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May 2, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:01
May 2, 2011, Monday, Hour #3
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Views expressed by the host on this program, documented to be almost always right, 99.6% of the time, that's because we are totally devoted to the truth here.
A relentless, unstoppable pursuit of the truth.
We find it and we proclaim it.
Great to have you here.
Fastest three hours in media.
Telephone number if you want to join us, 800-282-2882, and the email address, Lrushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
All right.
So we've had a call, and I know that uh probably many of you out there, uh, ladies and gentlemen, terribly concerned that this cements President Obama's re-election in 2012.
Media saying so.
Um because it is a fear that many people have, you think this cements it.
And I'm I'm here to tell you that it does no such thing.
By the way, there is a briefing going on in the White House.
Now John Brennan, the White House, one of their national security people saying, just it essentially confirmed the Al Jazeera report that the hope was to capture him alive.
But bin Laden refused to surrender.
Now, Brennan also said it's inconceivable bin Laden did not have a support system within the country packaging.
Well, obviously he did.
He was there.
He had a support system in Pakistan.
So that's that's easy to say.
Um that the but the hope was to capture him alive.
Now that now here's a problem, though.
Reuters immediately followed the Al Jazeera story in an attempt to rebut it.
No, no, no.
Our plan all along was to take him out.
So Reuters has just been thrown overboard by the regime.
I shared with you these stories previously in this program.
Here it is.
Here's the Al Jazeera story.
I don't want to make too much of this, but believe me, inside the White House, this is a big deal.
Al Jazeera zeroing in on bin Laden.
The idea here was to capture him.
They wanted to capture him alive.
They wanted to interrogate him.
They wanted to uh sign him a legal team and all that was the plan.
That's what Al Jazeera asserts.
Then Reuters came along not long afterwards.
U.S. Special Forces team that hunted down bin Laden was under orders to kill, not capture.
Okay, so you have those two stories.
Then here comes Brennan.
No, no, no, no.
No, no.
The original plan was to capture, not kill.
So uh people at Reuters are not going to be happy with the regime.
They're not going to be happy because they've either been used because they wouldn't put this out with somebody from the regime telling them to.
So the Al Jazeera story stands.
The Al Jazeera story was it's uh capture mission.
Why would Reuters run a story with the headline U.S. team's mission was to kill bin Laden, not capture?
That's because somebody in the regime called him up and said, hey, look, these guys at Al Jazeera have it all wrong.
We never wanted to capture the guy.
This was a kill mission from the get-go, but it wasn't.
Apparently, from the White House itself.
Now, as to this business re-election.
My friends, get a grip.
It is May the 2nd of 2011.
George H.W. Bush was at 90% in the polls after the first Gulf War.
He was so strong that the Democrats did not even throw their first team at him in terms of opposition.
That's why they ended up with Clinton.
Clinton was not in the first team.
The first team Democrats decided, you know what?
Incumbents generally win.
This guy's got 90% coming out of the war.
We don't support war.
We can't go out there and be happy about victory.
We have nothing to do with it.
So they just basically checked out.
And look what happened.
Bush came along and reneged on his promise not to raise taxes.
Perot ended up getting in the race.
And all this conventional wisdom that George H.W. Bush could not be beat went out the window, and he did not win.
He lost, and Clinton did win with 43% of the vote.
So it's not over till it's over.
And even a guy with 90% approval two years out ends up losing.
And Obama's nowhere near 90%, and he's not going to be after this.
And what was the issue that Clinton harped on?
It's the economy, stupid.
Worst economy in 50 years, and that's going to be doubled down upon in this campaign.
So get a grip, folks.
Nothing's etched in stone here.
To suggest that the capture or the killing of Osama bin Laden was a major campaign issue.
No, if this if Bush had done this, they would have been accusing it all of Bush ain't known where he is for 10 years.
Bush knows where he's been.
They just did this because Bush is plumbing into polls.
They just did this.
Bush just did this because whoever would have been his Trump was out there getting too close.
Did you happen to notice, folks?
This is not an accident.
All the networks abandoned their programming a little after 10 30 last night.
What was on NBC at 10 30 last night?
The celebrity apprentice.
Guess what got preempted?
And who didn't come out for an hour to make the announcement?
Obama.
So on Saturday night, Trump is the is the butt of a bunch of jokes by Obama.
I would have told Trump not to even go.
But that was so predictable that that was going to happen.
Don't even mess with showing up.
I don't care what your ego tells you, you're going to be the most hated guy in that room, Donald.
They don't love you there.
They're not mesmerized by you.
Don't even mess with it.
But he went.
Obama tells it jokes, and then the next night, Obama single-handedly gets the last half-hour Trump show preempted with what?
An hour's worth of Oh my God, what's coming?
White House says president coming out 10 30 with an announcement.
Okay, network, well, you gotta honor that.
The networks go on the air.
What is it?
What is the big announcement?
Start speculating.
It's an hour before Obama comes out.
Around 11 o'clock, they start leaking that it's bin Laden that's been killed.
Meanwhile, nobody has seen the end of Celebrity Apprentice.
It was preempted.
So we all know that if Bush had pulled this off, not one aspect of it would be reported as legitimate.
The press today wouldn't even be accepting as proof, whatever proof had been offered.
So get a grip.
You all know the way the game's played here, and you also know that this is not a campaign issue.
If gasoline is five and a half dollars a gallon in November of 2012, Obama on a campaign, yeah.
Well, so what?
I killed a Q Bilan.
Not going to overcome five and a half dollar a gallon gas.
Or five dollar a gallon gasoline.
Let's go through the stack of other news here, shall we?
From the Wall Street Journal, the job market may be on the mend.
Again, I don't know where they get this news that the economy is recovering.
I really don't.
Energy prices and food prices up, the unemployment numbers not changing, the gross domestic product was revised downward to 1.8%.
I don't know where.
They get the idea the economy is on the mend, but
they say it is.4 million
from a year earlier.
That 1.4 million change reflects people losing their benefits.
So right before your very eyes and not being reported upon in the mainstream.
Well, here we have it.
Millions set to lose unemployment benefits.
They're expiring.
Will there be an extension?
You might say, well, Rush, you're going to extend them, you're never going to extend.
Let them try.
It's not going to be helpful.
John Harwood column, caucus, New York Times yesterday.
Organizing now, Democrats expect tough bid in 2012.
Go back to last week.
I was insistent.
That all of this conventional wisdom Obama's a shoe-in is nothing but BS is an attempt to shape people's thinking.
He's not a shoe-in for re-election.
He's not now and he wasn't last week.
And the New York Times knows it.
Mr. Harwood starts his story this way.
Republicans shouted hypocrisy last week with justification.
After former White House aides opened a campaign organization using the sort of anonymous donors condemned by Obama, but they also understood it as a compliment.
That's because in another springtime full of political disappointment, Democrat strategists have begun concluding Obama faces a tougher than anticipated re-election fight.
This was in the New York Times yesterday.
This story had been in the works.
Now, Harwood has since let me find the soundbite.
Harwood went on television this morning on squawk box on CNBC and basically told everybody to forget his column.
Here's what he said.
I wrote a column that was in the New York Times today about the difficulty facing President Obama in his re-election, and was quoting a Democratic strategist who said the American people are looking at President Obama and they're still not sure what kind of a leader he is, how effective he is, and that was with reference to the economy.
An event of this kind where you had the secrecy maintained, you had the operation go smoothly in a national security area where a lot of people presume the president was inexperienced and might not be as capable.
You've got to say that this is a great assistance to him to be able to answer that question for Americans.
People are going to say, wow, he got it to up.
So Harwood said, forget it, forget okay, he's re-electable now.
But he's not.
The story stands because every reason given still valid.
There's not one thing about the killing of Obama that changes why people were upset with Obama.
Osama.
No, no, Obama.
There's not one.
Oh, killing Osama is changing is not going to change one thing about why people are upset with Obama.
And I'm telling you, they're going to be an uptick in the polls.
There's no quick.
Get ready for that this week.
But it's going to pass.
And this story that Harwood wrote for yesterday's New York Times, they understand exactly what they're up against.
They're trying to, they're trying to uh downplay it as much as possible, but they know.
And it will remain the case.
The Commerce Department announced that the U.S. economy grew just 1.8% in the first quarter.
The same report also found that inflation rose to 3.8%.
Meanwhile, the nation's unemployment rate stands at 8.8%.
The Labor Department announced this week weekly jobless claims increased by 25,000 to 429,000, the highest number since January.
Walmart's CEO told CNN last week that their core shoppers are running out of money.
Walmart, Walmart said their core shoppers are running out of money.
The slaying of Osama bin Laden changes none of this.
And this will not assuage it.
You know, people who are losing their jobs or don't have enough money to shop at Walmart are not going to a year from now and say, well, I don't really care, you know, because we got Osama.
I I I just don't.
I don't think so.
And they probably won't extend unemployment benefits either.
They need that unemployment rate to come down.
No president's ever been re-elected with an unemployment rate higher than eight percent.
They need that number to come down, so they may not even extend benefits.
They need these slackers to go back to work for at least a year.
It's not sweetness and light.
It's not all happiness is here again, roses and so forth out there.
Debt ceiling.
More Democrats threaten to vote against raising the borrowing limit.
Washington Post last Thursday.
A growing number of Democrats are threatening to defy the White House over the national debt, joining Republicans' calls for deficit cuts as a requirement for consenting to lift the country's borrowing limit.
Attention is the latest illustration of how the Tea Party infused GOP is driving the debate in Washington.
The pushback has come in recent days from Senators Kent Conrad, Joe Manchin, Senator Mark Pryor, even Senator Amy Klobushar, a Democrat from Minnesota, generally a stalwart, White House ally, is undecided on raising the debt limit and is hopeful that a debt ceiling bill can be attached to a measure to cut the federal deficit.
So uh this this is this stuff is all in a pipeline.
This news is real, just like the assassination of Osama is real.
But the assassination of Osama is a temporary fleeting passing moment that is not going to have one substantive change on any of the circumstances that determine the course of people's lives.
In fact, what happens if they ramp up security at the airports because of this?
What happens?
It becomes even more arduous to get on an airplane.
Quick timeout.
Back with much more after this.
Don't go away.
And there's another reason, folks, that um, and I'm just trying to be realistic.
I'm not even trying to keep you falsely pumped up.
Terrorism will continue to happen.
Despite the death of Osama bin Laden, terrorist, he probably has not been running the terror show for a long time anyway.
He hadn't been able to communicate.
So terrorism will keep happening.
Snerdley, you want to make a bet on where this story ranks one day from one week from today.
If if this if this is going to get Obama re-elected, the election had better be next week, is what I'm saying.
Okay.
Okay, you're right about the election, it better be next week if this story is is a shoe in.
Don't fall for this crap, folks.
Don't let them manipulate this way.
Don't let them manipulate you this way.
This is absurd.
Only if the election's a week from tomorrow does this matter.
In South Portland, Maine, Bill, thank you for waving, sir.
You're up next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Mega Diddle's Rush from South Portland, Maine.
How are you doing?
Very well, sir.
Thank you.
Well, okay, when I called up, it was the start of the show.
And you were in fact that turned on shuttle after the beginning of the first hour.
And you were saying how Obama deserves credit for this and credit, you know, credit for not dismantling credit in the and I got very concerned that you were unintentionally doing electioneering for him by by pointing out anything positive this guy does.
I mean, hold it just a second.
Explain to me how it is when I credit Barack Obama for maintaining Bush policies that he opposes.
How is that electioneering for Obama?
Well, the way this guy works, and what I was worried about, and I was listening to your your.
Oh, you think you think Obama's gonna go out there and start quoting me as now a support?
No, no, no, no.
But he'll he definitely lessens, and he will he won't quote you.
Believe me, he won't give you credit, but he'll start beating the drum wall.
I like you said, I, me and my were the most used uh uh Let me ask you a bit.
Are you a journalist by any chance?
No, I'm not gonna tea party's Journalists do not understand sarcasm, they don't understand uh uh satire.
Well, I mean, I do, but uh a neophyte to the show wouldn't.
And and I'm j it just concerned me because uh Wait, you're a neophyte to the show, you just No, no, no, no, I'm not.
I'm a long time.
Look, you hang on.
All right.
I gotta take a break.
You hang on.
I gotta get your mind right over this.
I am sitting here.
I, ladies and gentlemen sitting here in stunned disbelief and amazement.
Bill in South Portland, uh Maine, you still there?
Hello.
Yeah, we're still there.
Uh tell tell me again, before I tell you why I'm sitting here in stunned disbelief.
Why am I helping Obama with this?
Well, okay, you see, you've taken me to the woodshed several times this afternoon while while I was waiting to get on the air, but when I first heard that I just turned it on.
And I'm and I'm thinking, my gosh, here's Rush saying that Obama deserves credit, that he alone did this, that he alone did that, and I'm thinking, no, no, no.
They like like the call before me, the credit goes for our armed forces.
And and I think that uh I mean Obama is a cheap opportunist.
And I I just scared to death that he will use this.
Uh now you've got me convinced that he's probably he won't shoe in, but we've got we have a scary situation that's very close to 92.
We've got Trump in the mix.
Trump is not uh I I really wish that he would not try to run.
Look, what that's yeah, that that that that that's that's not a factor yet.
I wanna I got I got a note from a friend.
I want to share this with you just to remind you of some things and try to help you at ease.
Then I want to read to you something from the hill.
That sad to say, our caller may have a point.
First off, in 1976, Israeli commandos launched that you we all know about this, that uh spectacular rescue operation at in Tebi uh in Uganda that freed several hundred passengers.
Now, Israel was in a foul mood since the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
And they went why it was it was the Netanyahu's brother who led that rescue mission.
The Prime Minister Yitchak Rabin and the defense minister Shimon Paris were both of the Labor Party, got the credit for the rescue mission.
The national election was eleven months later, and everybody, pundits, everybody thought that in Tebbe would clinch it for labor.
But Labor lost the election for the first time in Israeli history.
Menachem Bagan was the conservative candidate, was elected less than a year after the Intebe raid.
So these things do not they don't have a lasting effect.
This this story is not going to be the intense focused story one week from today that it is today.
From the Hill.com.
And I I have to.
I have to tell you, it's been a learning experience for me.
The Hill.com.
It's also at Mediaite and some other places.
Limbaugh commends Obama for getting bin Laden and bringing back proof.
So Conservative firebrand and a frequent critic of the President Rush Limbaugh on Monday praised Obama for his effective strategy that resulted in the killing of bin Laden.
Reacting to Obama's announcement that the U.S. strike team had killed and recovered the body of bin Laden, Limbaugh said Obama deserved credit for the operation and credit for retaining some policies of the Bush administration that resulted in his capture.
And then they quote me.
We need to open the program today by congratulating President Obama.
President Obama has done something extremely effective.
He has continued the Bush policies of keeping a military presence in the Middle East.
Limbaugh said that Obama deserved praise for keeping the prison at Guantanamo Bay open, which, according to Limbaugh, helped American intelligence locate bin Laden.
Limbaugh added that Obama was clearly the only one who wanted to...
Who wanted to...
Limbaugh added...
added that Obama was clearly the only one who wanted to send an actual team in to hunt down bin Laden and that most of the military brass just wanted to scorch the place where the terrorists had been staying.
Limbaugh said President Obama, perhaps the only qualified member in the room insisted on the special forces.
Nobody else insisted on that.
Our military wanted to go in there and just scorch the earth, leaving no evidence of anything, but President Obama single-handedly understood what was at stake here.
Limbaugh's comments come after...
*laughs*
Limbaugh's comments come after...
Ahem.
Regaining my composure.
Limbaugh's comments come after reports that Obama had rejected a plan to bomb the facility where bin Laden was staying, according to those reports.
Obama wanted poof that bin Laden had been killed.
Limbaugh praised Obama for choosing to send a team, contrary, Limbaugh said, to what Obama's military advisors wanted.
Obama alone understood that there would be doubting Thomas's Limbaugh said.
That's the Hill.com.
And the same story has appeared media and at the Huffing and Puffington Post.
Who's Dave in Philadelphia?
You're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Great to have you here.
Rush?
Yeah.
Hey, how are you doing?
Megados from uh Philadelphia.
My uh wife Gail and I are big fans.
And uh I just wanted to ask you a question about the body of bin Laden.
Why did they bury it at sea?
Why didn't they uh bring it home here and uh do what Glenn Beck said, yeah, put a ham hat on him and bury him.
Well, here again, uh in in uh it we must praise and congratulate President Obama for being the only one to know the strict Muslim rules here.
Uh and that is that the quick burial, burial within 24 hours is required in Islam.
And the uh the the regime uh had decided that they would do a proper burial at sea.
Yeah, that at sea is the last approved method in Islam for proper burial.
If no other way, they either have to have died at sea, and I think in this case the regime probably assuming there were so many tears in Pakistan at the death of Obama that that qualified as a sea, so they didn't buried him at sea, and this prevents there from being a a shrine, you know, a grave site that can become an annual pilgrimage place.
Yeah, I understand that, but it just seems it just doesn't seem right to bestow any sort of honor to him.
You know, I mean, well, look, let me tell you something.
You just have here, you've got you've got Brennan up there, though the one of the uh uh national security advisors, and he's going on and on and on about how this was a proper show of respect.
They had to respect the body of this mass murderer, even though Islamic law is against burial at sea unless there's no other choice, and there were other choices.
But they he w he went on to uh to to point out here that the the uh uh this this regime showed profound respect uh in the way they handle the burial of the body, and that that was the intent.
They wanted people of uh uh of the Islamic faith to understand they had profound total respect for their traditions, and this is why.
Now, I did this notion, I w I want to try to debunk something here, folks.
Again, just using a little common sense, because the regime is saying that they did not want to create A shrine.
They didn't want to have an actual burial site that could end up being a pilgrimage location for millions of Muslims to visit.
Yet the same people stick with me on this.
The same people are in total support of a mosque at ground zero.
So I don't believe this assertion that they didn't want to create a shrine, because they are totally in favor of a shrine at no less than ground zero with the building of that mosque.
Okay, that White House briefing with the National Security Guy Brennan is over.
Here's one of the things he said, he stressed how important it was to the administration to treat bin Laden's corpse with all the traditional Muslim honors and respect.
Now, why?
Bin Laden was a mass murderer, and last night, Obama himself said he wasn't even a good Muslim.
Don't...
He was not a good Muslim.
He was a militant disability.
He was not a representative of Islam.
He was a terrorist.
So why?
Why all these traditional Muslim honors?
They don't consider burial at sea an honor, by the way.
Where is this story?
I put it out.
I have it somewhere here.
It is a giant.
Ah.
Islamic scholars criticize bin Laden's sea burial.
Muslim clerics said today, Osama bin Laden's burial at sea was a violation of Islamic tradition that may further provoke militant calls for revenge attacks against American targets.
The radical cleric in Lebanon, Omar Bakri Mohammed, said the Americans want to humiliate Muslims through this burial.
I don't think this is in the interest of the U.S. administration.
So, So I'm not happy with the Bamster.
And the uh the whole burial at sea thing.
Here is uh Ron in Gaston, Alabama.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
How are you doing?
Very well, sir.
Thank you.
I was calling in response to the woman you had on earlier who was uh amazed at your comments about uh Obama's uh narcissistic attitude with his uh his speech last night.
Yeah.
And uh I tell you, I was on the road last night, my uh we got a text from my stepdaughter telling us that uh that uh that uh bin Laden had been killed and the president was going to be on, and my immediate response was to send her a text back and say he will try to take credit for it.
And I was amazed at the speech.
And what hit me was what a stark contrast it was between his I mean compared to President Bush's comments when all of this started in the speech where he said we shall not waver, we shall not falter, we shall not fail.
And it was we it was what's what you get.
Look, we got a narcissist in the midst of a cult of personality, and and you're exactly right, this is what you get.
Yes.
Uh so your your antenna were raised in a proper way.
Also, in that speech, my friend Andy McCarthy has observed that speech last night, Obama also said we got the Taliban.
He did no such thing.
Uh in fact, Obama has sought to negotiate with the Taliban.
Obama has not vanquished the Taliban at all.
It was Bush that did that.
You know, it's we, we, we when Bush did some things, I I I when Obama thinks he alone did it.
But no, your your observations right.
David in uh in uh Colonel Island, Georgia.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi, sir.
Hey Rush, thank you.
When you signed off last Wednesday, you had so many issues to talk about, and you said you really needed a couple of days off to find the truth about these matters and what.
But you'd already told us, I think on Tuesday, that uh you wouldn't be able to, if you were invited, accept an invitation to the royal wedding because you had a long weekend to golf with your buddies.
Right.
Uh, which was it?
Did you find the truth or uh did you just enjoy a long weekend to go?
Well, you know, I'm a multitasker.
I did both.
Great.
I appreciate it, Grux.
That was my annual spring fling uh with some of my uh golf buddies from Minnesota and California.
But I but I I have to tell you something.
I did there there was a um uh You know, we had at these it's it's a it's a multiple day uh party, wives, everything.
And there was a lot of truth seeking.
I mean, particularly on my part.
I uh especially about Obama's re-election and what the real plan here is.
And how and I've I have evolved a theory that uh they have, the trap that they have set that we are falling into.
And I was prepared to explain it in detail today, but this is not the day because of what happened last night.
So got it.
right here.
The whole stack with the result of the truth-seeking And it's important.
And I think it's right on the money as well.
And it basically, well, I don't have enough time to even tease you with it.
Just trust me.
I will be discussing it in great detail as the week unfolds.
Folks, I have to debunk one more rumor.
This is not true, but it is circulating.
Osama bin Laden's body will not lie in state in Washington, inside Obama's 2012 re-election headquarters for the media.
There's a rumor going around that that's it's not true.
Don't doubt me.
And we'll see you tomorrow.
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