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April 24, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:14
April 24, 2009, Friday, Hour #2
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It is the second hour of the Friday Rush Limbaugh Show.
And from deep in the heart of Texas, I'm Mark Davis.
And look forward to getting back on the horn with you about a wide variety of issues.
But I'm really looking forward to this as well.
One of the questions that hangs so thick in the air, especially since these people had the, pardon the word, audacity to invoke this, to oppose in retrospect, to historically criticize the level of interrogations, that's fine, that's fair game, that's free speech.
To criminalize that which has made us safe goes to a level of pathology that's hard to wrap my brain around.
How long will this last?
Is it a function of the moment?
Is it an overreach?
And will this White House reign that back in?
There's evidence that maybe that's happening.
But there's a gentleman who's going to tell us, among a lot of things, because you can always talk to Byron York about a lot.
But his great column in the Washington Examiner involves a conversation he had with Ted Olson, former Solicitor General, whose magnificent wife, Barbara, one of my favorite people, was lost in the 9-11 attacks.
And it is Ted Olson, former Solicitor General of the United States, that this whole torture probe thing will simply never end.
So we'll start with that and go other places, I hope, with the always wonderful Byron York.
Welcome, sir.
How you doing?
I'm doing great, Mark.
Good to be here.
You talked to Ted Olson, which it's funny.
I've talked to him a couple of times in the intervening years since 9-11, and it just my heart is instantly tugged.
This is a magnificent man.
I always appreciated him.
I certainly always appreciated his wife.
When you sat down to talk with him, you found a special perspective from him, not just from his 9-11 loss, but his familiarity with the way Washington works.
That's it.
You know, I thought he was particularly well qualified to talk about this, not only because of his experience in the Justice Department, his personal experience with terrorism, but also he knows a lot about how the Washington investigation machine works.
Actually, in the 1980s, he was caught up in an independent counsel investigation that cost him a lot in terms of time and money and reputation and ended up after years concluding that he'd never done anything wrong.
And basically, his bottom line was, look, the president has opened the door.
This has started, and he can't stop it now.
And we could be looking at months and years of subpoenas and witnesses and commissions and committees and investigations and maybe even prosecutions.
And it's a very, very long process.
And his experience in Washington tells him that once you start it, it's not going to stop.
When did you speak with him?
Because it's really important.
I mean, like, what time was it?
Was it yesterday?
Was it the day before?
We talked yesterday morning.
Because the reason I ask, and what did you eat when you were talking?
No, I'm GG.
The reason I ask is that the headline today, and maybe it's only a one-day headline, is that maybe the president is distancing, if only a little, from the witch hunt theme and maybe thinking twice about this, not with any regard as to whether it's right or wrong, because it's always about power with them, but the notion that it may not resonate so well, even among war critics.
So is it possible that maybe there's a mild retreat on this?
And if the president is not that enthused about it, I guess the bad news is the president doesn't have to be.
Others can take this witch hunt ball and run with it.
That's entirely right.
Now, I'll tell you, Mark, I am trying to figure this out because as we know, what happened was last weekend on the Sunday shows, White House Chief of Staff Rah Emmanuel goes on and says we don't want to prosecute anybody about this.
And this is after the president had chosen to release those Justice Department memos.
Then Tuesday in a photo op in the Oval Office, the President opens the door back up to possible prosecutions, but says he's going to leave it up to the Attorney General.
And then we've just been going on from there.
Today, by the way, we have found out that the administration has decided to release 44 photographs of some of these interrogations in response to a lawsuit by the ACLU.
They were ordered to do so by a U.S. circuit court.
They could have appealed it to the Supreme Court, but they didn't.
They want to release this.
And now you have the president saying, well, he's not sure he wants a 9-11 style commission.
It wouldn't be a good idea.
So if you listen to the pundits, they'll all tell you that, listen, this is the last thing Barack Obama wants.
He doesn't want a long investigation of his predecessor's administration.
But on the other hand, the president is doing the very things that have started that.
He released the memos.
He opened the door to prosecution.
He's releasing photographs in response to a court case that he doesn't even have to respond to yet, at least.
So he's playing both sides of the streets on this.
Byron York with us, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner.
In trying to make our own crystal ball as to where this might go, how far it might go, I guess it's always instructive to see, all right, against what landscape is this occurring, against what backdrop.
And if there is a major theme these days, it is that for the left, for the Bush critic, the war critic, whatever, it is not enough to have history prove them right.
Those who ever disagreed with them must be chased from the public square and must lie in the ash heap of reputational ruin.
And only years of these kinds of tribunals will do that.
Well, the president is facing pressure from that group.
Listen, if you looked at what some of these people were saying last year, during the campaign, before Obama was elected, some of them were debating whether there should be Nuremberg-style trials for Bush administration officials, and they used that word, Nuremberg-style, or whether there should simply be a truth commission.
The moderates favored the truth commission.
This is something they've wanted, and there's a lot of pressure on the left for the president to acquiesce to that.
Just a couple of days ago, George Soros sent out an email saying that he had joined a call for a 9-11-style commission.
That's what moveon.org, a very, very influential, powerful Internet group, wants.
The president is under pressure to do this.
And here again, releasing the memos, opening the door to prosecution.
You can't shut the door again.
The great Byron York, in our couple of remaining minutes, if you don't mind, a little inside baseball.
We remember so fondly your years with National Review, what happened there, and what's with this Examiner world that's attracted you, Bill Salmon, other heroes of mine?
What kind of allure have they got?
You neglected to say we have just added Michael Barone.
I think the great would refer to Michael Barone quite nicely.
Meaning that he is able to multitask or is he no longer in the U.S. News world?
Michael has left U.S. News and has joined the Washington Examiner.
What's going on here?
Well, we're very serious about ramping up our political coverage and giving the best political coverage that we can every day.
And we have me, we have Michael, we have Chris Starwalt, we have a lot of other terrific writers.
And I will tell you that my years at National Review, I was there for eight years, were absolutely terrific.
They're the best.
It was a very good experience.
But basically, we were starting something new and exciting at the Examiner, and I was just very tempted to do it, and it's been great.
You can read all of these good folks and their magnificent work at Examiner Politics, examinerpolitics.com.
In our remaining minute, let's talk about the role of punditry.
All of our lives are different, those of us who deal in opinions for a living, as we come up on the first hundred days here that will be viewed as some new type of solstice by those covering it.
How's this worked out for you compared to what we were all thinking looking at each other at the inauguration?
Well, I'm not all that surprised.
I was just talking to somebody in the Senate a few minutes ago, as a matter of fact, and I said, Well, what do you think about these 100 days?
And he says, Well, he's done the things that we knew he would be able to do.
You can push through big spending measures if you have 58 senators in the Senate and you have, what, 256 Democrats in the House.
Clearly, he's not going to get everything he wants on stuff like cap and trade.
We'll see what happens with health care.
But what's happened is we have seen this consistent personal popularity of the president.
He is still personally popular, and we have seen his positions on the various issues like terrorism, detainees, like cap and trade, energy, health care, to be 10, 15, sometimes even 20 points below his popularity rating.
So, do those issues bring his popularity rating down?
Does his popularity bring those issues up?
Well, Republicans are betting that the issues will bring him down as summer goes on.
I invoked crystal balls.
Let me ask for you to peer into yours and tell me about the fate of Janet Napolitano and Kathleen Sebelius.
Boy, I tell you, the Napolitano thing is just amazing.
I mean, not only has she angered all the Republicans with this right-wing extremist report, but the whole country of Canada is apoplectic about her now, suggesting that the Canadian border, somehow terrorists are pouring over the Canadian border, and you have to pay as much attention to that border as the Mexican border, where you have illegal immigrants coming over and a hyper-violent drug cartel war going on.
I mean, she really needs to be quiet for a while.
There's no indication that the White House has lost faith in her, but a lot of people on Capitol Hill are very upset about her.
As far as Sebelius is concerned, she is the last member of the Obama cabinet not to be sworn in, confirmed, and it is still a little bit dicey because people want to know more about this abortion issue.
Yeah, because she apparently just, I mean, listen, you know, a lie is something that you know someone knew the truth and fudged it with the purpose of deceiving.
I mean, that's to misspeak is not to tell a lie.
To share bad information because you got bad information is not a lie.
But it sure looks like she just flat-out lied about this contribution from this radical abortionist.
And does her fate kind of depend on how firm that fact becomes?
It depends on how firm that fact is and about how firm Democrats in the Senate want to be on pushing her through.
You have to remember, a lot of them spent a lot of their patience on confirming Timothy Geithner, even though he had these tax problems.
Senators do not like to be flat-out lied to.
They really don't of both parties.
It's one thing that unites members of both parties.
So it definitely means she is not out of the woods.
WashingtonExaminer.com.
Find Byron York and his increasingly impressive list of colleagues at examinerpolitics.com.
Great success to you there.
It's just always a pleasure to talk to you, Byron.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mark.
Good to be here.
It is the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Mark Davis filling in.
So I'll tell you what let's do.
Let's hit this first break, come back and start talking to people some more.
But Byron has given us another couple of topical layers.
If you're not totally up to speed on exactly what's well, most Limbaugh listeners are, I know.
But if you just sort of need the latest of the latest on what's going on with the drumbeat for Janet Napolitano's head, and is that right or wrong?
And the Sebelius matter, we'll cover those real quick and then blend that into various other thoughts that you have on this wonderful Friday.
It's Open Line Friday on the Rush Limbaugh Show, and see no reason to conduct it any differently.
If you got a thought you want to share, bring it.
1-800-282-2882.
Always visit RushLimbaugh.com.
I'm Mark Davis in for Rush, and we'll continue in just a moment.
It's the Rush Limbaugh Show for Friday.
I'm Mark Davis filling in from Proud Limbaugh Affiliate, WBAP, Dallas, Fort Worth, Texas.
Home of the returned president George W. Bush and Laura.
I think I had the chance to fill in, sure I did, over the holidays a little bit, and I told you about having been to the White House Christmas party and with 500 people and you do the photo line and you basically get like 45 seconds.
I subsequently, and I don't think I've had the chance to deliver you this enormous name drop, had the opportunity to be with about a half dozen of my talk show compadres in the Oval Office when the president was about a week from being done.
I'll give you some more on that either later today or when we are back together on Friday, May 8th.
The reason I bring this up is now that he is back and he's back here, and there's, as you might expect, an enormous amount of attention about the house.
There's Secret Service all over the place.
And it has not been a nightmare for the neighborhood.
Most of the neighbors are quite pleased.
They got a security fence at the end of the road now.
And it's not as though the former president and his wife are showing up like where's Waldo at various places all over town.
They're playing it pretty low-key.
And I'm not even sure really how much time he's spending here in the Metroplex.
He's spending some time down in Crawford, doing some traveling.
I think he's done one pretty big speaking engagement, mostly writing the book, which will tend to keep you behind closed doors while he's not the kind of guy where you're going to wind up seeing him at some Dickie's barbecue out in Plano or anything like that.
But it's just, it's nice to have him here.
It's nice to have him here.
The reason I tell the Christmas party story is he did exactly what he said he was going to do.
And that was when my wife, Lisa, and I had the opportunity to shake his hand and Laura's at the Christmas party.
I said, get ready to head back home, sir.
We look forward to serving all of your talk show needs.
And he said, glad to be coming home, Mark.
Tell him we're coming home with our heads held high.
And that is exactly what he did.
And this is the sentence that'll come out of a conservative talk show host's mouth 500 times, phrased a little differently, no matter how you hear it.
Were there issues that I differed with the president on?
Yeah, but he kept my family safe for seven years and yours.
Lowered my taxes, too, which I liked.
And I just so yearn to tie ourselves back into sort of the premise of the day, taking the Tea Party spirit and just reaching for that November 2010 Election Day finish line and then reaching for that November 2012 finish line when hopefully what's finished will be the pernicious agenda that seeks to rob us blind,
establish an even deeper, more profound culture of dependency and sacrifice our liberties in the process.
This must stop.
And you know this Rush Limbaugh show is going to be a major outpost at which observations are made for the progress of that effort.
1-800-282-2882-1-800-282-2882.
Let's go back to some calls, folks, waiting while we talk to the wonderful Byron York.
We are in Kansas City, Missouri.
Mark, Mark Davis, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi.
Hey, Mark.
Thank you for taking my call.
I just had a question.
I was wondering, did anyone in the Nixon administration investigate and pursue to prosecute anyone in the Kennedy and Johnson White House for the abysmal failure of Vietnam?
What a superb revisitation of history.
Was there this, it's the word of the day, fetish for looking back in history and not when Nixon became president in January 1969, we were in the middle of the worst kind of Vietnam types of protests.
And remember that even in the middle of that, in November 1972, in the middle of anti-Vietnam fervor, he beat the holy stuffing out of an anti-war Democrat.
Maybe that took a lot of the passion away that would have otherwise been directed at punishing retroactively those who got us into Vietnam.
I don't know.
Yeah, they're in control now, and if they wanted to show a non-hypocritical stance, it'd be real good for them to start there.
These hippies are now in office.
Have them go back and investigate that war first and then go back and investigate George Bush.
Let's take them in order.
Mark, thank you.
My best, everybody, in Kansas City.
Another Byron York column, in fact, that he's cranked out recently is why is the left so angry?
Is running one party rule not satisfying enough?
And obviously, the answer is apparently not.
Having a Democrat in the White House, lovely.
Having a Democrat in Democrat majorities in the House and Senate, lovely for the left.
No, it's not enough.
And I think I got a couple of answers.
I'll give you the short versions now.
Get another call real quick and see if you want to hop onto this topic.
The left is frustrated, again, because the moment they got power, now they got to actually go to work.
What they really want to do is ruin the reputations of anybody who ever disagreed with them.
The tax cuts must be portrayed retroactively as evil.
The war, even though it's working, must retroactively be referred to as some abysmal failure.
Conservatives who rise up on something like a tea party day must be savaged reputationally.
And these are political bigots.
Political bigotry is the same as racial bigotry or religious bigotry.
Just hating somebody because of what they are.
Now, do we practice that sometimes?
Yeah, sure.
Is there such a thing as somebody who will discover that you're a liberal and no longer shake your hand or even give you the time of day?
Yeah.
And you know what?
That's ugly too.
You know what the difference is?
Our political bigots are not in Congress.
Political bigots on the right tend not to be in important policymaking decisions.
And I think the other reason that there is discord on the left was on display in Denver when I was there for the Democratic Convention.
I covered both conventions, as I always do.
What a bookends experience that is, especially this year.
But there are a ton of people for whom, even the current Obama, Pelosi, Harry Reid Democratic Party, there are people for whom they're not liberal enough.
I know.
I know.
Oh, there were protesters all over the place at the Democratic National Convention because the Democratic Party, so radicalized compared to the Democratic Party of the 50s and early 60s, even that party, not wild-eyed, bug-eyed, left enough for them.
Wow.
Mark Davis, filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
Let's get this quick pause out of the way, and then we will return with more of your thoughts.
1-800-282-2882.
It is Friday.
It is the Rush Limbaugh Show, and we're very glad you're here, listening along on the EIB Network.
And Rush will be back on Monday, and I will be back on Friday the 8th.
They've been kind enough to ask.
I think we can do that.
Friday, May 8th together.
Enjoyed Mark Stein yesterday.
Always a great pleasure to hear him filling in and to read all of the greatness that he throws down.
Byron York with us today.
A lot of thoughts of punditry and the things that will be from either the Golden EIB microphone or various other shows or various writers, various websites.
Activism and pardon this term, community organizing take on a very different face these days.
And at every tea party moment I could, I just wanted to invoke these incredible technologies, Facebook and Twitter and all of this.
And in fact, I was just looking at Red State, the folks at redstate.com, whom you can also follow on Twitter at RedStateAll One Word, as you can follow me, Mark Davis, all one word.
We are the ones, we were a little, we were caught a little napping.
We were caught in that.
Conservatism was caught napping in the era, the blooming embryonic era of Facebook and Twitter and such.
But we're going to show them what Facebook and Twitter can do.
We are going to show them, as we did on Tea Party Day number one.
And apparently some folks look at it.
I mentioned the July 4th Dallas Tea Party.
It's going to be a big one.
I'm about to go to a gentleman in another part of the country that apparently is also looking at a July 4th event.
That would just be magnificent.
And it has, without a doubt, made organizing such a thing is easier the word?
I guess so.
Because if you get some followers and you get some, because that's what the whole Twitter thing's about, and you throw, I mean, Twitter's kind of one way.
I'll say something, and if you're following me, you'll hear it.
I may or may not hear anything you ever say back, unlike email or texting or calls to a talk show.
Facebook's more interactive, of course, but that was of innumerable value in helping to organize all of the tea party successes.
And eventually it's going to be about more than getting a lot of people to come out for a tea party.
If July 4th, there are these kind of things all over America, fantastic.
And maybe we need to do those about every 90 days just to kind of keep the needles bouncing on the passion we'll need to bring about real hope and real change on Election Day 2010.
But there is just no doubt that this is taking the place of 5,000 phone calls.
5,000 email now seems sluggish to me.
My head is spinning.
The notion of composing an email, putting together a send list, oh, who do I want to get this or not?
I mean, Twitter, hello, gone.
Facebook, much the same.
And to their credit, the Obama folks had this down as of summer of 08.
And that's part of what cleaned our clocks.
And as we work our way toward 2010 and 2012, we must become masters of this domain or at least competitors in this domain.
There's also an observation that I heard made recently that I think is some genius in terms of organizing and in terms of keep hope alive.
Great.
I'm quoting Jesse Jackson now in terms of keeping our hopes alive for somehow derailing this demonic train from its tracks, a train that sends us into the abyss of debt and cultures of dependency.
But here's the point.
There's something that the Obama folks did, and I saw it because I tried to get on some mailing lists because it's always, it's helpful to me to see what the other side's doing.
Free country, right?
So I got all the Obama emails.
I got all of the campaign stuff.
And I had to admit that a lot of stuff they did was genius.
You know, I mean, obviously, ideologically, I found it repugnant to the core, but tactically, genius.
And the proofs in the electoral pudding, isn't it?
But what they did is if they got you to come to one event, if they got you to organize something in your neighborhood, if they got you to send them 20 bucks, you always heard back from them.
Not just the way any political organization will, looking for more money, more money, more money.
Oh, no, no, no.
They wanted you to do something.
They would say, okay, thanks a lot.
Appreciate it very much.
Money's good.
Got to have the money.
But would you mind organizing this?
Would you mind getting on a committee to do that?
Would you mind gathering together in some grassroots way with like-minded folks and do that?
And people obviously widely, enthusiastically obeyed.
Yes, I will do what you say.
No, they, you know, for whatever reason, they did what they did.
Now we're going to do what we do.
And aided by the technology that they used to deliver us a sucker punch to our values and liberties in 2008, the counter punch comes in 2010, and hopefully the knockout punch in 2012.
Okay, enough boxing analogies.
Let's head back to your calls on the Rush Limbaugh Show at 1-800-282-2882, 1-800-282-2882.
The gentleman I was referring to is up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
And Richard, Mark Davis, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Have you got murmurs of a July 4 thing up your neck of the woods, too?
I hope so, Mark.
I tell you, I went to the April 14th Lansing Tea Party.
It was great.
Of course, I live in Ann Arbor.
When I got back, a lot of my friends told me it was treasonous that I even went to one.
Good lord.
The people at the tea party, I tell you, you haven't seen so much patriotism and pride.
Was there something about Lansing?
Was there something about Lansing that made them want to do it the day before April 15th, or did you misspeak?
No, they did it April 15th.
Okay, thanks.
I was going to say that they just wanted to get the jump on everybody's.
No, April 15th, sorry.
Very cool, no problem.
And now I'm looking to get another one going up in Lansing again or Ann Arbor would be really neat, but I don't see it happening.
But in Lansing, again, on the 4th of July, I don't see any day that's more appropriate.
And I mean, I'm a recovering, I shouldn't say that, I'm a recovered Democrat.
And I think we need to get another one in Michigan.
Michigan's hit hard right now, and Washington isn't helping us.
Washington is hurting.
Let me ask, because I'm curious about the Tea Party phenomenon in purple states.
Here in Texas, I mean, we do have Austin and we do have the Rio Grande Valley, but we're still a pretty reliable Republican state in most ways.
So the Tea Party phenomenon caught fire pretty easily here in Texas.
In Michigan, where you do indeed have some Republicans, but a whole lot of Democrats, how did the process go?
Did you find actual Democrats at some of the Tea Parties?
And just sort of describe to me Tea Party fervor up there in Michigan that day.
I would say there were quite a few Democrats at the Tea Parties.
Most of them were concerned about the spending.
Very few raised issues about the taxes.
My problem was that if you have the spending, you're going to have the taxes.
If you have the taxes, you're going to have the spending.
That is a genius point.
And that is the connection that we must make.
Richard, thanks.
My best to everybody in Michigan.
Let's spend a second on that.
Let's spend a second on that because this probably doesn't get said enough.
To me, and maybe to you, taxes and spending are just fused.
I mean, we have way too much of both, way too much spending, way too much taxation.
So why is it that it's a lot easier to find people annoyed by spending than it is to find people annoyed by taxation?
Now, find any true conservative, and they are rankled by both.
But there are a lot of people, some independents, plenty of Democrats who are all about, who will talk with you and agree with you about the insanity of spending.
There are plenty of Democrats offended by not in Capitol Hill.
I mean, real, actual people, actual Joe and Jane Six-Pack Main Street USA-type Democrats who may feel themselves liberal on a lot of things, but they take a look at these tens of trillions of dollars and go, my God, what's going on here?
So why is spending easier to gather a big crowd of people to rail against than taxation?
Here's why.
Spending resonates with everybody.
No matter whether you make 15 grand or 15 million, the government, boy, I need a synonym.
The government frittering away trillions and trillions of those dollars is offensive to the sensibilities of virtually anyone, at least one would hope.
But when you get to taxation, therein lies the craftiness of what these people are trying to do.
Anytime David Axelrod or whatever, you know, other minion of Barack Obama is on Stephanopoulos or wherever, telling you, hey, why the Tea Party rage?
We're trying to cut taxes for virtually all of you.
Right.
First of all, a ton of you don't pay taxes at all.
There are millions more who pay really meager amounts of taxation.
And yes, the Obama people would like very much to take millions of people who pay almost no taxes and have you actually pay no taxes because they love you.
No, because they want you to not care about tax policy.
They want you to have no stake in tax rates.
Because if you're sitting there paying no taxes, but we can economically rape other people higher up the economic food chain and you get more free stuff.
Oh, bonus.
They'll vote Democrat forever.
That's why I've always been, listen, sales tax, flat tax.
No, I don't want to start that right now.
But I've always been a flat tax guy because if you make $20 million, I want 17% of it to go to government.
If you make $500, I want 17% of it to go to the government.
I want everybody to be a taxpayer so that if somebody takes that 17% and says, hey, let's make it 21, it's not only half of America that's incensed, it's everybody, because everybody needs to have a stake in tax debates.
The Obama agenda is to render you numb and disinterested in the tax debates because the only thing you know about tax money is you send none of it out and get a bunch of it back through expansionist collectivist government.
Hey, let's make some money for some advertisers.
On the EIB network, I'm Mark Davis filling in for Rush, who's back on Monday, back with you in just a moment.
It's the Rush Limbaugh show.
Mark Davis filling in.
I'm going to let you hear a little something as we get ready to head back to your calls.
This is the credit where credit is due, department.
Any conservative talk show can be counted on to slap around the White House press corps, and it is usually quite deserved.
So you know what else is deserved?
Moments when the press corps actually stumbles across some level of clarity.
And so you're going to make a couple of heroes here.
Jennifer Lovin of the Associated Press, their White House correspondent, and ABC's Jake Tapper.
Here's Robert Gibbs attempting to make the press corps and thus America excited about $100 million of budget cuts, which is just insanely tiny against the backdrop of the huge numbers that we've had jammed down our throats and into our kids' lives.
But just you may drive off the road at this, but please remember this is indeed the White House Press Corps, okay?
And just listen as the always overwhelmed Robert Gibbs attempts to deal with skepticism coming from a place where skepticism rarely arises when the Democrat's in the White House.
The 100 million target figure that the president talked about today with the cabinet.
Can you explain why it's so small?
I know he talked about, you know, you add up 100 million, 100 million, 100 million, and eventually you get somewhere, but it would take an awfully long time to add up 100 million to make a debt in the deficit.
Why not target a bigger number?
Well, I think only in Washington, D.C. is 100 million.
What a joke.
The deficit's giant.
$100 million really is only a debt.
Do you understand what's happening here?
An AP White House reporter is lecturing the White House press secretary that we're in an enormous deficit and we need to cut more spending.
Wow.
No joke.
I'm not making a joke about it.
I'm being completely sincere that only in Washington, D.C. is $100 million not a lot of money.
Now, in a moment, the tag team, as ABC's Jake Tapper, steps into the ring.
It is where I'm from.
It is where I grew up.
And I think it is for hundreds of millions of Americans.
You were talking about an appropriations bill a few weeks ago about $8 billion being managed.
$8 billion in earmarks.
We were talking about that.
And she said that that in terms of $100 million is a lot, that $8 billion is a lot of money.
What I'm saying is I think it all adds up.
Just as the president said, just as Jennifer was good enough to do in her question, if you think we're going to get rid of a $1.3 trillion deficit by eliminating one thing, I'd be, and the administration would be, innumerably happy for you to let us know what that is.
Give me five minutes.
I'll give you all kinds of things.
I'll give you so much to cut, your heads will spin.
How great is that?
So to Jennifer Lovin of the Associated Press and ABC's Jake Tapper, big standing oh, love you guys.
Keep it up.
Appreciate it.
And what we may actually have here, and this is funny, I mean, I look for optimism in every corner, or reasons for optimism.
And if this indeed, if this is indeed the White House that is so radically, pathologically left, so socialist-leaning, so Marxist-resembling that even the White House press corps' eyebrows go up.
We may be on to something here.
All right, I know what we're on to here.
Another quick break.
Let's do it.
Come back and put some real people on the air.
It is the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Davis filling in from Texas.
Don't move.
You're right back.
It is the Rush Limbaugh Show for a Friday.
I'm Mark Davis, filling in from WBAP Dallas Fort Worth.
And Rush will be back on Monday.
Let's head to the fine capital city of California, see what's going on in Sacramento.
Ed, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Davis, how are you?
I'm pretty good.
And you?
Good.
What's up?
Say, you know, the Oversight Committee of the CIA met in 2002, and Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats were there.
And they were talking about waterboarding.
And I'm sure this had been hashed over.
But they all agreed that that would be a good thing to do.
She agreed to it.
Now, she's Speaker of the House.
Can she be brought up on charges if anything happens from this?
If what you describe actually happened, here's the great vagueness that she can benefit from.
In those 2002 hearings, there were absolutely Democrats in the room.
They were absolutely briefed on its potential use.
Her quote is, we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used.
What they did tell us is they had some legislative council opinions that they could be used.
That's a very nuanced point that she will probably cling to to avoid just what you're talking about, namely the double standard of having it be tolerable in 2002 when America was serious about the war versus now when most Americans are not and the president is not.
Oh, that's a way around it.
Yes.
Yes, yes, it is, Ed.
Great question.
Good.
You got about 30 seconds.
Good.
How does that leave you?
How's that work out for you?
That's just a way around things.
Yeah, and it is so often the case in politics.
Ed, thank you.
And God bless all of y'all in California there in the People's Republic of Nancy.
It's funny because it's arguable that former Secretary of State Powell might engage in the same strange kabuki dance.
You know, was I in the room?
Yeah.
You know, were they telling me people were being waterboarded?
I don't know.
They said they might be.
But the real contrast that needs to be understood here is that these hearings where John Boehner and others are going to say, hey, you were in the room.
You were in the room for crying out loud.
It wasn't that big a problem then.
You know why it wasn't that big a problem in 2002?
Because we had not forgotten yet.
As a country, we had not forgotten yet.
And by 2004, 5, 6, we largely had.
Not all of us, just enough of us, and certainly many of the Democrats among us.
Mark Davis, in for rush.
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