Times, they're gonna find the exact media matters version of this.
In that sense, they in the Nexus Lexus database, they got it out there as they want it to be.
Uh, but in the meantime, they are uh there's they're they're they're being shown for who they are and what they are as uh as laughing stocks.
Uh you know, there were two calls on that day, and everybody's forgetting the first call.
The first call was a seminar caller.
There were two mics.
And the first mic was a seminar caller.
He said, and they all do this.
I'm a Republican, and I you know I agree with you.
Well, when are we getting out of a rock?
We can't win it, we gotta and I was discussing the whole notion of his defeatism with him.
And he's well, what are we gonna leave?
We have won, we beat Saddam, we don't always get out of there.
I said, No, you don't you don't go to war on timelines.
I said, Do you uh you wash half your car?
Because the time runs out.
Is that how you run the rest of your life?
The guy just got kookier and kookier and kook, and he threw it, look, and I'm Republican, and I'm former military, and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I said, I don't think you don't sound like a Republican to me, sir.
And eventually, it was it was uh it was an uncredible, you know, not and the second Mike then comes on and starts talking about what he talked about, and that's where they get the phony soldier.
Two words that they have turned into a week long event.
By interpreting what I meant, what I thought, and what I said.
Fred Thompson's statement I wonder who General Petraeus and his troops think is most supportive, Rush Limbaugh or Wesley Clark, maybe, about Rush Limbaugh or Harry Reid, or Rush Limbaugh with uh Media Matters for America.
Who do you think Petraeus would rather have on his side?
Me or the New York Times.
Great statement by presidential candidate Fred Thompson.