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Nov. 19, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:22
November 19, 2007, Monday, Hour #2
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Time Text
I know, I know, I know, just hang tough in there, be cool, everything's fine.
Greetings, my friends.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, on the cutting edge of societal evolution here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Great to be with you.
Fastest three hours in media already to number two.
Here's the phone number if you'd like to join us today, 800-282-2882.
And the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
We are going to do something today in a little less than a half hour that we've not done before, and that is simulcast this program with a television program.
For those of you in Rio Linda, simulcast means we're both going to be on the air at the same time.
The program is live desk with Martha McCallum, Fox News Channel.
She has asked me to be a guest on her program a number of times, and I just can never do it because our programs occur at the same time during the busy broadcast day.
So she then said not long ago, well, next time you're in New York, could you walk down the street and we do a pre-tape?
And I said, I don't want to do that.
It's right in the middle of show prep, show prep's intense time.
And I came up with the idea of doing a simulcast.
I said, why don't you just put a camera right here in our studio, just a little camera, put a Fox camera in here, and you'll be in New York.
I'll be here.
We can simulcast it.
And you can conduct the interview that way.
Well, that led to an entire Fox crew coming down here.
Martha is right now doing the first half hour of her show from another studio here at the EIB Southern Command.
We've got Fox equipment all over the place.
These poor guys have been here since 7 o'clock this morning setting up.
And we overloaded our power supply, uninterrupted power supply with all this stuff, and it blew.
We think we fried it.
Good.
Okay, well, so we're not going to get it back until the programs.
We're going to have to reboot the thing.
It's a major reboot.
But regardless, if you're watching a ditto cam, that's why the neon rush limbo sign is not on.
The fluorescents above the desk are not on because they're on that power supply.
And so we don't have it.
What is so funny in there, Snerdley?
Are you got some idiot on the phone?
Okay.
I'm sorry.
It's an insight.
He's been telling me all day how tough it is out there on the phones.
It's Thanksgiving week.
You've got to figure this is not a period of normalcy, Mr. Snerdley.
Go with it.
You know, run with it.
Remember the primary rule for any callers to make the host look good.
Anyway, here's how this is going to work, folks, when we get into the next half hour and the simulcast actually begins.
During the bottom-of-the-hour break at 1.30, Martha will come in here and she'll sit down right across from me at the desk.
Now, this is her show.
That next half hour is going to be her show.
Remember, she invited me.
And so she's going to be, in effect, running things even on the EIB network, which has also never happened.
For example, I want you affiliates along the EIB network to understand this.
We come out of the break and all of our breaks in the next half hour, it will be Martha McCallum as though this whole thing is on the Fox network, which it is.
But she's going to be getting us in and out of breaks and so forth.
See, our breaks, our commercial breaks float in the half hour.
Some of Fox's are hard breaks because they've got computers that are going to run the commercials anyway.
So we've worked all that out.
But I have no idea what she's going to ask me.
It's like any other interview.
A blonde will be controlling the program.
Exactly right.
And this comes on the heels of shocking news today that men tend to dumb down when they are confronted or see blondes, even a picture of blondes.
And the research is that that's because of stereotypes, that men think blondes are dumber than brunettes, and so they automatically, because of stereotypes, dumb down.
I, my friends, am going to have to watch this very carefully.
We'll put this to a test.
Actually, as I mentioned in the first hour of the program, I learned this from the four years that I had my own television show and each subsequent time that I have guested on a television show, and that is people are so enamored of my appearance that they seldom remember what I say.
And so I waste brilliance when I am on television.
And I don't want to waste brilliance if people are so enamored with what I look like.
So I'm going to keep all of that in mind.
But it's going to be fun, and it'll start at 1.33.
Nothing untoward or unusual for you affiliates on the line is going to happen during the half hour in terms of execution of the programming format.
It's just that it'll be Martha McCallum getting us into and taking us out of our commercial breaks.
I love this headline.
Sikhs seethe over a snub by Clintons.
Fundraiser on the coast canceled over security.
This is from Bakersfield.
The Clinton campaign's abrupt cancellation of scheduled appearances here is leaving members of the Sikh community dismayed and demanding an explanation.
Traditional food, elaborate costumes, ritual sword fighting were on display as thousands of Sikhs celebrated a religious festival here yesterday.
But the expected guest of honor, Senator Clinton, was a no-show.
Mrs. Clinton also scuttled a fundraising breakfast at a nearby fairgrounds where Sikh leaders had hoped to raise $1 million for her presidential campaign.
Some organizers cited security reasons for Hillary's sudden withdrawal.
An advertisement in a Sikh newspaper said the fundraiser, which was also to have featured President Clinton as a guest, had been postponed due to the advice of the Secret Service.
Others involved said some of those planning the fundraiser failed either the campaign's vetting process or a Secret Service review.
Whatever prompted the late change, many of those who attended yesterday's festival and parade were upset, underscoring the risks of a backlash against Mrs. Clinton as her campaign tightens its standards in an effort to avoid another fundraising scandal.
We don't know what the reason is.
A trucking company owner who helped set this thing up said, Tehal Singh of Bakersfield said, they just tell us last night everybody's shocked.
They want to see her.
So Sikhs seethe over a snub by the Clintons.
New Zealand has an interesting way of dealing with immigration.
Officials there are keeping a United Kingdom wife from joining her husband because they say she's too fat.
British citizen Roanne Trazis, 33 and Richie Trazis, 35, are living apart as she tries desperately to shed the pounds needed to comply with New Zealand's guidelines that immigrants maintain a healthy body mass index.
Over half of New Zealand adults, nearly one-third of New Zealand children, are already overweight or obese, according to the group.
These figures are expected to rise as of the health problems associated with being overweight.
And so this woman is being denied entry into New Zealand because she's too fat.
I shouldn't laugh.
Really shouldn't laugh.
Sometimes you just can't help it.
Did you see, this was over the weekend, counting up U.S. names.
And the Garcias are catching up with the Smiths and the Joneses.
Smith remains the most common surname in the United States, according to a new analysis released yesterday with the Census Bureau, but for the first time.
Two Hispanic surnames, Garcia and Rodriguez, are among the top 10 most common in the nation.
And Martinez nearly edged out Wilson for 10th place.
The number of Hispanics living in the United States grew by 58% in the 90s to nearly 13% of the total population now.
And cracking the list of top 10 names suggests just how pervasively the Latino migration has permeated everyday American culture.
Garcia moved up to number eight in 2000, up from number 18.
Rodriguez jumped from number nine, or to number nine, from 22nd place.
The number of Hispanic surnames among the top 25 doubled to six.
And have you heard about Nancy Pelosi's latest maneuver?
It's been less than a week since the smackdown with Hillary Clinton and Elliot Spitzer over driver's licenses for illegal aliens.
And now Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker Red of the House, has moved to kill an amendment that would protect employers from federal lawsuits for requiring their workers to speak English.
Among the employers targeted by such lawsuits are the Salvation Army.
Senator Lamar Alexander, a moderate Republican from Tennessee, this John Fun's work today at the Wall Street Journal, is dumbstruck that legislation he views as simple common sense would be blocked.
He noted the full Senate passed his amendment to shield the Salvation Army by 75 to 19 last month, and the House followed suit with a 218 to 186 vote just this month.
He said, I can't imagine that the framers of the 1964 Civil Rights Act intended to say that it's discrimination for a shoe shop owner to say his or her employee, I want you to be able to speak America's common language on the job.
But that's exactly what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is trying to do.
In March, the EEOC sued the Salvation Army because its thrift store in Framingham, Massachusetts, required its employees to speak English on the job.
The requirement was clearly posted.
Employees were given a year to learn the language.
The EEOC claimed that the store had fired two Hispanic employees for continuing to speak Spanish on the job, said that the firings violated the law because the English-only policy was not relevant to job performance or safety.
So the bottom line is that Pelosi is trying to force, with the power and force of the federal government, she's trying to force the Salvation Army to hire people who cannot speak English.
I'm telling you, just calm down, calm, calm down.
This immigration stuff, the Democrats and their buds in the drive-by media do not understand how volatile this is for them.
Let them keep on.
We'll take care of it at the appropriate time, ladies and gentlemen.
Stay with us.
Hi, how are you?
Welcome back, El Rochebo, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
I want to go back and revisit the New York controversy, Governor Spitzer, the driver's licenses for illegal aliens.
Yesterday, the Washington Post in an editorial just spelled out exactly how this is going to end up happening.
Listen to the fumblings and bumblings of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, two otherwise canny and articulate senators, and you can hear a pair of candidates who probably know that granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants is smart public policy.
It is?
It is not smart public policy.
It's not smart any policy.
When you give a legal document to an illegal person, you have made them legal.
You have made the legal document irrelevant.
Smart public policy.
So the Washington Post assumes that Hillary and Obama, they know what's got to happen.
Yes, smart policy, but it's not smart politics.
Both Mr. Obama, who supports the idea, and Mrs. Clinton, who now says she doesn't, have come in for derision by seeming to straddle an issue that's becoming a surrogate for the broader, unresolved problem of illegal immigration.
A report prepared for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety gives a sobering assessment of the consequences of people without citizenship driving around without licenses.
The report based on data collected in the 90s says that unlicensed drivers are almost five times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than drivers with valid licenses, and that 20% of all fatal accidents involve at least one driver without a valid license.
Such drivers are also more likely to operate vehicles under the influence of alcohol.
So none of this matters.
You cannot, I don't see how you can make the connection here.
Such drivers are also more likely.
You mean if you give them a driver's license, they're going to stop drinking while they drive?
If you give them a driver's license, they're going to stop being in accidents.
So the Democrats want to reward this illegal and bad behavior by giving them U.S. identification and the ability to vote, which is what this is all about.
Never, ever forget that.
Unlicensed drivers almost five times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash.
So?
What is giving them the driver's license?
How is it magically going to make them a better driver?
Are these people driving around without licenses when they see the bubblegum lights in the rear view mirror?
Do they speed up or something and running away from the law?
Because that's probably what it is.
That's what we'll be told.
Yes, these people live in total fear, Mr. Olimbaugh, because they know people like you want to kick them out of the country.
And so when they get a little traffic scrape and here comes the cops in a back window, they speed up and have acted.
It's all your fault, Mr. Limbaugh.
People like you.
It's probably what they think.
Now, the pull quote line from the Washington Post editorial.
Illegal immigrants will continue to drive regardless of posturing by politicians.
The important question is whether they will do so safely.
Now, somebody needs to help me out.
I haven't.
I don't think you need to go get driver's ed or training to get a license, do you?
You have to, maybe a little test here, but you don't have to take a driver's license bureau.
Yeah, but this, yeah, it's a driving test your first one.
Yeah, the little parallel park.
Most cars now have these little centers.
They don't parallel park for you.
Mine does.
No parallel parking in the Florida.
Well, no wonder the 9-11 hijackers are able to get driver's licenses here then.
Nine of them had them.
It might have been 11.
We'll continue to drive regardless of posturing by politicians.
The important question is whether they will do so safely.
As though granting them the driver's license automatically improves their ability to handle a car.
Let's go to the phones, grab a couple calls here quick before we join the simulcast with Fox.
Bob and Jackson, Michigan.
Welcome to the program.
How you doing, Rush?
Fine, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I was just, when I watched the first hour of the Democratic debate, I didn't catch the second hour.
I noticed that Bush bastions didn't go over very good.
Democrats in front of Democrats, they just got sparse of applause and didn't.
I wonder if Democrats are starting to realize, hey, this is real.
Do these guys really know what they're doing?
Who does know what they're doing?
Who do I really want to vote for?
I noticed there wasn't much good reaction towards Bush.
Look, I'm going to tell you something.
That debate was interesting for only one reason, and it didn't happen.
So the debate turned into a disaster and a bore and a bomb.
4 million people watched it, but you know why?
Because they were waiting for the Hillary Clinton train wreck.
Wolf Blitzer had been warned by the Clinton campaign that he should not do a russert, which means ask tough questions or just ask questions, period.
And so the people were waiting for Mrs. Clinton to see if she could do her comeback, which she did.
The whole thing was just a CNN went in a tank for the Clintons.
That's why Dennis Kucinich was probably the most popular guy there, as we talked earlier, because he's the one that was most passionate, the most articulate, and the most authentic.
Mrs. Clinton is not authentic at all because she's trying to hide what she really intends to do, her agenda and her plans.
But whether they bashed Bush or not, that's going to keep up at least foreseeably through the first quarter of next year.
I have a prediction that these Democrats that are running around now trying to secure defeat in Iraq, once they have their nominee, and it may happen by February 5th.
I mean, there's so many front-loaded primaries.
It may happen by mid-February.
Once they've got their nominee, don't be surprised if the Democrat Party tries to turn into the biggest pro-American foreign policy country that you have seen under the banner of Hillary Clinton.
Don't be surprised.
And that's when they're going to stop.
They might continue to run against Bush, but that's primary period stuff.
You're going to see a marked change.
I predict you will see a market change in direction and a lot of issues once Mrs. Clinton has secured the nomination and is out trying to secure the votes of real people, not the lunatic fringe kooks that populate this primary process or attend these debates.
They're all plants anyway.
The six kids, people that ask questions in the second half of the hour that you didn't see, they're all Democrat Party operatives.
One of them, actual intern for Dingy Harry, she's not even old enough to vote.
And she's portrayed there as an a registered, independent, undecided voter.
She may be 18 by the time the election comes around.
All right, a quick timeout, and we'll come back.
The next voice you hear on the program, if it all goes according to plan, will be Martha McCallum sitting right across the desk from me as we simulcast with the Fox News channel coming right up.
From the studio of Rush Limbaugh, this half hour of the show, we're doing something totally different today.
It's an exclusive simulcast.
You can hear me on the radio right now, which is a little bit scary for me.
I know you have a much bigger audience than I do.
And you can see Rush on TV on the live desk.
We're in sort of interesting territory today.
We've had a few technical glitches, but we're just rocking and rolling and making it happen throughout the day.
And so, hi, Rush.
Thank you for having us.
It's great to have you back.
I forgot to turn on my mic.
There you go.
You have engineers to do that for you.
Great to have you here.
I just did this study about how men go dumb when they see blondes.
So I've got my guard up to protect my IQ with you sitting there crossing.
I'm not going to count on that.
I'm just going to plan on you.
I don't think that's going to happen to you.
I said that this morning.
That's pretty funny.
I've never really experienced that.
But let's see what, you know, one of the stories I just did with Major Garrett, who's out in Iowa, we were talking about this back and forth that Bob Novak wrote about, where supposedly Hillary's camp says, we have something really nasty on Barack Obama, but we're simply too big and too above it to disclose what it is.
But they just disclosed it.
By letting that out, if they've got it, they just disclosed it.
So what do you think?
Do you think they have something or do you think this is?
Of course, it's a Clintons.
Of course they've got something.
Got that and more.
They've got that on everybody.
But I don't think the Clintons released this.
The Clintons would not actually do it this way.
This is somebody trying, I think, to burn or sabotage the Clintons.
And Novak said he never talked to anybody in the Republican Party about this.
He doesn't make up items.
So somebody in the Democrat Party or the Democrat organization somewhere is leaking this stuff to him.
So, you know, in terms of Barack Obama and his response, then the Clinton camp says to him, you know, oh, this is this kind of stuff happens all the time.
You really shouldn't have jumped on it.
Of course, everybody lies about sex.
You know, everybody lies to grand juries.
Everything the Clintons do that is under the table, borderline illegal.
That's their excuse.
Everybody does it.
I've been kind of fascinated with the press reaction to Obama's reaction.
What's he supposed to do?
You know, he's this is here's the subtext.
I don't know if your guests talked about this earlier, but the subtext is he's black.
And here's a powerful white woman, the presumptive nominee, apparently has dirt.
There's a racist component here, too, that I think makes this very interesting.
But I don't doubt for a minute the Clintons have all that and more about a whole bunch of people.
But just by saying it, you're suggesting that there is something out there, and there doesn't even have to be once you've said that.
Right.
So another thing I wanted to ask you about, you know, happened over the weekend or started really on Friday.
Mitt Romney is the subject of some push-polling in New Hampshire.
And they're getting people on the phone, asking them a few basic normal questions about the election.
And then they're sort of going into this territory where they say, well, do you realize that Mormons think that the Book of Mormon is superior to the Bible?
A lot of outrage about this.
Let's just play the sound bite and get Russia's reaction to it.
I think anyone recognizes that attacking a person based on their faith is un-American and simply wrong.
And at a time like this, the irony associated with attacking a person on their faith as we celebrate the founding of a nation which welcomes people of different faiths is not lost in any American.
What do you think?
I think he's got a point.
Attacking people's faith.
I mean, the last time this was really done, and I thought we overcame it, was when Jack Kennedy ran in 1960.
I was worried about whether the Pope would actually be running the country.
Now people are worried about whether Joseph Smith is going to be running the country.
It's a different situation, though.
I mean, I know that comparison exists.
You had 42 million Catholics, I think, in 1962 in America, and now maybe five and a half Mormons, five and a half million, I should say, Mormons in the United States.
Do you think that is the Mormon religion an issue for Mitt Romney in terms of his possible nomination?
Well, it is in the sense that Republican primary voters are largely made up of evangelical Christians.
And there are ways that he can deal with this.
I think he's right to be somewhat offended by the push-polling, but this is politics.
And I hate to sort of echo the Clintons here.
I remember down here in Florida when Jeb Bush was running for governor the first time against Lawton Childs.
Lawton Child was running push-polling on Jeb, telling senior citizens he's going to cut off their benefits and their housing and so forth.
I mean, this kind of thing happens.
The religious component here makes this sort of fertile ground.
If Mitt would just say, hey, look, I have a vision for the country, and this is what it is, ABCDE.
I believe in God.
And I have a great deal of faith in God's relevance to this country's founding, and then move on.
That's what he's tried to do.
I mean, that's what he's been saying.
But there's also been this move to do the speech like John Kennedy did and say, you know, I won't be ruled by the Pope in Kennedy's case.
Do you think it's wise for Romney to consider doing that speech?
Do you think he is considering it?
Or do you think he says that's something I'll do down the road?
I don't, you know, I'm sure he's considering it.
I don't know what he's going to do.
His circumstance right now, the reason this is happening to him in part is because he's leading everywhere in a lot of places in these early primaries, New Hampshire.
In Iowa, and I think he probably may be in a little bit of a protect the lead mode by not amplifying this stuff beyond what it already is.
You know, in terms of Iowa, it is getting a little bit tighter.
We've got some interesting sort of undercurrents going on with Huckabee and also Barack Obama giving Hillary a run for her money in Iowa as well.
Do you see any scenario where there's a surprising shake-up that happens in the beginning of January in Iowa?
Well, I don't think, let's look at the Democrats first.
I think ABC has a poll out today that makes it appear, even though it's not even December yet, that she may lose what I call the hawkeye cauckey.
She can afford to lose Iowa and move on.
If on the Republican side, and even though it's unlikely, you mentioned Huckabee, it's very perceptive because he is starting to make a move.
If he finishes a high second, then what's governing all this right now is conventional wisdom.
The conventional wisdom is Hillary's a nominee and she's the next president, and Rudy is going to be the Republican nominee.
I'm going to duke it out and all those scenarios.
Now, something comes in to upset the conventional wisdom.
Conventional wisdom is set with a drive-by media covering this, and they love excitement.
They hate boredom.
So if Huckabee comes in and shows a strong second, or even if he won it, that would cause an explosion and create all kinds of momentum.
It would upset this conventional wisdom going into New Hampshire.
So if he finishes a strong second, it could have some ripple effect on the Republican side.
I don't think he's going to get the nomination, but it could shake things up.
You said that you are Hillary Clinton's biggest fear.
Why are you her biggest fear, Rush?
Well, I've got bullseyes on both sides of me.
I think I'm the one that stands in the way of her ability because of my audience reach, because the loyalty and the size of my audience.
Mrs. Clinton is right now trying to get away with saying nothing specific about anything because she wants to hide her true agenda, which is as close to socialism as the country will have ever been if she gets her way.
And she's trying to do the exact opposite.
So anybody who's telling the truth about her and trying to warn people about what her candidacy and presidency represents, I mean, you become a target.
And since the Republicans haven't chosen a nominee yet, and by the way, the Clintons don't just try to defeat people they consider their opponents.
They try to ruin them and try to destroy them in terms of their credibility and so forth.
There have been a couple of, I'm drawing a blank, but there have been a couple of instances just recently.
I don't forget, I think, for a minute that the Harry Reid smear letter, I mean, she signed it.
You know, that was an episode that was designed to impact negatively my ability to do business using the force and the power of the federal government.
These things are, nothing is coincidence with the Clintons.
All right, we're going to take a quick break.
We'll be right back with Rush Limbaugh.
Let me take you to Tim Gawn, who is in the newsroom with some breaking news out of North Carolina.
Tim, what are you looking at?
And we are back.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
Rush Limbaugh, the cutting edge of societal evolution, broadcast history here for us at the EIB Network, simulcasting today with Martha McCallum's live desk, the Fox News Channel.
Fox is still in a commercial break, waiting for the they had a breaking news story before they went to their break, so we beat them by a minute.
They're going to give me a countdown when she's ready to come back.
I had no idea when you went to the break, that picture of me on the raft, I did not send you that picture.
And when I need to know, we're going to do a personal segment.
Oh, these things are just, these are.
I hadn't seen that picture.
Yes.
I hadn't seen that picture yet either.
Oh, you hadn't?
No.
Oh, you didn't choose the picture.
No.
Oh, I like that one, though.
Well, the audience should know that when you were looking at it, it's so cute.
Like you had seen it before.
Anyway, can you give me a little, no, I can't ask you to do that.
We have just a couple of seconds back from our break, so I'll tell you in just a couple of minutes.
Take it, yours.
All right, we're going to jump right in.
We're going to talk to Rush Limbaugh a little bit about what it's like to be Rush Limbaugh.
You know, you look at some of what you say about yourself on the radio and, you know, the era of Rush, which I know came from another publication in terms of yourself and talent borrowed from God.
I was blamed for the writer's strike.
I know, I saw that.
But, you know, what do you say to people who are not among the 20 million people out there who listen to you all the time and who hear phrases like that and say, gee, you know, that's pretty pompous.
What do you say about that?
I don't care.
I do my program for the audience, and it's building.
Radio is a very competitive business.
When I started this show in 1988, there were 100 talk stations.
Now there are 1,200, I think.
It's grown.
And you have to cut through the noise.
If conservatism expressed on the radio was what got ratings, then there would have been somebody long before me that was number one.
There's a showbiz component here, and those are signature things.
A talent on loan from God, I actually mean.
I think I'm blessed by God.
Cutting edge, I am.
I'm leading a movement, leading a broadcast revolution on AM radio.
I'm very confident about myself, and I don't mind telling people the things I like about myself, and I don't believe in false humility.
And by the way, we in talk radio have this thing called polarization.
It's not required that everybody love us.
We're looking at right now, you can't see it, but we have a picture of you and your dad and your grandfather that you sent to us.
You talk sometimes, you say, you know, boy, if my parents could see this.
What do you think they would say if they could see all this?
Well, the reason I say that is because my dad thought he was a failure as a father.
He came out of the Great Depression.
It was a formative experience of his life.
He went to World War II.
And when you come out of the Great Depression, the key to success, the key to even getting a job was a college education.
And I hated school from the time I was 12.
It was prison.
And I went to college for one year.
I flunked speech twice.
I gave every speech, but I didn't outline them.
They should have called it Outline 101.
I quit, moved to Pittsburgh when I was 20 to continue working in radio, which I'd started in 16.
He just thought that he had failed as a father to properly instruct me and prepare me.
And so all of this, you know, being denounced by the Senate majority leader, the guy responsible for the illegal driver's license question being asked of Hillary in the debate, he would be stunned.
He would not believe it.
He'd be infuriated, too, to see some of the attacks.
He'd be very proud at the same time.
But he just, he died before I had really mushroomed here.
The first time he saw me on television, I was debating Al Gore on the environment.
And first commercial break, he turned to my mother, said, where did he learn this?
He didn't go to school.
My mother said, from you, silly.
He was a brilliant man.
So he said, he used to yell at the television, too, right?
Like a lot of our dads.
Yeah, absolutely.
I do want to ask you a couple of questions about what I know was a difficult time in your life.
And it was a long time ago, and not to really rehash it.
It's several years ago now.
But when I told people that I was doing this interview with you, a couple of them said, you know, I will never forget the day that Rush came back from his experience in rehab and what it was like listening to him, very strong man, humbled by this experience.
And I'm curious how all of that colors who you are today.
How did it change you?
Made me better.
I actually, I don't mean this to sound perverse, but I actually thank God that I became addicted to pain pills because the process of going through rehab taught me more about myself than I had ever known.
I wish I would have learned what I learned about myself and how to use the things I learned in rehab going through life.
You know, we're all raised to be, we want to be loved, we want to be liked.
We care about what other people think of us.
And sometimes to our detriment, we let feedback and the opinions of others shape our own self-image.
And I was guilty of that too, especially, you know, being in a performance industry where that kind of feedback is necessary.
But in my professional life, I had mastered it.
I didn't care what the critics said.
In fact, I learned to take criticism from certain people as a measure of success.
But in my personal life, it was just the opposite.
If people didn't like me who knew me, I thought there's something wrong with me.
And people who are addicted to substances, be it alcohol or whatever, are mostly medicating pain that they don't have the knowledge or the will to deal with.
And that's primarily what I learned.
My life has been totally changed.
It has never been better since I, since those five weeks were among, at a place in Arizona, among the most valuable five weeks of my life.
I know that a lot of people that you were with there relapsed, and you feel very fortunate that you didn't.
What do you attribute that to?
I bought into the program.
Plus, you know, I was addicted medically a few short years ago.
Some of the people I was there with had been users for decades and much stronger stuff than I was using.
It doesn't matter the substance.
It's all addictive.
It's all opiates.
But I totally, totally bought into it.
It was so life-changing.
I look back on it.
I actually can't believe I did that.
And the idea of taking a pill again is repugnant to me.
All right.
We're going to talk more with Rush Limbaugh.
And when we come back, we're going to talk about his relationship with the president, the president's legacy, how kind or unkind he thinks history will be to the 43rd president of the United States.
And also, we want to get this in for you before we take this break.
Former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson, sentenced to one day in jail and three years probation on drug charges for drug possession and driving under the influence in Arizona.
Tyson pleaded guilty in September to a single felony count of cocaine possession and misdemeanor driving under the influence count.
He faced a possible maximum sentence of four years and three months in prison.
So that news just coming across the wires.
We're going to have more with Rush Limbaugh.
We'll talk about the president.
We'll talk about politics.
All on the live desk right here, live simulcast with Rush Limbaugh.
We're pleased to be here in Palm Beach.
We'll be right back.
I want to jump right into this.
I want to talk to you about the president as one of the greatest conservative voices in this country.
So sorry, sir.
V, do you think that the president in any sense has blown it for Republicans?
No, not blown it.
It's just the president is a fine man.
I like him.
He's incredibly upbeat.
He's so different in person than the guy you see on Television.
In what way?
Confident, arrogant.
Well, not airy, but cocky.
He's just a life of the party kind of guy.
No deliberate presidential behavior, as you see in front of the camera.
I was back with him for two hours in August, and it was smoking cigars up in the treaty room in the residence.
It was just, it was, he didn't stop talking, took me around the world, told me what he faced, what leaders of foreign countries faced, where we're headed.
I tell these people, United States is a solution.
It's not their problem.
He's just, he's bullish in the country.
To your question, he doesn't, he's not a conservative.
So he's not leading an ideological movement.
He is a Republican.
A conservative would not have come in with a new tone to let Ted Kennedy write the education bill, for example.
But he thought he had to work with Democrats because the Republican margins were so small.
But he's not her proposal.
Well, let me ask you this.
I just have a minute left.
So you say he's so different, you know, when you're with him off camera.
Does that frustrate you?
Do you say to him, you know, this is the message that you need to be communicating to the American people?
I would never.
No, no, no.
I would never presume to tell you.
But does that frustrate you as an observer of the people?
Yes, it does because I think the country would love him.
He's such an engaging, charismatic, laughing, smiling.
It was this way when I first met him when he owned the Texas Rangers.
And the country would love him.
I would love for him to be able to do this.
I just have 20 seconds.
Where do you think you're going to be 10 years from now?
I am right here, right here.
I am not, and I've made this claim very public.
I am not retiring until every American agrees with me.
And there's some work still to be done on this.
All right.
This has been a pleasure.
Really good to be with you.
Thank you very much, Rushlin Baugh.
That's it for us.
And that's it for us.
And that's it for us.
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