All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 23, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:25
January 23, 2009, Friday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Greetings to you music lovers and thrill seekers and conversationalists all across the fruited play in Rush Limbaugh and the fastest week in media.
It's Friday.
Let's go.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open live Friday.
Remy, here's your telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882.
Go to the phones.
The content of the show is all yours.
If you want to go the email route, it's LRushbo at eibnet.com.
Steve Gilbert, sweetnessandlight.com.
Blogger sends me about this whole business of the 10 people dead in Pakistan.
And of course, we had the call from Muhammad in St. Paul, Minnesota, who was very appreciative of my apparent concern for Muslims.
I just want to go back and remind you of something.
This from August 14th of 2007, in Hanover, New Hampshire, presidential hopeful Barack Obama was warned by a friendly voter Monday to avoid public spats with his Democrat rivals.
But remarks he made later could add fuel to the criticism against him.
Asked whether he would move U.S. troops out of Iraq to better fight terrorism elsewhere.
He brought up Afghanistan and said, we've got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.
So I hope, ladies and gentlemen, none of these Pakistanis were civilians because Obama accused our military of doing that in Iraq and Afghanistan back in August of 2007.
This Caroline Kennedy thing, she may have a lawsuit, folks.
Let me walk you through this.
I mean, we've got a mob war between the Kennedys and the Cuomos now.
We have a Democrat nominated, appointed to the Hillary Senate seat who's a blue dog Democrat.
She opposed the first TARP bailout.
She is pro-gun, pro-NRA.
And of course, New York Liberal Democrats are fit to be tied over this.
But let's focus on Caroline Kennedy for just a second because she may have a lawsuit.
This woman is a Democrat and she is a Kennedy.
We are finding out that she has been forced out of the running for a Kennedy entitlement, a U.S. Senate seat.
For what reasons?
You get these reasons.
This is what Patterson.
Patterson said she was never seriously considered once the vetting process was complete because she was mired, this is a quote now, mired in some potentially embarrassing personal issues.
The source cited tax liabilities and worker compensation liabilities connected to the employment of a nanny.
Well, the Treasury Secretary just got appointed, despite all that.
The source also said the state of her marriage may have presented a problem as well.
She has a tax problem, came up in the vetting, and a potential nanny issue, the source said.
And reporters are starting to look at her marriage more closely, the source continued, refusing to provide any specifics.
Well, hell's bells, folks.
Marriage problems?
She's a Kennedy.
Of course she has marriage problems.
That's the point.
Why have a Kennedy in public office with no marriage problems?
We are talking about the Kennedys here.
This is a standard no Kennedy could meet.
Potentially embarrassing personal issues, as though that's a liability.
That's a requirement if you are a Kennedy.
In fact, a badge of honor.
My gosh, folks, I am convinced the world has gone crazy.
Then we hear she has tax problems.
Of course, she has tax problems.
She's a Democrat.
Ask Al Franken about not paying taxes, and he might win the Senate seat in Minnesota.
Ask Timothy Geithner.
He's a tax cheat, and he's going to be seated as the Secretary of the Treasury, which runs the IRS.
Both of these guys are males, I might point out.
If tax problems are an issue, I mean, they're resume enhancers.
These are just innocent mistakes.
Charlie Wrangel, he writes tax policy at the House Ways and Means Committee.
He's got tax problems that I'm sure make Caroline Kennedys look small change, which would not help her resume.
If you're going to have tax problems, do them big.
If you're a Democrat like Geithner, like Charlie Wrangell.
But this would never happen to a male Kennedy.
This is my point.
They'd probably hold it against her if she drank a quart of Chevrose Regal every night, like the real men in her family.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Caroline Kennedy's not a Republican the last time I checked.
So what the hell is this?
Why are they holding her to standards only Republicans are held to?
Potential nanny issue?
Good grief.
She's a liberal Democrat.
If the nanny is an illegal immigrant, she's a hero.
They want amnesty for these people.
She's doing the Lord's work by having an illegal immigrant as a nanny.
She's in line for the presidency.
Am I missing something here?
This is an outrage.
I don't know how the Kennedy family is putting up with this.
And I understand that the Kennedy family is a little upset, but they're upset with her.
Because apparently one of the things she said when she pulled herself out of the running here is that, well, Ted had the seizure the other day and his health is not the best.
And that just flabbergasted and fulminated over at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis.
He didn't like being used as the excuse here.
Caroline Kennedy comes from a family that has built a reputation, going back to good old Joe Kennedy, of not playing by the rules and being rewarded for it.
How can this Senate seat be taken away from Caroline Kennedy with these reasons?
These are reasons to deny it to a Republican, but these reasons are resume enhancements for a Democrat.
I've lost my bearings here.
What can anyone believe anymore?
Caroline Kennedy should sue.
She should go on 60 Minutes.
She should go on Oprah.
She may not, you know, she may be an order of fries short of a happy meal, but that's never stopped anybody else in her family.
Why her?
She may be entitled to feel as if she's royalty.
If history is any guide, she should.
I'm just.
I don't know, folks.
You know, this is just a, I, you know, think it's just, well, you know, a tragedy.
And it's a travesty.
All the male Kennedys get celebrated for this kind of stuff.
They're applauded.
They're called great liberal lions.
She comes along and they trash her and said she never had a shot.
That's what it says in the New York Post in a stunning revelation.
A source close to Governor Patterson insisted that the governor had no intention of picking Caroline Kennedy for New York's vacant Senate seat because she was mired in tax issues and her nanny and possibly her marriage.
Mired in some potentially embarrassing personal issues.
Like, that's a problem for a Democrat?
A problem for a Kennedy?
What would be odd is if she were clean and pure as the wind-driven snow.
That's what would, I think, stand in the way.
In the New York Times, Housekeeper in Taxes are said to derail Kennedy's bid, and they go into their own version of this.
I don't know why Barack didn't stand up for her.
Well, yeah, I do.
He was learning the executive orders that Greg Craig wrote at about the time this happened.
Now, who is the new Senate pick?
Governor Patterson defying the liberal wing of his Democrat Party.
The Cuomos here, this is he has chosen a little-known, NRA-backed upstate congresswoman, Kirsten Gillibrand, to succeed Hillary Clinton.
She opposed the TARP bailout, the first one.
She votes for NRA-type legislation.
She has won two successive elections in one of the heaviest GOP districts in the state.
As a Democrat, she's done this.
This has shaken everything up in New York.
Now, not only do they think something's big time wrong with Caroline Kennedy, they also think something's wrong with the governor.
Do you realize the scope of this?
I don't think you do.
This is a liberal Democrat governor stabbing his own party in the back with this pick after trashing the reputation of Caroline Kennedy in the process.
Hope, change, peace, love, good grief.
I want to see what acrimony is going to look like in this administration.
Robert Gibbs, the best press spokesman in the history of press spokesman of four yesterday.
That was his pre-pub, his lead-in, is having at it again today.
And depending on how long this goes, we had a little montage of Robert Gibbs yesterday.
We might jip this.
He went for an hour yesterday.
We might jip this just to see how he's doing.
Our microphones are always there.
And we'll let you know.
In the meantime, back to the phones.
Open line Friday to Redding, California.
Robert, nice to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Good morning, Rush.
Extremely frustrated dittos.
Thank you, sir.
I'm happy to hear that you're frustrated, however.
Yeah.
Rush, I'm 40 years old.
I've never been without a job, and I've worked all my life.
Extremely conservative in my views and my thoughts.
There's no such thing as an extreme conservative.
Oh, okay.
Well, well set in my conservative beliefs.
How about this?
Yes.
Sir, what can I, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
What can I and other people do?
It really seems like we're fighting a losing battle.
It seems like responsibility for what you're doing and not thinking that the government solves every problem that you could ever have is dying.
I mean, it seems like more and more people are believing the opposite of that, and it's really frustrating.
And I don't know that I want to run for office, but there's got to be something.
I mean, you talk till you're blue in the face to people and try and get them to understand it.
Like I said, it just seems like a losing battle.
It's extremely frustrating.
Well, you know, I've been giving this a lot of thought because I get this question frequently.
And right now, the focus of attention on the American people is worthwhile.
It's going to be a big project because right now the American people are not thinking, and we've got to find a way to reach them by virtue of emotion.
And talking to them, at least the Obama supporters and some of the cult followers.
And there are a lot of Republicans in this group, too, by the way.
I just don't think reason is the way to approach them right now.
Reason will be automatically rejected because they view this not within the realm of reason, but within the realm of emotion and hope, all these ethereal things that are not tangible.
So I think the only thing that's going to turn the people around will be time, and that will require the failure of Obama policies to work.
That will happen.
And I think 2010, 2012 will both provide pretty good opportunities for significant Republican gains in the House and Senate.
However, maybe even the White House back.
But limiting the damage between now and then so that even after Republicans win in 2010 or 212, that there's still something left to fix that's not so far gone.
Like if they get national health care, I mean, that's a tipping point.
We may have had it in terms of the structure of the country being a republic and founded on the notion of individual liberty, democracy, and all of that.
So the focus needs to be on the elected members of Congress.
How do we reach them?
I actually think we might want to hire lobbyists to reach our own elected officials.
It seems that these people, when they get elected, end up going to Washington and they metamorphosize into cheap imitations of the dominant culture there, which would be the liberals.
And everybody that has a vested interest in Washington lobbies.
And I know voters think that they shouldn't have to lobby their own representative.
Their own representative or senator is up there to represent them.
But everybody else is competing against the voters.
And the people that are competing against the voters are doing it with money.
And the voters are just doing it with civics.
And I'll guarantee you, you put your average politician on a stage and say, I want to give you six minutes of a civics lesson or $6,000.
And I'll guarantee you the guy's going to find a way to take the six grand.
Yeah.
So we might actually want to hire or create a lobbying firm.
Rush, can I mention one other thing?
Yeah.
You, sometime back, shortly after your bout with some of the issues that you've had, had mentioned that you were tired of the language being twisted to suit the Democrats.
And the other night on the McNeil-Lair NewsHour, they actually referred to, on the same day that Barack Obama got inaugurated, they actually referred to Feinstein as the Democratic from California.
Well, don't say that's a... Democrat, not Democratic.
Did they say Democratic senator?
No, no, they said the Democratic from California.
I think that's a slip of the tongue.
I'll bet you what happened was that whoever typed up the script left out senator and it just wasn't on the teleprompter.
I guarantee you, they're not going to start calling them Democratics.
They call it Democratic Party and so forth.
Believe me, that's the least of our problems out there.
We need to hire lobbyists.
I'm dead serious.
No, I'm dead serious, but I think I'm trying to also make a point.
But look, I think what's coming is going to be a concerted effort by the Obama administration to separate our elected officials from us on the Republican side.
Colin Powell is working on that.
Colin Powell is already out there saying Republicans shouldn't ignore limbaugh, meaning conservatives, plus me.
McCain, New York Times story today, the Maverick is back.
What does that mean?
It means he's back criticizing the Republican Party, and they're celebrating it.
So I think what's going to happen, you know, I don't know, they had this big meeting.
Obama had a meeting with congressional leaders today.
And it's a wild guess.
My assumption is that there's going to be an attempt made to separate elected Republicans in the House and Senate from their voters.
And the effort's going to be, don't listen to what your voter says.
It's not the way this is going to get done.
We're not going to get things done up here unless we work together my way.
That's what Obama's going to say.
He's going.
Now, I know you're laughing.
You're probably outraged.
Why should we, of all people, have to hire lobbyists?
Well, everybody else dealing with them is a lobbyist.
But Rush, but Rush, we're constituents.
We elect them.
And we re-elect them if we don't do the right.
I know, but when have they learned that lesson?
I mean, they started screwing up after, I guess, 1996, 98, and their numbers dwindled every year other than the Bush election years, 2000, 2004.
There was a steady attrition of Republicans in the House I'm talking about here.
You would think they would get their lesson.
Governors consider.
I know they had some problems with the Republican president is not being a conservative on all things.
It's hard for the House to oppose their own president.
That was a problem too.
But no, everybody else lobbies these people.
Well, what lobbying firm, Rush, are we going to, I don't know, maybe we create one.
But Rush, aren't there other conservative interest groups that already have lobbyists?
Yeah, but do you see it working?
Now, I will say this.
John Boehner came out of that meeting today with the president, and he said some pretty good things.
He said, we've got to remember here that we're not spending our money.
This is not ours to spend.
This is our kids.
Right now, just the cost, forget the deficits that have already built up to a trillion to $2 trillion, annual deficits.
Just the cost of this stimulus as it stands now is about $6,700 per family if they came and collected it from us.
At some point, we are going to pay that.
Somehow, some way, by hook or by crook, with increase in fees, increase in taxes, we're going to pay this.
And it's not going to stop at $6,700 a family.
And Boehner's pointing out that Republicans, Mitch McConnell or some Jeff Sessions, there's some people up there that are willing to oppose this and stand up to it.
And there are some who aren't.
But it's going to require a strong backbone, and the guys that oppose are going to have to know they're supported for doing so.
I'm talking about elected officials.
This is not Civics 101.
This is not Thorndike Foghorn being elected by his constituents and going up to Washington and always keeping his constituents in mind because once Foghorn Thorndike or whatever gets up there, here comes this lobbying group and here comes that law.
And I have nothing against lobbyists.
It's the way of the world.
And they're just trying to get things passed that their clients, also American citizens, maybe organizers of business or a political group they want done.
And we don't lobby them.
We write letters.
We call phones.
Some of you do, but we don't lobby them.
They're used to being lobbied.
Just something to think about.
Sir Douglas Quintet.
She's about to move her.
That reminds me.
I will say this.
As best I can tell, the new senator from New York seems to be marginally hotter than the former senator.
And I think will probably be less stressful on the eyes as we watch her age.
You know how unfair our culture is to women.
But this is, I mean, I'm just saying that this represents an overhaul that is pleasant in a number of levels.
Back to the audio soundbites.
Here's Robert Gibbs.
We have put together here a montage of the stellar Robert Gibbs.
The Drive-By Media told us when he was nominated or appointed to be the press secretary that they didn't come any better.
And this guy was top right, top rate, first class all during the campaign.
Here is a montage of his answers yesterday.
just don't want to get ahead of a process.
I think that the president, I'm sorry, say that again?
We'll check on that.
Let me not get ahead of an economic team, but I shouldn't get ahead of the president.
Let me get some guidance from the council's office.
Some of the technical questions, obviously, we had Greg help you guys understand a little bit of that.
Well, as Greg said, as it relates to your first question, let me get some guidance from Greg.
We think it was done in a way.
Hold on.
People usually don't laugh when I don't say something that's not funny.
But out of an abundance of caution, out of an abundance of caution, and again, out of an abundance of caution, a similar abundance of caution, the oath was readministered.
No, because it was done again out of an abundance of caution.
That's a montage of Robert Gibbs yesterday.
Numerous times he mentioned consulting with Greg Craig.
He's got one going.
Let's jip it.
Join it in progress.
See how he's doing today.
It'll likely get worse before they get better.
But I believe, and the president believes, that Congress has to act quickly to ensure that this package gets on his desk by President's Day recess so that we can begin turning that economy around.
Chuck?
Two questions.
One, do you rule out asking for another stimulus package after this, this year, if the economy, if there's a determination that let's get one done and start seeing that impact?
Chuck Dutzing, if this one doesn't work, are you going to answer another one?
Get into hypotheticals about what we might do later on in the year.
And other U.S. officials have confirmed these Predator Drone airstrikes.
Paxim, what is it about the Canada confirming whether the President consulted?
I'm not going to get into these matters.
Compromise operational.
I'm not going to get into these matters.
Justifiable curiosity, Robert.
We jipped this at the right time, didn't we?
If other members of the U.S. government are confirming this, why is it that you can't come?
going to get into these matters.
He won't confirm.
The Obama war on terror was in Afghanistan, Pakistan today.
He won't confirm it.
Is that right?
That's the 75%.
We believe that more.
By the way, if you're a middle school in Green Bay, listen to it.
Turn off the PA system.
Spend.
We believe that through a series of steps, we'll also have a financial stability package that will have credit flowing.
Right when we jipped this, folks, he said things are going to get worse before they get better.
Home foreclosure crisis.
Americans face people waiting for their mortgage to be paid and their gas tank to be filled up.
Seen the lines at the gas stations?
People waiting for Obama or somebody from government to come pay for it to fill up.
Have you seen it?
I'm not sure what to see as a part of this package.
That's why the President believes, and members of Congress shared in that belief today, that it has to get done quickly.
Do you see any turnaround in economic indicators that will be noticeable after 18 months?
Well, I refer you to the reports that we put out about this.
No, tell us yourself.
As I've said, as the President has said, it's not going to get better overnight.
We didn't get here overnight.
18 months, and he won't commit to it getting better in 18 months.
Our hope is that this work can be done quickly, that the money can get into the economy quickly.
That's why we're committed strongly to.
Most of it doesn't get into the economy until 2011.
It's in the CBO report.
I'm not making it up.
To create jobs.
Good, great.
And that all those tests can be met by this package.
Yes, Robert.
The president this morning expressed a degree of concern over some banks that have remodeled their offices.
He helps him approve this.
Well, I want to hear this.
These are some of the same banks that have gotten taxed.
Ask him about remodeling the residents and how much the government's going to spend on that.
Or what did he have in mind there?
Well, I think, as I've mentioned, as was outlined in principles that Larry Summer sent to Congress and that Secretary Designate Geithner have talked to the Finance Committee about,
that as we move forward with the financial stability package, he's asked his team to ensure that safeguards and controls are put into place to ensure that the money that's gotten doesn't go to lie in the pockets of people that may have gotten us into some of these messages.
It didn't.
It went to the contractors that did the work.
He's given his economic team to come back to him on as we move forward on these packages.
The American people need to be reasonably greatly assured that their hard-earned money is not going to the bonuses of the remodeling office.
What do you mean be reassured?
At a bank that's in trouble.
That money needs to go directly to the American people in the form of a Treasury Secretary.
He's in charge here.
Or a small business so that it can meet its payroll.
That's what the financial stability package should do, and that's what he's asked his team to ensure that it's put together so that the next money that's spent to stabilize our financial system is spent differently.
This is an answer, by the way.
To a question about $1.2 million being spent to remodel an executive office at Merrill Lynch.
I'm not going to get ahead of the recommendations that the team are going to put together and in front of the president.
Laura?
If the stimulus package winds up passing Congress with no or very minimal Republican support, will the administration view that as a disappointment?
Well, again, it's not a hypothetical because given the committee vote, it's a very real possibility in the House.
We've all spent a lot of time in Washington.
You have?
I'm not going to prejudge the final outcome of a legislative vote based on the inner workings of a particular committee vote.
Bob, this is your chance to pressure them.
We can all go back and look and find examples of the.
Take that down a minute.
Let me explain how this ought to be.
If Gibbs, this guy is supposedly stellar, so he gets a question.
Will you be disappointed?
She's setting him up.
She's got a drive-by reporter there throwing a softball at him.
It's waiting to be knocked out of the park.
Will you be disappointed if you get minimal Republic?
Yes, we will.
This is a package designed to save this country, to bring our economy around to create jobs.
And it will be terribly tragic if a number of our Republican friends don't see that.
Well, I'm not going to get into the future of legislative outcome.
I remember.
Ah, long way to go here, Bob.
Long, long way to go here.
Well, I don't know if his natural impulse might be.
We don't care about the Republicans.
We can get past whatever we want to get past.
We don't care about them.
That's his natural impulse.
What he should have said, well, yeah, well, we'd be terribly disappointed if they don't do what's right with us.
This guy's going to get taken to the woodshed.
Somebody's going to, Greg Craig, probably going to have a meeting with him this afternoon and say, look, you're passing up opportunity after opportunity here, and you're going to have to learn how to deal with these guys.
They're setting you up.
They're giving you all the help in the world, Mr. Gibbs, they can.
They want you to break Barry Bond's home run record in three press briefings.
And so far, you've hit a bunch of foul balls.
Now, we're going to teach you how to knock them out of the park.
Because at the end of the day, mark my words on this.
Don't doubt me and look at me.
The Obama administration is going to do everything it can to separate Republicans in the House and the Senate from their voters and what their voters want.
Mark my words.
We'll be back after this.
By the way, there are a couple of secret briefers of the press in the White House press room.
I guess a lot of administrations do this.
They have people speak on the condition of background, but they're unnamed.
They're called administration sources.
And yesterday, poor old Bob Gibbs outed one of them.
Oh, yes, he did.
He mentioned the name of one of the secret briefers.
An unidentified reporter said, why do the American people not have a right to know the names of the senior administration officials who briefed us this morning on the Guantanamo and related matters?
I hope that you all found the exercise that we did this morning helpful in further understanding the process by which the president had tasked his team to establish policies that he thinks enhances the security of the United States and to do so in a way that helps inform you of the decisions that he's made and the decisions that he will make over the course of this and do so in a way that's helpful to your job.
What about one of those senior officials' first name several times in this briefing?
I do, Jonathan.
Do you repeat that then?
Sorry?
Are we allowed to repeat that name?
I'm tempted to ask you to see if you can get one person's name into the paper so people will think he might be a Brazilian soccer star.
Like Pele.
I don't understand it.
Don't worry about understanding it.
You're not meant to understand it.
Now, this next question, this came from Bill Plant, CBS News.
And this upset Bob Gibbs, Robert Gibbs.
Listen to this.
How is it transparent when it looks like play to pay when the president gives his only interview on our inauguration night to a network which paid $2 million for the privilege of exclusive coverage of an event?
We've done interviews throughout the transition process.
We've answered questions from reporters, and no interview is decided on by me or anybody else who works for the president based on who might sponsor an activity.
Bill Plant didn't like it.
Apparently, what ABC did, they spent $2 million sponsoring a ball.
One of the inaugural balls, one of the people's balls, not official things.
Obama did his first official interview as president with ABC, and this is what Bill Plant was.
It sounds like pay to play.
Mr. Broadcast Engineer, we will be skipping audio soundbite number six.
Back to the phones.
This is Tom in Chicago.
Great to have you, sir.
Hello.
God bless you, Rush, and thank you for your service to us all.
I have two questions.
Yes.
Speaking of pace of play, the first is related to the only reason that Patrick Fitzgerald arrested Lagoyevich when he did was to protect Jesse Jackson Jr., Valerie Jared Emmanuel, Ron Emmanuel from getting harmed in the process, and by extension, Obama.
So the question is: you know, you can either have rule of law or mob rule, and the only reason that they would have impeachment rather than waiting for the trial is so that they don't have to have due process and that they don't have to have discovery.
Do you really think?
Do you really think that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald ceased the investigation so as to protect Jesse Zach Jr., Rahm Emmanuel, and eventually Obama?
Yes, sir.
There's no evidence of this.
Well, it's not evidence as such, but it's common sense that if you want to indict somebody, you wait until you have the evidence.
But you are saying that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago has thus been politicized.
He's been in the tank from the beginning for Obama, and obviously, Daly and all of the locals have been in the tank from the beginning.
But the fact is that it was common knowledge early on that Fitzpatrick was going to be, quote, reappointed.
Now, he's going to be kicked upstairs later on so he doesn't do more damage to the Democrats, but he certainly has been in the tank from Obama from the beginning.
Fitzgerald, by the way, Fitzgerald is Patrick Fitzgerald, also known as Fitzmus, or the Fitzmas that wasn't.
Well, it's interesting you have this theory.
I have a different one.
Who knows?
I know they're interesting questions, but I know U.S. attorneys.
I find it difficult to believe.
That's something I wouldn't believe until it's proven.
The suspicion is easy, but I wouldn't believe that until it's proven.
Now, there is an AP story here today.
Facing almost certain defeat in a Senate impeachment trial, Governor Blago might ask the courts to step in and block a proceeding that he considers a sham.
A lawyer for the Democrat governor said on Thursday, Samuel E. Adam told Associated Press Obama on Thursday at a lawsuit challenging what he called completely unfair Senate trial rules is being prepared and could be filed to the state Supreme Court within days.
Blago's trial is set for Monday.
I'm going to make a prediction to you, and I will not be disappointed if it happens.
I won't be surprised if Blago weasels out of this.
I know it's a long shot, but he might weasel out of this and still hang on.
And I frankly wouldn't be disappointed.
It would serve as a great daily reminder of just what you get with Democrat Party power politics.
I know, I know, snurdly, there's countless Blagojeviches still in office that we could use.
The guys got to pay the price.
I'm just saying, keep a close eye on this.
I do.
I do think with the proper maneuvering, good lawyering, I think he can get out of this.
Certainly without going to jail.
May not get out of it and survive as governor.
Also, the embattled and defiant governor, as A.P. Obama also reports, turned to the history books to describe the emotional strain on him and his family.
He compared his arrest last month to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
December 9th to my family, to us, to me, is what Pearl Harbor Day was to the United States, said Blago, talking to the AP.
It was a complete surprise.
It was completely unexpected.
And just like the United States prevailed in that, my family will prevail in this.
I am going to beat the equivalent of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Attorney's Office here in Chicago.
Be right back, folks.
Stay with us.
Obama got really ticked off, got really annoyed last night, went down to the press room in the White House, and the drive-bys dared to ask him a real question when he was out there gladhanding.
Mr. President, how do you recognize Mr. Lynn?
Oh, see, you guys, I came down here to visit.
I came down here to visit.
I didn't come down here.
You got very strict lobby rules, but Mr. Lynn was a lobbyist, sir.
Don't worry, guys.
This is what happens.
I can't end up visiting you guys and you can shake hands if I'm going to get grilled every time I come down.
We will be having a press conference at which time you can feel free to answer questions.
Right now, I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself to you guys.
That's all I was trying to get.
You didn't want to answer the question.
You're not supposed to ask the Messiah questions unless he's cleared it.
The guy was saying, how can you put this guy in there as a deputy DOD guy when he's a lobbyist and you got new rules saying I got to be lobbyists?
He should have just said, well, rules are meant to be broken.
We need to give ourselves flexibility.
We have reasonable rules with reasonable exceptions to them.
That's what they said yesterday.
I would counsel Obama.
I'm sure Greg Craig will get to him on this too, but I would counsel Obama.
Don't sweat this little stuff.
Don't get all irritated here with this on the big issues like socializing the country.
These drive-bys are going to be right there with you, Barry.
▲
Export Selection