All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 14, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:08
November 14, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Okay, folks, Obama just got mad.
He just got livid.
Jonathan Carl of ABC News said Lindsey Graham and John McCain today said that they need a select committee to look into Benghazi.
And by the way, if you're going to nominate Susan Rice to be Secretary of State, they're going to do everything they can to stop her.
What's your reaction?
And the smoke started coming out of the one's ears.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
No, the reason we didn't jip this thing is because most of this is just boring.
I can tell you what he's saying.
I want to raise taxes on the rich, and I can't comment on an ongoing investigation.
That's the sum total of this press conference.
But when they mentioned Susan Rice, it was Jonathan Carl at ABC News.
Now, what did Susan Rice do?
And by the way, I want to go back to the guy from Maryland who was, I know he's not mad at me, John and Crofton, Maryland.
Well, he might be mad at me today.
But he's like, every one of us, we're throwing our hands up.
Where is what's right?
Where is the decency we always used to be able to count on?
I don't know.
I want to address this in just a moment.
But none of the institutions and traditions that have defined this country's greatness and set us apart seem reliable anymore.
Everything seems corrupted.
And it is.
It's what happens.
People think I'm just too partisan.
When you have liberals in charge of things, all these things end up being corrupted.
By definition.
Now, Susan Rice was sent out by the regime on five Sunday morning shows after Benghazi.
And on every one, when you're sat on five shows, the shows are not calling you.
When you hit all five of them, it means the White House is offering somebody, and the shows accept.
So Susan Rice on five shows means that the regime wanted her out there, and they gave her a message to impart.
And she said that what happened in Benghazi was the result of a mob that went out of control because they were mad over an anti-Islamic movie.
We know that that was not true.
We know that a movie had nothing to do about it, but Obama will not even admit that today because there's an ongoing investigation.
He promised to work with Congress to get to the bottom of it.
But then he tore into these guys for impugning Susan Rice.
How dare they attack her?
She is the finest.
She's the best.
She's the most gracious.
She's done great work.
And all she did was tell this country the latest intel that she had at the time.
Meaning, it was the video.
There are rumors that he's going to nominate her to be Secretary of State.
And these guys say they're going to block that as best they can.
And he launched into these guys.
They think they're going after the UN ambassador because they think she's an easy target.
That he'll nominate her or whoever he wants to be anything.
These attacks from McCain and Graham on Rice are outrageous.
I don't have any doubt he's going to nominate her for state.
And he's livid here that these people would dare block his intentions.
And then he pledged to get to the bottom of what happened to Benghazi.
He'll work with Congress all day long.
Well, we already know.
We all already know what happened in Benghazi.
The State Department knew the moment it was happening.
The White House Situation Room knew the moment it was happening.
You want to get to the bottom of Benghazi?
You got to go get Obama because Obama's the bottom of Benghazi.
Obama is the bottom of the cover-up of Benghazi.
And what is going on?
There is no quit.
That's why I said that this dwarfs Watergate.
This is a cover-up that dwarfs the Watergate cover-up.
There are four people dead in this.
Now, let's talk about Petraeus for a second.
Because John from Crofton, Maryland is mad.
He thinks I've given Petraeus an outlet to go ahead and lie.
And I don't think that that's even possible.
But Petraeus, on September the 13th, two days after this thing, went up to Congress and testified that it was the video.
Now, all this time, when Petraeus goes up there and testifies, it's known he's having an affair.
They're trying to tell us Obama didn't know at that point in time.
That's the rub here.
They're telling us that nobody told Obama that his CIA director was having an affair.
And they're telling us Obama was not told that the CIA director was sharing classified data with his biographer.
They want us to believe that Obama didn't know about this until the Thursday after the election.
Last Thursday.
They're asking us to believe that's the first he knew of it.
It's too much to believe.
They told us that Obama is the most sophisticated consumer of intel the country's ever seen.
He's such a great consumer of intelligence that he doesn't need to even go to the daily briefings.
It's outrageous to insult our intelligence, to have us believe that Obama was not told that the CIA director is having an affair.
What happened was they put that fact in a pocket and they're ready to use it against Petraeus whenever they need it.
Well, hello, Benghazi.
Now, Petraeus was scheduled to testify tomorrow.
Anyway, until they dropped a dime on him on the affair.
Then he resigns.
By the way, we learned yesterday that Petraeus wanted to stay on originally.
Did you hear that?
He asked the CIA security chief, look, let's admit that this happened.
I want to stay on.
He wanted to finagle away to stay in office as the CIA director, even with the news having come out.
They wouldn't let him.
I don't remember where I heard that yesterday.
Two different places.
I can't recall right now.
So he's scheduled to testify tomorrow anyway.
He's already under oath in prior testimony blaming the video like everybody else in the regime did and has maintained even to this day.
Now he's no longer the CIA director.
That means to people that he's free.
He doesn't have to worry about recriminations.
He doesn't have to worry about loyalty to the president, even though as CIA director, he shouldn't anyway, but they all are.
It was the Washington Post-Philadelphia Inquirer both reported that Petraeus wanted to stay.
He wanted to stay on.
And that is crucially important.
So, yeah, he resigned, but because they wouldn't let him stay.
So, now he's going to testify anyway.
And the hope is, and the expectation is, that since he went to Benghazi after his testimony on the 13th and conducted his own investigation, the assumption is that Petraeus now knows that it wasn't a video.
In fact, the assumption is that Petraeus knew it wasn't a video when he said it was, if we must be honest.
And we must be honest.
There isn't anybody in this administration who really thought it was the video.
That was a concoction and a lie to cover up the incompetence or whatever else they're trying to cover up.
Now we learn there might have been a CIA illegal prison in the annex over there.
This is much bigger than anybody knew.
It's much bigger than just Obama foreign policy incompetence.
There's something going on they don't want us to know.
It's never been about the video.
And even when Petraeus said it was, it wasn't.
And when he said that it was the video, he knew that they knew that he was having the affair.
I mean, that was all known.
He just didn't know that Obama knew.
That's how convoluted this is.
When, of course, there's no question Obama did.
I don't care what anybody's saying.
Now, the expectation is that Petraeus can go testify tomorrow or Friday, whenever it is, and say, by the way, I recant.
It wasn't the video.
This was an al-Qaeda attack.
It was a pre-planned attack to testify this is the truth.
We all know what it was.
It was an al-Qaeda attack that Al-Qaeda is building and establishing more bases in Northern Africa and in Libya.
And what I said to get John and Crofton and Maryland all upset was that I don't expect Petraeus to change his testimony because then they can charge him with perjury.
John said, well, he's already, he could rely on the fact that he's conducted his own investigation now.
It wouldn't be perjury.
It'd be correcting the record.
To which my reply was, folks, in this era, there is not a dispute that does not end in the Democrats' favor.
We are one week into Obama after the second election.
He's officially not in his second term, but for all practical intentions, he is.
Does anybody really think that his second term is going to be taken down tomorrow or Friday?
If Petraeus goes in and said, John said, you're basically telling us that an American hero for 40 years would still lie about something.
And I'm saying I think that if that happened, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
And like the rest of you, I'd be livid and I'd be disappointed and I'd be pulling my hair out over frustration.
But frankly, I've been doing that for 25 years on this show, watching the Demerats get away with virtually anything they want for all intents and purposes.
Be it rape, be it sexual harassment of an intern, lying under oath to a grand jury, and the guy that does that is the biggest hero of the Democrat Party.
We have to face facts here.
The Democrats win this stuff.
The media and everybody else circles the wagons around them.
This is closed-door testimony tomorrow.
It'll probably leak, particularly if it favors Obama.
We will see what happens.
I'm just telling you that I'm going to be surprised if Petraeus changes his story.
And now, John thinks that I'm giving Petraeus an out here because I'm the second most powerful guy in America.
And if I say it's okay, I expect him to lie.
He'll go do it, and there won't be any criticism of it.
Now, Obama said, if Senator McCain, Senator Graham, and others want to go after somebody, let them come after me.
I'm happy to have that discussion.
Well, good.
Let's have it.
Let's have that discussion about you, Mr. President, by all means, since you've asked for it.
So anyway, that's where we are.
And Graham and McCain want the select committee to get to the book.
We've got four dead Americans here that's being covered up by a sex scandal.
A sex scandal is being used by the administration to cover up any investigation or any news reporting about the truth of Benghazi where four Americans are dead.
It is outrageous.
It's unacceptable.
There's no question about it, but it's par for the course.
I got to take a brief time out here, my friends.
Two things.
I talked to you about an hour ago.
Sarah Palin has a pretty interesting Facebook post, Who is Running Our Country?
And one other thing that I want to share with you that Victor Davis Hanson wrote that's very close to things I've been saying about the pop culture overtaking everything in this country that matters and cheapening it and corrupting it.
All that coming up.
Plus, we'll get back to your phone calls as well.
Okay, so Obama is now talking about global warming and how it's getting warmer now than anybody thought 10 years ago.
It's an abject lie.
The planet is cooling.
It is not getting warmer.
And we got to start educating our children about it, he says.
I don't think the Republicans will go for a carbon tax, but we're going to work on that.
We've got to reduce carbon.
We don't have to reduce debt, folks.
No, no.
But we've got to reduce carbon.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
So we'll shut down the coal industry.
We'll really do what we can shut down fossil fuels and oil.
We're going to double down on green energy.
We've got to reduce carbon.
Nothing, by the way, about debt reduction today.
Now, Sarah Palin, who's running the country, stick with me on this because this gets to the nub of what's bugging us all.
We've got a CIA director sharing security info with his mistress using an unsecured Gmail account.
We've got the delusional Susan Rice blaming the death of an ambassador on a YouTube video.
We got Iran firing on one of our drones a week before the election.
We got the White House either ignorant of or covering up all of this.
Who's mining the store?
Everywhere we look, we see rank incompetence or corruption of the people who are supposedly running the country and of our major institutions.
Let's hope that responsible reporters at Obama's press conference today asked the right questions.
They didn't, and they won't.
They're circling the wagons around him.
Here's Palin's question for the president.
As our nation's chief executive, you claim to be unaware of the most important and tragic situations plural that we're facing.
You don't know about Benghazi.
You don't know about Petraeus.
You don't know about anything.
So as a former chief executive, I'd like to know how long it takes for your staff to tell you things like, sir, your CIA director is under investigation.
How long does it take?
How many months, sir, does it take for your staff to tell you these things?
Now, This next is written by Victor Davis Hansen at National Review Online, and it's very close to a bunch of things that I have been saying.
One symptom of this entire tragedy, or is it a dark comedy now, is the shocking degree of casual sort of kind of rules and protocols.
Strange, in this era of vast bureaucratic rules, how exactly did national security and military affairs come to resemble keeping up with the Kardashians?
I.e., how did all of this, how do we find ourselves, our government, starring in the real housewives of the Pentagon?
We got President Kardashian.
We've got entertainment reality TV.
That is our government.
How can some individual just call up an FBI friend and investigate or instigate an investigation?
And how did that lead to an FBI agent photographing himself barechested and apparently infatuated with a married mother of three?
How can a PhD candidate, this is broad beam here, how can a PhD candidate without any journalistic or historical credentials become the public face of a four-star general and be privy to information to the point of hitting the lecture circuit to pontificate about a CIA annex in Benghazi?
In other words, how does Petraeus choose somebody that's never written a book who isn't an historian to grant all this access to?
How does this pop culture crap happen?
How did an early, middle-aged, married mother of two suddenly morph into a court biographer who lectured on everything from military practice to leadership to national security challenges?
In other words, who is Broadwell and where did she come from?
And what are her bona fides?
What is her CV?
What's her credibility?
And then how can a Florida socialite, by any stretch of the imagination, merit a vast email correspondence with the nation's highest-ranking military warriors entrusted to conduct our most critical wars, struggles, and battles?
How is it that the commanding general in Afghanistan sending thousands of documents to a brain-dead socialite in Tampa?
Those are my words, and I should probably take that they're brain-dead, half-brain-dead, but regardless.
I mean, she thinks she's a consul general.
She thinks she got diplomatic immunity for crying out loud.
We got a general that's sending her thousands of pages of stuff.
Hansen writes, what in the world is an honorary consul general, and who extends such Alice through the looking glass titles?
Why do generals seek to go backstage to meet a Denzel Washington or have Angelina Jolie pop up for a photo op?
I think it is impossible that an attorney general who knew of the investigation and many of the details for months did not tell his president and his close friend.
But then on the other hand, given all the above, who knows?
So what's happened?
Pop culture has taken over all of our great institutions.
You ask what's right or wrong?
Where's the accountability things you can count on?
It's gone.
It's scary.
Everybody wants to be on entertainment tonight.
Everybody wants to be on the E-Entertainment Network.
Everybody wants to be in the Real Housewives of X. You name it.
Presidents used to never go on shows like Leno or Letterman.
Now they live there.
Is it an indication of how dumbed down our culture has become?
Is it an indication how dumbed down our voters have become?
This was also quite interesting.
Ed Henry asked Obama a question, Ed Henry Fox News.
He said, Mr. President, he cited a couple parents of some of the dead Americans of Benghazi.
He said, the parents say they haven't heard from you.
The parents say they're not.
They felt like they called 911 and nobody answered.
Have you said anything to these parents?
Ed, I'm not going to do that here.
I'll talk to families when I'm ready.
I'm not going to go through the media.
I'm not.
Started getting really mad again.
Because you see, a number of parents of some of the people killed in Benghazi have been all over television.
Well, they've been all over Fox thinking, very expressly saying that some thought he had cover, thought he had backup, thought he had people there to protect him, and there wasn't anybody to protect him.
Obama basically was asked, you have anything to say to these parents?
Can you tell these parents that you were doing all you could to protect these kids, protect these people?
He wouldn't answer the question.
I'll deal with that.
Ed, my way, right?
Okay, I'll talk to parents.
I'm not going to do that here with you.
Now, Chuck Todd, NBC News out there covering for Obama.
In fact, we've got the.
I want you to hear that.
Grab somebody.
Let's see what's, uh, grab number 23.
This is where Obama loses it.
The question with Jonathan Carl.
Senator McCain, Senator Graham both said they want to have Watergate-style hearings on the attack in Benghazi.
And if you nominate Susan Rice, they're going to do everything they can to block her nomination.
Senator Graham said he simply doesn't trust Ambassador Rice after what she said about Benghazi.
She made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her.
If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me.
And I'm happy to have that discussion with them.
But for them to go after the UN ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.
When they go after the UN ambassador, apparently because they think she's an easy target, then they've got a problem with me.
They got a problem with me.
Now, F. Chuck Todd, official Obama apologist, is saying that the reason Obama, the nice guy, oh, he's one of the nicest guys around, the reason he got mad at the McCain-Graham question is because Rice was simply out there acting on the same intel that Congress had and that everybody had.
And that these guys know it.
McCain and Graham Nesty know that what she had is what everybody else has.
That is not true.
The State Department knew at the time of the attack it was not a video.
They knew there was nothing spontaneous about this.
It was not a protest that derived from a video.
They knew it real time.
The CIA station chief sent the notice to the White House situation room.
She goes on TV practically a week later.
It was not the latest intel.
It was a cover-up.
And the White House sent her out.
She was on five shows.
Again, I don't mean to be redundant, folks, but when you have anybody from a regime who's on all five Sunday shows, they're all at the same time.
You've got to go pre-tape a bunch of those.
You can't do them all live.
The regime is calling the networks and saying, we want to send Susan Rice over.
They sent her out with that story.
It's not the networks called and said, we want to talk to Susan Rice.
Why even talk to the UN ambassador about this anyway?
This is a CIA operation.
The UN got nothing to do with this.
But the regime wanted to send her up there.
And I'll tell you why.
No, I'm not going to tell you why.
I'll just get into trouble.
But they sent Susan Rice up there specifically because they thought she would be the least likely to be criticized or opposed.
That's why they sent her up there.
Of all people, send somebody from the United Nations, our UN ambassador, to go explain what happened at a CIA station.
Send somebody from the State Department for crying out if you're going to do that.
Send somebody from the CIA itself if you can't send the State Department.
Anyway, so Obama did get ticked off about a couple things.
That's one of them.
Back to the phones.
Here's John in Minier or Minier, I'm not sure, Illinois.
Hello.
Hello, Rush, Dittos.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet, sir.
Pronounced either way around here.
Obama has typically discredited somebody who is opposed to him, whether it's somebody in a campaign.
So I don't see too much different here with this Petraeus thing.
Petraeus could possibly be opposed to him at the hearings, telling the truth.
So they probably knew that.
He and his handlers.
And so they found a way to discredit him through this affair with Broadwell, with the Benghazi attacks and everything.
I think it's a tactic, Obama tactic, of discrediting somebody before they get up there.
They have a chance to get up there and tell the truth.
I wouldn't doubt that at all.
I mean, they've known Petraeus is having this affair for months.
They asked for his resignation a couple of days after the election.
In the process, they have allowed one of the most decorated American military heroes to have his reputation tarnished.
Not that he doesn't deserve it.
I mean, an affair is an affair and so forth.
I mean, I'm not trying to slough off what Petraeus did on them, but I totally agree with they would use it, kept it in their back pocket.
And the one thing about liberals, folks, and I know this sounds simplistic, but take a look at, how did Obama really beat Romney?
If you want to get down to Brass Tell, you talk about the get out the vote operation on election day, and clearly it's relevant.
Look what they said about Romney.
Look at all this character sentence.
I look back on that.
I actually think it worked.
I actually think it kept people at home.
Actually, I think there are people in this country who think Romney doesn't care if somebody's wife dies after he takes over their business.
I don't think there are people who really believe that Mitt Romney might be a felony.
I think there are people that really believe Romney hates dogs.
That stuff worked, but that's all the Democrats have.
They can't debate and win an ideological argument on the merits.
They have to discredit and impugn the character of their opponents.
That's how they do it.
Standard operating procedure.
And I think whether they're doing that with Petraeus or not remains to be seen, but they clearly have the opportunity to.
They did it with Romney.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Send Susan Rice on five shows.
You are choosing who you want to go and you're choosing what you want said.
Now, why not?
Again, she's the United Nations ambassador.
She had nothing to do with the State Department.
She had nothing to do with the CIA.
Why didn't they send Petraeus up to say this?
For example, well, there's an explanation now.
Despite what they're saying, they knew Petraeus was under investigation.
They couldn't send him up there to represent them on anything because they knew at some point they're going to use the fact he's having an affair on him.
So they couldn't send Petraeus up there.
They send Susan Rice.
Here's another thing.
Obama essentially stood behind her today, which means he stood behind what she said.
Obama officially stood behind this video story today again.
There's no other way to explain this.
He also, I'm sure, wants to name her Secretary of State.
That's what this raucous defense of her today was all about.
Now, Lindsey Graham has issued a statement to the president.
Mr. President, don't think for one minute that I don't hold you ultimately responsible for Benghazi.
I think you failed as commander-in-chief before, during, and after the attack.
We owe it to the American people and the victims of this attack to have full fair hearings and accountability be assigned where appropriate.
And given what I now know, I have no intention of promoting anybody who is up to their eyeballs in the Benghazi debacle.
Fine and dandy, where was this during the campaign?
Well, the Romney people obviously didn't want to do this during the campaign.
They had, I don't know how many opportunities.
Do you realize for Graham to do this?
Do you realize how many people our side have been seething about this just as we all are?
But for some reason, the campaign did not want to go to Benghazi.
Probably, I don't even want to speculate why, but I could guess maybe the Candy Crowley-Obama team up.
Maybe they felt that there's no they were going to win it because the press had shown you try this or we'll humiliate you, we'll embarrass you or whatever.
But I mean, here's Lindsey Graham.
Again, Mr. President, don't think for one minute.
I'm not blaming Susan Rice, man.
I'm blaming you.
You're the one that failed.
Given what I now know, I have no intention of promoting anybody up to their eyeballs in this Benghazi debacle.
Here's the grab somebody 27.
This is the Ed Henry-Obama exchange on all of this.
I want to stay in Benghazi.
I wanted to ask about the families of these four Americans who were killed.
Sean Smith's father, Ray, said he believes his son basically called 911 for help and they didn't get it.
And I know you've said you grieve for these four Americans, that it's being investigated, but the families have been waiting for more than two months.
So I would like for you to address the families if you can.
On 9-11, as Commander-in-Chief, did you issue any orders to try to protect their lives?
Ed, I'll address the families not through the press.
I'll address the families directly, as I already have.
And we will provide all the information that is available about what happened on that day.
That's what the investigation is for.
That's a pretty simple question.
Did you, 9-11, Commander-in-Chief, did you issue any orders to try to protect their lives?
And he won't answer it.
How easy would it be to say yes?
Yes, Ed, I ordered troops in from wherever, and I ordered.
He won't answer it.
There's no easier answer in the world.
He's the commander, yes, I sent forces in.
Yes, I did what I could.
He will not answer the question.
Did you issue any orders to try to protect their lives?
Oh, Ed, that's not for you.
I'll talk about families.
Oh, look.
They could have sent Hillary Clinton up there.
State Department, Secretary of State.
They wanted this story of the video.
They tried to sell that.
Obama and Hillary did that commercial on Pakistan TV for this.
So we'll see where it all goes.
We've got to take a 21-hour timeout here, folks.
Catch our breath.
Be back here tomorrow.
▲
Export Selection