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May 14, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:59
May 14, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have Rush Limbaugh the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Happy to have you here, my friends.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800 28-22882.
And the email address, Lrushboard EIB net.com.
You know what the big news is today, no matter where you go, the uh USA Today website lead story, CNN, no matter where you go, the lead story today is Angelina Jolie.
She wrote an op-ed in the New York Times informing everybody that she quietly underwent a preventive double mastectomy after discovering that she carried a gene which tends toward breast cancer.
The gene is the BRCA1 gene, sharply increases a woman's risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
She wrote, My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87% to under 5%.
I can tell my children that they don't need to fear that they will lose me to breast cancer.
She says she feels empowered, that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.
Fortunate to have a partner, Brad Pitt, who is so loving and supportive, so to anybody who has a wife or girlfriend going through this, know that you are a very important part of the transition.
I think her mother died of breast cancer early age, had the uh had the gene.
What did I say?
I was watching news this morning, and I'm I may get this wrong.
It was trying to remember this.
But I think I saw somebody say that the percentage of cases breast cancer that can be traced to this gene are under 5%, that most cases of breast cancer do not have the gene, but that if you do have the gene, uh the likelihood is 85% chance that you'll get breast cancer if you have the gene.
So she underwent a double mastectomy as a preventative measure.
You know, that I don't know, that that has that's gotta take some um some guts.
That that is just an uh you know how important physiology is to men and women and their physical characteristics and what it says uh to people about their self-esteem and then their identity to do something like this.
Whatever you think of it, uh it it it obvious requires a lot of courage to do that, and then to um to write about it.
That's uh that's another thing.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, a random act journalism from the Washington Post of all places.
The Washington Post has found that the IRS's scrutiny of conservative groups was not contained among low-level workers in the Cincinnati office.
Now, the Cincinnati office, by the way.
I have since learned the Cincinnati office is exclusive to tax exempt status and tax exempt organizations.
It's not some insignificant little satellite office off the beaten path that handles a few things here and a few things there.
This is the place where every application for tax exempt status goes through.
And so Obama and the administration said, well, it's just a bunch of low-level rogue people that they're acting on their own pretty much in in Cincinnati.
However, the Washington Post today, internal revenue service officials in Washington and at least two other offices, were involved with investigative cons investigating conservative groups seeking tax exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed.
And the Washington Post says this is according to documents that they have seen.
IRS officials at the agency's Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Nigel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to Tea Party affiliated groups.
So some of the scrutiny came from IRS headquarters.
What a shock.
What an absolute who would have believed this?
Now IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of social welfare groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.
In other words, even the low-level workers in Cincinnati were being told what to do by a task force in Washington.
So this whole story that it was a bunch of low-level people in Cincinnati that were acting pretty much on their own, totally blown up now by the Washington Post.
Lois Lerner, who oversees tax exempt groups of the IRS.
Did you hear what she said shortly after the story broke?
Well, I'm not very good at math.
Well, that's helpful.
A chief officer of the Internal Revenue Service admitting I'm not very good with math.
Lois Lerner told reporters last Friday that the absolutely inappropriate actions were undertaken by frontline people working in Cincinnati to target groups with Tea Party, Patriot or 912 in their names, all of which we now know was a series of lies.
These actions were not done by frontline or low-level people, and not just in Cincinnati.
And they were not just targeting names, but anything that indicated they were conservative.
And Ms. Lerner also lied about when she found out about this.
She actually learned about this in June of 2011.
Now you try lying to the IRS, see what happens to you.
Now, in one instance, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington on several other occasions.
IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.
Cleta Mitchell, partner in the law firm of Foley and Lardner, who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax exempt status to something called true the vote, said for the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false.
So we know now that the woman in charge of this division at the IRS did not tell the truth on practically every single point.
actions were not done by frontline or low-level people, not just in Cincinnati.
Lois Lerner also lied about when she found out about this scrutiny.
She actually learned about it in June of 2011.
We also now know, thanks to the Washington Post story, the IRS was even lying to senators and congressmen who wrote to them to ask about the tax-exempt applications of conservative groups.
And we also know now that the IRS was not just targeting keywords in the group's names, They were targeting anything that indicated they were conservative.
In fact, the Washington Post even points out, quote, although some of the groups were explicitly labeled Tea Party or Patriot Patriot, others that came under intense scrutiny were focused on challenging the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, or the integrity of federal elections.
You know, which kind of disturbing here, folks, since the IRS is going to be the enforcement agency of Obamacare.
Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, said the fact that they went after the Tea Party here feeds the Republican critics.
And this is one of the most outrageous excesses I have seen in all of my years in journalism.
And Rihanna Mitchell, NBC News in Washington, calling this one of the most outrageous excesses that she has ever seen in all of her years of journalism.
You know, it it begets the question that I said yesterday over the weekend I was asked constantly.
Rush, how come the media is so anti-IRS in this?
Folks, I'm going to tell you, this may describe you.
American conservatives are so jaundiced by this administration and the media today.
Many of them, and again, this may describe you, many of them fully expected the media to support the IRS in targeting Tea Party groups, groups that had Patriot in their name, or groups that were forming to fight Obamacare.
Such is the corruption in Washington today that many decent, good old-fashioned American citizens, when this story happened, actually expected the media to encourage the IRS to keep looking further at conservatives.
They were shocked that the IRS would be criticized by the media.
And they were asking me why I thought that was.
And I said, I can understand why you're perplexed by it.
It's a mystery.
But I think the answer is that the IRS is the collection agency of the statists.
The IRS is the collection agency of socialism.
Remember, these people are all about as much money as possible flowing to government.
They are all about tax increases.
They are all about the government getting bigger.
And anything that happens that encourages people to be suspicious of their collection agency is not good.
So they're going to take this on and they're going to try to pile on the IRS just to limit the damage.
Because unlike you, they don't really fear the IRS.
They think the IRS is a country can't get along without it.
It's the collection agency of socialism.
Socialism needs all that money.
It needs a majority of all money flowing into Washington and being spent and redistributed by Washington.
And anything that might corrupt that whole process, they can't allow to fester.
Now, this IRS thing, this is going to hit a nerve with increasing numbers of people into public.
I think much more so than Benghazi, because this is something people like I can identify with.
People understand this, like the House Bank scandal.
That was so easily understandable.
The House Bank scandal was very simple.
Members of Congress could go to the bank.
Most people didn't even know there was a bank specifically for members of Congress, but there was.
And members could go there and write checks for cash for money they didn't have.
It turned out that their salaries were irrelevant.
It didn't matter what they earned.
They could get checks cashed anytime they wanted, and they were able to run those deficits, those bills that they owed the bank, and there was very little pressure ever to repay it.
Once people learned that, that was easily understood.
You can't do that at your bank.
You can't go cash a check for which you don't have money and get away with it and then go do it again and again and again.
Well, same thing here.
This one is easily understandable.
The IRS targeting people.
People suspect this anyway.
Now, this is confirmation of it.
And it's a it's it's I'm not saying it's more important to Benghazi, don't misunderstand.
I'm just saying that people can identify with this easier.
So you have this, you have Benghazi, you have the media ticked off now.
The AP was targeted for almost Soviet-style treatment by the administration, by the Department of Justice.
I don't know how long any of this is going to last, but I guarantee you it's gonna last longer than the regime thinks or wants it to.
Brief time out as we continue here on the EIB network, El Rushbow back in just a second.
Wow, I just checked a little bit of the White House press briefing the spokes kid Jay Carney.
Kind of under the gun, Jessica Yellen of CNN is really having at him on this IRS business.
And one of the reasons why is that Jay Carney is sitting here talking about the IRS scandal, and he said, well, if the IRS reports are true, then the president would be outraged.
What do you mean if the IRS reports are true?
The IRS has admitted all of this.
They've already apologized for it.
The IRS has confessed to a scandal.
Now they haven't confessed to the whole enchalada yet, but nobody's denying it.
An IRS official or two have admitted that wrongdoing took place.
Well, this is so so telling and so typical.
White House digging in, they won't even admit that what is known is true.
You know, Jay Carney's telling Jessica Yebinov CNN, well, if what you say is true, then uh the president would be outraged.
She's not having any of it.
She's firing right back.
And he says, just to give you an example.
She asked a multi-part question, and his response was, Well, I don't know, that does have anything to do with your first sentence.
Your first sentence has no relationship to I mean, it is stonewalling, it is deflection.
The spokes kid is being harassed right now.
The uh White House press corps just appears what little I saw of it, appears to be really loaded for bear on this IRS business.
Here's Cindy in Hughesville, Pennsylvania, as we head back to the phones.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Thank you so much for taking my call and thanks for everything you do.
I appreciate that.
Thank you so much.
Well, I don't want to give out too much information because I don't want to be audited by the IRS.
But um, I just want to say that President Bush should probably call him thank you because now this takes some of the heat off of him because now they're they can blame you for the next three years after blaming him for the last five years.
Um yeah, except they've been blaming me too.
Now not as fervently as they blame Bush, but but this is uh this is something the president's been doing since his second week in office.
He is holding me out as the obstacle.
Don't forget, folks, the second week in office he had a meeting with congressional leaders in the White House.
And he looked at the Republicans in that meeting and said, Look, you guys have got to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
That's just not how things get done in Washington.
So this is nothing new.
What he said at the fundraiser at Harvey Weinstein's house yesterday, when he basically told Justin Timberlake and his bride, Jessica Beal, and uh the designer Tommy Hilfiger.
He said he knows the Republicans want to agree with him.
The Republicans want to join him in his agenda for America.
And he thought that his re-election in 2012 would break their fever.
He thought that his winning re-election 2012 would make the Republicans basically see the light and cave in and agree with it.
But they don't because they're afraid of me.
I'm the obstacle.
I'm the guy that's presenting Ob preventing Obama from getting what he wants, doing what he wants.
Anyway, appreciate the call, Cindy, thank you.
Karen in Mawa, New Jersey.
Welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
How are you?
Fine and dandy.
Thank you.
That's terrific.
I'm glad to speak to you.
I have so many things to talk to you about today.
Um first one is you meeting with Obama to try to help him out is not gonna be good.
It is so great watching him flounder up there and being, uh, uh uh and not knowing what he's talking about.
It's been the best time I've had in the last four and a half years.
Um number two, the Republicans and Obama thinking that the Republicans will do everything that he wants them to do if it wasn't for you.
The Republicans would do everything that Obama wanted them to do because they fawn all over him like school children.
And they make idiots out of themselves.
They do everything.
They're so gentlemanlike.
They never ever, ever do the right thing.
There always seem to be, let's say, kissing butt.
Well, you know, let me stop you there because you have raised an interesting point.
I've had some emails during the program today.
Rush, Rush, I don't understand.
Why is he singling you out?
Mitch McConnell opposes him and and Boehner opposes him.
But why is he blaming you?
You know, and I I uh I write back, it's a great question.
Stop and think about the answer.
There's a there's an answer to that question.
Because it's true.
There are Republicans who criticize Obama.
There are Republicans who are not many, but there's some who do, but he never singles them out.
He singles me out.
And there's a reason for that.
What is that?
Well, I do more than oppose him.
I define him.
Well, that's what I'm saying.
I tell people who he is, what he is, and what his ultimate plans are.
I don't deal with Obama as just the latest Democrat who we oppose because we're Republicans and he's a Democrat.
I recognize Obama as the Alinskiite that he is, the community organizer that he is, and the guy who really doesn't like this country is founded.
You know, Republicans don't talk about him that way, but I do.
Well, I also have another uh something else to say.
Well, I gotta take a brief time out here, so you hold on to the break and we'll come back and we'll get to your final point that you wanted to make right after this.
Jay Carney is indeed, I watched a little bit more of this.
He's being raked over the coals, but this is part of the game, folks.
This is standard operating procedure.
An IRS scandal, easy.
IRS scandal, safe.
Anything that covers Benghazi up, fine.
That's the value of this, both to the media and to the regime.
So they're asking Carney about the IRSA.
Well, if this happened, come on, Jay, what do you mean if it happened?
If apologize for what do you mean?
Well, if it happened it'd be outrageous, the president's still looking at it.
What do you mean, Jay?
Come on, man.
They've they've they've already admitted it.
They've apologized.
What do you mean if it happened?
Well, the president still thinks it's very, very bad.
Well uh what Carney's basically saying is look, we didn't know anything about the IRS thing here at the White House.
We didn't know anything about Benghazi here at the White House.
And we didn't know anything about the AP here at the White House.
We don't think about any of that.
And the press is saying, come on, Jay, you're here at the White House, you gotta know all about this.
No, we don't know about that.
But the IRS scandal, the media is perfectly safe hammering a press spokesman on the IRS.
And I think Kearney is perfectly fine being hammered.
That's standard operating procedure.
I mean, an IRS scandal, that's pretty common in Washington.
People not liking the IRS, that's pretty common.
People being suspicious of them, that's pretty common.
So all the time taken up with the IRS scandal is time not spent on Benghazi, and that's really helpful.
And I frankly I got people sending me, no boy, Russia J. Carney.
He really, really, I mean, I mean, they're just hammering this poor little guy.
I'm sure he's perfectly fine with it.
Anything to keep Benghazi off the front pages and off of the uh the the top of anybody's mind.
Somebody chip Chip Regis said, are you guys in a siege mentality here in the West, oh no, Kearney said, no, no, no.
We're back here, we're working on everything we can do to help the middle class.
And now we're working, we're doing everything we can to educate America's kids.
We're working really, really hard in reducing the deficit.
Well, what about this IRS?
If it's true, it's it's what do you mean if it's true?
They've apologized for it.
What about what about the AP?
Well, we didn't know anything about the AP.
I mean, that happened over at the DOJ.
We don't know anything about that.
We found out about that at the same time you did.
What about Benghazi?
Well, you know, that's the video.
That's still the video of the president's still, we don't really know what's going on with any of this.
It's the limbaugh theorem being played out in this press conference.
Obama's got nothing to do with any of this.
That's how they're trying to play it.
That's how Jake Carney's trying to play it.
Obama's got nothing to do with any of this.
And if it happened, why he's outraged by it just like you are.
That's that's the position Kearney's taking, and he's not moving off of it.
No matter what they say to him.
So it's the limbaugh theorem in action before your very eyes.
Well, if it happened, the president's truly outraged by it.
What do you mean, Jay?
Well, the president doesn't know for sure.
He's not really up on it.
Uh AP, none of it.
They don't know anything about it, folks.
It's just these, you know, these rogue low-level people on their own doing this horrible stuff.
We're trying to get our arms around it and corral it and stop it.
Well, turns out to be true, it'd be really bad, but we don't know that yet.
Back to uh back to Karen of Mawa, New Jersey.
What is the what's the next thing you wanted to comment on?
Okay, Rush.
Hey.
Um, with the Benghazi cover-up, with the IRS corruption, with the DOJ spying on the AP, with the health care law that is going to be a train wreck.
I think it's time that the Republicans, forgive my political incorrectness here, go for the kill.
I think it's time that they come out strong, they come out bold, and they let the entire country see what these Democrats are all about.
I don't think that's going to happen.
I I know, I know.
Don't get me upset.
There is one.
Look, I look I don't maybe more than one.
I mean, two or three Republicans who are dealing with Obama on the wholesale level.
Mo most Republicans will limit their criticism to Obama in a retail way.
What I mean by that is they just treated, okay, he's the latest Democrat, uh, and his policies are uh whatever they are, and we oppose them, and we're gonna try to stop them.
Uh the wholesale level of dealing with Obama is, okay, we've got a real status here, gang, and what this guy's trying to do is transform this country and turn it into something it has never been.
He is trying to do everything he can to change this country from the way it was founded.
No Republican talks of it, maybe Ted Cruz, maybe Rand Paul now and then.
But no other Republican does this.
They just he's just the latest Democrat.
The Republican consultants, he's just the latest Democrat.
Uh, and we really got to get these Hispanic voters, and we really got to get these independents.
And they're missing the boat on what's really happening to the country.
And well, maybe they're not missing the boat.
They just they they don't want to go there verbally in in in discussing it.
They just nothing special about this regime.
It's just the latest Democrat regime.
You and I, Karen know full well there's nothing typical about this Democrat regime.
This one's make or break, as far as as far as the the country and its founding is concerned, or what kind of country we're gonna have and what kind of future individuals are gonna have, what kind of opportunity they're gonna have.
And I think that's why the president singles me out, if you want to know the truth, it's there are plenty of Republicans that do criticize his policies.
There are plenty of Republicans that McConnell has said our objective is to make sure Obama's not re-elected.
But Obama's never out there saying that Mitch McConnell is the reason his agenda is thwarted.
He's blaming me, and there's a reason.
There's a reason he's blaming me.
And it is that he does consider my position here to be of sufficient power to influence others to oppose him in ways they otherwise wouldn't.
That's what bothers him.
If I may be so bold and honest as to say, he believes that if it weren't for me, vast majority of Republicans would just roll the dice and go with him.
Take the path of least resistance.
Not say anything that's gonna get people criticizing them, not say anything that's gonna get the media mad at him.
But I won't let him get away with that in his mind.
Therefore, I'm the obstacle.
And that's why, if you're just joining us, I've offered seriously in the first half hour of the program today.
I'll be glad to meet with him and hash it out.
I'll be glad to advise him on how to move the country forward.
Not his way.
But I'll be glad to talk to him about it.
If I'm the obstacle, I've made that offer.
I've extended that invitation in the um in the first half hour of the program today.
He's telling all these donors and everybody that I'm it.
If it weren't for me.
He's just, folks, salivating over the possibility that just one Republican would come out and denounce me.
Oh, that would make his day.
That that would that he thinks that'd be the end of me.
That you would leave me, that you would leave the program, that that'd be the end of me if just one Republican do it.
And that's what he's trying to egg on.
Because he knows they're not going to stop him.
Bottom line, he knows the Republicans, he can look at them.
can see that they didn't run a serious campaign against him in 2012, did they?
They had all kinds of chances to run a serious campaign against him.
They didn't.
They They treated it as it's a standard next campaign, it's the next election.
We've got a Republican versus a Democrat, and let's raise our money and let's go buy our ads and see what happens.
Here's Rick in Greenwood, South Carolina.
Welcome to the program.
Great to have you here.
Thank you, Rush.
I appreciate it.
Uh quick question.
Do you think that the revelation of the Justice Department investigating the AP, and if that's the one that is revealed, there's probably some others that you know we don't know about yet.
You think something like this would cause the drive-by media to wake up to the fact that once the left is through with them, using them as a propaganda machine, once the left gets fully entrenched in power, that they're going to shut them down and throw them out like yesterday's laundry, and freedom of the press will be a thing of the past.
No, I don't think that.
Oh, I wish they would wake up to that because that's what's going to happen.
I know that just like Obama, just like Obama hopes and dreams of the day, one Republican would publicly denounce me and tell the country that I'm the problem with America.
He dreams of that.
So do you dream that the press is going to wake up one day and see Obama for who he really is and divorce him.
And what you have to understand is they'll express the AP, they'll express their outrage here and whatever.
But they're ticked now.
They're very mad at him.
But that's not going to last.
They're on the same team.
These reporters are human beings.
They want to be in the inner circle.
They want to be thought of as friends and co-conspirators and fellow travelers.
They think they're on the same level.
They think they're on the same team.
It's going to take more than this for the AP.
Don't forget, the primary objective of the media is to deny us a win.
to deny us any kind of a victory, they're not going to throw Obama overboard by virtue of...
Whatever he does.
They're just not going to do it.
Now, I I there's no question the AP's Mad now.
They wouldn't have sent the letter.
And they wouldn't have got their lawyers involved.
But I don't think it's going to last.
It's true.
I think uh the Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They what do you mean?
Of course it's not gonna last.
Do you really think that the media is gonna end up divorcing Obama and end up opposing him over this?
How's that gonna manifest it?
What are they gonna do?
Demand impeachment.
Oh you really think they're gonna start reporting more objectively on Ob this is a lover's spat.
They're gonna kiss and make up inside of a week.
I gotta take a break.
I'm just looking at the broadcast clock.
I'm kind of up against it here, but we'll be back.
Don't go away.
Ha.
How are you?
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network.
So many people hoping that because the Department of Justice was spying on AP reporters that the AP will wake up and see the light about who it is they've been covering for and abandon Obama.
Gonna happen, folks.
Audio sound bites.
Last night Situation Room CNN, Wolf Blitzer, the host talked to their correspondent John King about the DOJ acquiring months of phone records from 20 lines connected to the AP.
And Blitzer said, John, you used to work for the AP.
When you heard about this, that the Justice Department secretly monitoring phone calls from reporters and editors of the AP, supposedly looking into allegations.
Somebody's leaking information to them.
How did you react, John, when you heard about this?
If you work in our business, and I worked at the Associated Press for twelve years, so I have a personal side of that company.
This is very chilling.
This is very chilling.
The government uh gets angry about leaks of classified information.
I understand that, and they have ways to investigate them.
But did they cross the line here?
Did they do something inappropriate here?
Do they possibly do something that went over legal barriers here?
It sends a chilling message from the government to people in our business and the AP, I think, is justifiably outraged.
That doesn't sound like he's particularly upset about it.
Sounds like he's saying what he thinks he should say, but in the end, they ain't gonna change what I think about Obama.
Yeah, my guy's only AP outraged by it.
What are you gonna do?
Stuff happens.
So then Blitzer, he didn't seem to mind at all about this.
If you take a look from the other side, if there was a serious leak about an al-Qaeda operation or whatever, they're trying to find out who may be leaking this information to the news media.
Do they occasionally have the right to secretly monitor our phone calls?
So it's okay with Wolf.
Hey, if somebody in our business is leaking secretly and so forth, and it might be determined, don't they have a right to monitor us?
Now, do you think Wolf would have that reaction if George W. Bush and his administration were doing this?
No.
They'd be in the street, they'd be burning down Washington today.
They'd be making tracks, and the media would be protesting in front of the White House.
And Wolf's, well, you know, you gotta understand.
If we're leaking stuff that they don't want us to leak, you gotta kinda understand that they'd be mad.
So does that help explain this?
That's why I played those uh bites for you, folks.
Now it's Eric Holder's turn.
He is doing his press conference at the Justice Department, answering questions on the Department of Justice grab of these associated press records.
Now, the most preposterous thing about this is that Holder and the Department of Justice are saying that they're doing this, that they went out and they grabbed all that stuff from the AP because of a leak about a thwarted terrorist plot in Yemen.
What would they need?
The phone records of 20 AP phone lines used by more than a hundred reporters, including in the press gallery, the House of Representatives, over this.
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