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May 22, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:35
May 22, 2013, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Rush Limbaugh, one of the luckiest guys ever, sitting here behind the golden EIB microphone at the distinguished and prestigious and renowned Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address Elrushbaugh at EIBnet.com.
It is as I thought.
The Fifth Amendment is not intended to be used as a shield.
The Fifth Amendment is simply there to make sure they prove it.
You do not have to incriminate yourself.
But once you assert your innocence and once you say you didn't do anything wrong, you can't then use the Fifth Amendment to say, I'm not answering questions.
Any good prosecutor, and that's what ISA has to be.
This is a congressional hearing.
Even Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat, said, you've got to run this thing a courtroom here.
Now, what he meant was, we've got to be fair to the witnesses.
Okay, fine.
Well, ISA should run it in a courtroom.
And any prosecutor, which is ISA's role, you've got a jury.
The jury is the rest of the committee.
The jury is the American people.
The jury is the media.
You ask her every question related to every allegation, everything that went on in that IRS office about suppressing Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status.
And you make her invoke the Fifth Amendment if it takes all afternoon.
Any prosecutor will tell you that the purpose in doing that is clearly the inference that the jury will draw.
So if a witness can take the fifth, you make them take the fifth.
You make them invoke it, not just once and then excuse them, not just twice and then excuse them.
You hammer them with it.
ISA didn't do that.
And I'm telling you, folks, I don't know.
I've been watching this stuff all my life, intensely for 25 years.
And in all candor, the government keeps getting bigger.
And on rare occasions do these government perpetrators get caught, Nixon, the House Bank.
But in most of them, the perps get away with it.
Clinton got away with it.
Hillary continues to get away with it.
Obama gets away with it.
Lois Lerner got away with it.
There really isn't a whole history here of success in these kinds of things.
That's why, by the way, people keep going back and referring to Watergate.
It's the biggest and one of the fewest, or one of the few examples of this kind of scrutiny actually amounting to anything.
The cynical view is that this is just a game and it's the Washington ruling class circling the wagons and giving us all the circus that we want.
But at the end of the day, nothing changes.
Everybody's still where they want to be when it comes to government.
Lois Lerner, she's unharmed.
She maybe quits or she maybe not.
Maybe she moves on somewhere else when this is all said and done.
Who knows?
Now, I want to move on to the latest proofs and illustrations of the Limbaugh theorem.
The Washington Post reported on yesterday's front page, the ABC Post poll, showed that Obama's approval rating remained steady.
So now we've got three of these.
We've got this one, we've got Gallup, and we have CNN.
And in all three of these polls, Obama's approval numbers are holding steady or in a couple of cases, inching up in the CNN poll.
In the ABC Washington Post poll, Obama's approval number, 51%, that's steady.
44% disapprove.
And this poll found also Obama's approval rating unaffected by all of these scandals.
And in addition, the president was judged to be more focused than Republicans on issues people care about.
And I take you back to the exit polling after the election.
Remember that question, cares about people like me?
81% cited Obama.
19% cited Romney.
Now, the numbers are not like that, but it is still a clear majority.
Well, but it's a bare majority, but it's still a majority of Americans say they believe Obama is focused on issues important to them personally.
Just 33% think so of the Republicans.
There's an 18-point gap.
51% think Obama is clearly focused on things that matter to people.
Only 33% think the Republicans are.
And the people at Newsbusters then write this question.
Should we draw from this question that lying to the public and using the imposing powers of the IRS to thwart conservative groups aren't issues that people need to care about?
Would the Post have asked this question during the Watergate?
That's not – the reason that this poll result is what it is is not that people don't think the IRS stuff is important or anything.
They don't attach Obama to it.
That's the phenomenon here.
Obama isn't attached to any of this.
Now, look, I know how hard this is.
You pay attention every day.
You are immersed in it.
You and I, I mean, we live this stuff.
We know it frontwards and backwards.
Low-information voters, they hear Obama say, I didn't know anything about that, and believe him.
They hear Obama say, this makes me mad.
I'm going to get to the bottom of it.
They believe him.
As far as the low-information audience or voter group out there is concerned, they don't have any reason not to trust Obama yet.
They don't have any reason not to believe him.
They think he's working on jobs.
They think he's working on the deficit.
They think he's doing everything he says he's doing.
And they think that he's doing it for them.
And there hasn't been anything that's happened to shake that up, no matter what you think.
And the reason there hasn't been is specific.
He has conducted his presidency in such a way that he is always seen as an outsider.
He's not in charge of all the bad stuff.
The fact that he's causing all these things to happen totally escapes these people.
Totally escapes the low-information voter.
They don't associate all of this, be it Benghazi, be it the IRS, targeting conservative groups.
Associate that with Obama.
It just doesn't attach to him.
And that's because of him.
It's because he's chosen to make himself appear as constantly fighting everything that's happening in Washington.
That's what a current campaign does for you in terms of optics.
A current campaign, when you're seen as constantly campaigning and fighting against things, you're not seen as trying to advance things.
It's just the opposite.
They think Obamacare is going to lower premiums.
They think Obamacare is going to make insurance easier to get.
They have yet to see the reality of this.
They believe what Obama says.
I know it's hard, folks.
I got two more examples.
Are you sitting down?
Forbes magazine.
You ready for the headline?
Economically, could Obama be America's best president?
Forbes magazine.
Forbes, not Time, not the New Republic, not the Huffing and Puffington Post, not the nation, Forbes.
Now, it's no longer controlled by the Forbes family, granted, but it's still Forbes.
Economically, could Obama be America's best president?
You think Obama's in trouble, and I'm telling you he isn't.
You see a headline like this, and let's go to the Washington Post.
Headline: President Obama says journalists should not be prosecuted for soliciting information.
How nice.
Why, he didn't know about that either.
Jay Carney said, by the way, the president thinks that, and he's telling this to the media, the White House press briefing, by the way, the president thinks that you should be able to do your job in a free and open way.
So all of this targeting of the Associated Press reporters and James Rosen and his parents and William Loganess at Fox, nothing to do with Obama.
He doesn't think that ought to be happening.
He's got, well, he's got total faith in Eric Holder.
He's got, well, the point, when you ask a question beyond that, you're missing the point.
The president thinks you should be able to do your job in a free and open way.
Well, who does he think?
Does he support Holder?
And Holder is the one.
You're off the beaten path.
Jay Carney said in the briefing: if you're asking me whether the president believes journalists should be prosecuted for doing their jobs, the answer is no.
Okay, so you're a low-information voter out there.
You're watching this if you pick up on this at all and you find out that if you're a low-information voter, I dare say you might even support Fox reporters being spied on.
Because if you are a low-information voter, you believe a Democrat's spin on things.
And you might believe that Fox is a problem.
You might believe that they need to be spied on.
Go read, if you dare, some of the comments at some of these Democrat websites, some of these lackeys in their pajamas sitting around all day cashing their welfare checks and doing whatever and posting comments on these sites.
Carney said he cannot, and I cannot comment on the specifics of any ongoing criminal matter, but I can tell you that in our conversation yesterday, the president reiterated just how important he believes it is that reporters, that all of you and your colleagues are able to do your jobs in a free and open way.
Now, meanwhile, you and I know that it is Obama and his acolytes who are responsible for all of this spying on Fox reporters and the AP, the bugging of the phones and so forth.
But right here's in the Washington Post, the New York Times today excuses the media for not reporting on the IRS scandal a year ago before the election because of me.
They say, you know, it's totally under the media was so absorbed in the limbaugh story one year ago that they missed this IRS thing.
They missed it.
They were because they were so they were so worked up.
They're so, so hopeful that they finally get rid of me.
By the way, I'm in the media.
I'm being suppressed.
I've been suppressed for over two decades, and nobody's speaking up for me.
And I'm not complaining.
Don't misunderstand.
I'm just saying, there's a lot of people, and it's really outrageous what happened to James Rosen.
It's really outrageous what happened to William Loganessa, really outrageous what happened to their parents, and really outrageous what happened to Fox.
With me, don't stop, keep going, Obama.
Let's see what the next story here in the stack is.
Ted Cruz is a lino, a Latino in name only.
That's from BuzzFeed.
Daily Show co-creator Liz Winstead beyond sorry for her Oklahoma tornado joke.
She says, I was an idiot.
Well, she said that since the tornado happened in Oklahoma, it was obviously targeting conservatives.
She said she said that before she knew how many people died.
Yeah, so now she's apologizing.
I would think she'd stand by it.
I mean, if, I mean, tornadoes are destructive, and if they hit in Oklahoma, you're bound to affect conservatives.
And she was in favor of that.
And a Democrat senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, he has also apologized for politicizing the tornado.
Sheldon Whitehouse, what he said, I don't have it in front of me.
What he said is really reprehensible.
We had the soundbite yesterday.
It was really, I mean, it was just, it was sick what he said.
I wish I could remember what it was.
Ah, here's what it is.
Here's what Sheldon Whitehouse said.
When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, you mean in the Northeast.
You come to us, the rest of the country, and ask for billions of dollars to recover.
And the damage that your polluters and your deniers are doing doesn't just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas.
It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms.
It hits Oregon with acidified seas.
It hits Montana with dying force.
So like it or not, we're in this together.
So he was saying, okay, you people in Oklahoma, you want some relief money?
Well, stuff it because you got a bunch of global warming deniers and you got a bunch of polluters and you're causing all the disasters that happen up here.
So that's what Sheldon Whitehouse apologized for.
Oh, look at this.
Sergio Garcia.
Sergio Garcia uses a fried chicken line against Tiger Woods.
What's this?
According to the Guardian newspaper at the European Tours Awards dinner last night, the BMW PGA Championship in Virginia Water, England, Sergio Garcia was jokingly asked if he would invite Woods for dinner during the U.S. Open next month.
And Sergio Garcia said, well, we'll have him around every night.
We'll serve fried chicken.
Yes, sir, Bob, the old standby fried chicken line against Tiger Woods.
Sergio really ticked off.
You know what?
The Players' Championship.
Oops, got to take a break.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, so Sergio and Tiger, they're out there playing together, I think, on the Saturday round of the Players' Championship.
And Sergio is getting ready to hit Tiger's 50 yards away and grabs a club out of his bag, making a racket out of it.
And Sergio accuses him of gamesmanship and trying to distract him.
And Tiger says, the Marshals told me it already hit.
I don't care what you're doing, Garcia.
You think I care about you?
The Marshals told me that you hit, so I got ready to make my shot.
Then the Marshals, there were four Marshals involved.
Two Marshals said, Yeah, we told him Garcia had hit.
And two other Marshals said, No, that's not what happened.
So it was a controversy.
The last I heard was still open-ended.
But the bottom line is that Garcia thinks that Woods was screwing with his head.
So they're going to invite Garcia going to invite Tiger for dinner every night during the U.S. Open and serve fried chicken.
Now, he said that in England.
He didn't say it here.
I don't know.
All right, Forbes magazine, Economically Obama could be America.
Could Obama be America's best president?
This story is based on two things.
Story is based on the stock market hitting record highs and the inexplicable uptick in consumer confidence.
That's it.
The Forbes story is based on those two things.
The headline, Economically, Could Obama be America's best president?
Well, let's listen to Ben Bernanke.
Ben Bernanke is a chairman of the Federal Reserve, and he was on Capitol Hill today during a joint House and Senate Economic Committee.
He was testifying.
And he basically said that the recovery is too weak for us to stop pumping money into it.
We got to keep doing stimulus.
And what they're basically doing is pumping the stock market's going through.
These guys are creating bubbles, folks.
At some point, this is going to implode.
It just has to.
They're artificially propping up the stock market.
They're printing money and converting it into bonds, and the bonds are ending up buying stock, buying securities.
I don't know all the machinations of it, but that's the root.
That's what's happening.
The stock market's not going crazy because average mom-and-pop investors all of a sudden are buying stock.
This is money being printed because the regime has decided that the stock market will be a great optic to show a great economy.
So it's all a game.
And here's Bernanke.
Now, you keep in mind now: economically, could Obama be America's best president?
That is insulting.
My God, this economy is barely hanging on.
And it another union came out today, demanded to be excused from Obamacare, another union.
Anyway, here's Bernanke.
Listen to this.
A premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily, but would also carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery and causing inflation to fall further.
Such outcomes tend to be associated with extended periods of lower, not higher, interest rates, as well as poor returns on other assets.
Moreover, renewed economic weakness would pose its own risks to financial stability.
Let me translate that for you.
What Bernanke was saying is the economy still sucks.
And we got to continue to pump money into it.
And as we do, it's going to make Obama look like maybe America's best economic president ever.
And I, Ben Bernanke, am single-handedly going to make sure that's what people end up thinking.
By the way, the union, ladies and gentlemen, the latest union that is now against Obamacare and is asking to be exempted is the National Treasury Employment Union, which is the union that runs the IRS.
The union that runs the IRS is asking to be exempted from Obamacare.
They want a waiver.
So after suppressing the Tea Party for Obama, the National Treasury Employment Union is now demanding that Obama let them out of Obamacare.
Back to the phones, Robert and San Diego.
Thank you, sir, for calling and for waiting.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, thank you.
Regarding all this IRS hearings and so forth, I think what we should do is just demand that these people apologize to Mitt Romney.
They influenced an election.
That's what they did.
And then move on.
I think the Democrats are really, really good.
I mean, they're genius.
This was going to come out at some point.
It didn't come out in the summer of 2012, which would have been a disaster for them.
And it didn't come out in the summer of 2014.
It was leaked in the summer or the spring of 2013, which is very remote from the next election, about as far away as it can be.
That's exactly right.
And it was perfect timing for them.
I think they pulled off a great election and released this at the least damaging point.
And they're really good.
They can be good when they've got unlimited media support for what they're doing.
I mean, stop and think about it.
I don't, look at, I'm not trying to make this about me.
I'm really not.
When you have the New York Times, which to them is the gospel, I mean, to the rest of the media, to the political class, the ruling class, the New York Times is gospel.
And they've got a story today excusing the media for not reporting on the IRS scandal a year ago when it would have had an impact on the election.
It was known a year ago.
It was known to the media.
It was known the Inspector General was looking into it.
It was known because the Tea Party had complained about it.
It was known that the IRS was targeting Tea Party groups and denying them tax-exempt status.
It was known that Romney donors were being audited and harassed.
Now, the New York Times says that that wasn't reported last year when it could have affected the election because of me.
Because what was happening with me in one week so overwhelmed everybody in the media that it blinded them to anything else happening.
And the New York Times story says that that IRS story happened to really break into full-fledged knowledge during that week, made famous by me.
And I was such a distraction.
Now, if you've got, if you're Obama and you've got a media willing to tell that story, if you have a media willing to excuse themselves From reporting on something that could impact the election because they have to cover a talk show host on the radio.
Well, then you're pretty confident that you're going to be able to keep things suppressed and sheltered during an election.
Same thing with Benghazi.
So, folks, Robert here is exactly right.
The release of the IRS scandal news happened just recently.
Lois Lerner, who today took the Fifth Amendment, was at an American Bar Association meeting and planted a question with a friend of hers in a QA at a convention, a conference.
And her answer revealed the details of the IRS scandal involving a Tea Party.
And that was just, what, a month ago, three weeks ago, whatever it was.
And we're dealing with it intensely ever since.
She orchestrated the release of this news at this time.
And Robert's right, this is about as far away from the 2014 election as you can get.
So it'll happen and be forgotten.
Nothing's going to happen here.
You have the news that could have been reported a year ago and been impactful in the election, but wasn't because of me.
And you have Benghazi.
So, yeah, the Democrats are really good, but they've got willing accomplices in the media that will help them implement their media plans.
You might say, now, this is stretch here, but maybe the Republicans have strategists that are this good too, but they don't have a media that would go along with this.
They don't, well, they do, but then the mainstream media, the mainstream media would not help them with it.
In fact, I don't think they do have a media that would be complicit with them in a scandal like this.
I know I wouldn't be if it were a Republican president and administration who had done this kind of thing and they come to me and say, Will you help us do this?
I wouldn't lie for them or excuse it, but their media will do that.
So, yeah, they're smart.
Yeah, they're good, but they've also got a lot of help.
But all that aside, the point is well taken.
By the 2014 election season, this will likely be old news.
And I don't mean to be throwing cold water on things here.
I just been around the block now a number of times, and I've seen these things work, and I've seen them not work.
And we're in a pattern here of it not working, meaning to our benefit.
The House Bank scandal worked to our benefit.
The Watergate worked to their benefit.
Name, I mean, Clinton impeachment didn't matter.
Approval numbers always stayed high.
One re-election didn't matter.
Hillary's still a viable presidential prospect after all of the shenanigans that she'd been involved in.
It doesn't hasn't mattered.
And every day I am treated with a just most pained facial expression by Mr. Snirdley, who every day shows up here thinking, okay, this is it.
They've gone too far.
They've bitten off too much.
And I say, no, no, no, no, no.
Let me give you another one, folks.
Try this.
I shouldn't have laughed, but I can't help it.
Five men.
This is an AP story.
Five men are under round-the-clock U.S. surveillance in Libya, wanted for questioning in the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.
The White House believes there is enough proof for a military force to seize them as terror suspects, officials say.
However, the White House prefers to wait until investigators have enough evidence to try them in a U.S. civilian courtroom.
The decision not to seize the men militarily underscores the White House aim to move away from hunting terrorists as enemy combatants and toward a process in which most are apprehended and tried by the countries where they are living or arrested by the U.S. with the host country's cooperation and tried in the U.S. criminal justice system.
Let me translate this for you.
The regime is pretty damn sure that the five guys who orchestrated and carried out the attack that led to the deaths of four Americans are known.
And there's clearly enough evidence to put them before a military tribunal, but we're not going to do that.
We know who the five guys are.
We have them under surveillance, but we are waiting until there's enough evidence to convict them in a U.S. civilian courtroom.
Now, who's making this decision?
Wait till Obama hears about this.
Can you imagine, can you picture that Jay Carney walks into White's house?
Mr. President, did you know that the five men who are responsible for Benghazi have been identified and they're being under surveillance?
Well, what are we doing about it?
Well, we're just watching them.
We're waiting until there's enough evidence to try them in the U.S. court.
Oh, okay.
Well, keep me posted.
Well, that's the picture being presented.
Wait till Obama doesn't know about this yet.
Wait till Obama finds out the five guys who did this.
And by the way, not one of these five guys had anything to do with the video.
Not one of these five guys had anything to do with the video.
The guy that did the video is still in jail without bail.
So we know who they are.
We know who did it.
And we're just watching.
We are not apprehending them yet.
We're going to wait.
Now, do you think, do you think maybe the timing on this might have anything to do with the next election?
You have to, because everything this administration does is political.
Everything they do has a political purpose, a political objective.
And you know what it is.
It's the elimination of all their opposition.
From the Washington Times, Stephen Dinan, the Senate Judiciary Committee, voted on Monday.
They voted out the immigration bill.
A gang of immigration bill came out of committee, passed the committee.
Now, Mitch McConnell said, well, you know, I'm not okay with the bill and I'm not okay with – wait a minute.
He's okay with the bill coming out of committee, but he's not okay with the facts on the ground, meaning he's not okay with border security, lax as it is.
But here again, folks, this is, dare I say it, further proof of the Limbaugh theorem as applied to both Amnesty and Obama's midterm election strategy in general.
Senate Democrats have passed in committee a provision in the Gang of Eight bill that gives welfare to legalized illegal aliens.
Senate Judiciary Committee voted Monday to allow illegal immigrants who get legal status to begin collecting tax welfare payments as the panel spent a fourth day working through amendments to the massive immigration bill and party line splits began to emerge.
Overall, the committee continued to maintain the delegate balance struck by the gang of eight senators who negotiated the 867-page bill.
But on Monday, the two Republicans sided with their party colleagues on key questions on giving illegal immigrants public benefits.
The 10 Democrats on the committee still outnumber the newly unified Republicans, but the votes signaled tough fights ahead on the Senate floor.
But the bottom line remains that the Senate committee, that's not the whole Senate yet, just the committee, which reported out the bill, has okayed illegals who become legal then immediately being able to collect welfare payments.
Meanwhile, the House Democrats are trying to include Obamacare in their version of the amnesty bill.
See, the House is going to have their own version of this.
And the Democrats in the House want newly legalized illegals to have immediate access to Obamacare.
That's a poison pill, as is welfare payments for newly legalized illegals.
So both of these poison pills will probably guarantee that the amnesty bill never gets through the House.
Which is the point.
This bill is not supposed to become law.
The amnesty bill, a gang of eight bill, is supposed to die in the Senate, and these two provisions just might guarantee that it dies.
Automatic access to welfare payments, automatic access to Obamacare.
So the bill dies in the House.
The Democrats then blame the Republicans and demonize them for not being friendly to Hispanics, not being friendly to immigrants, anti-disc, anti-that, mean, cold-hearted, extremist.
Don't want them to have barely survivable welfare payments and all that.
And that's supposed to secure the House for the Democrats in 2014.
That's the plan.
Okay, grab audio soundbite number.
Let's see, number nine.
By the way, Obama, remember, Obama said that he would not rest until these folks were brought to justice, the Benghazi terrorists, said he wouldn't rest.
I don't know.
I guess they don't want to take him to Gitmo.
They just, they don't want to take him to Gitmo.
That, see, and that's all about protecting the base.
No bad optics.
No bad, not going to take these, these, the Benghazi criminals, terrorists, not going to take him to Gitmo.
They're trying to close Gitmo.
It lifts.
So they can't take him to Gitmo.
Bad optics.
Just leave them over there.
And nothing to see here.
I want you, Dr. Kradema.
Dr. Kraudema last night on a special report with Brett Baer talking about what's her face, Lois Lerner taking a fifth.
And everybody loves Dr. Kraudemer.
But I don't think, I really don't think the Inside the Beltway crowd quite understands Obama.
When he got elected, they thought he was a centrist.
When he lost the 2010 midterms, they said he would move to the center.
In 2012, they thought he'd be held responsible for the economy.
None of that's happened.
And now they think that this scandal that's bigger than Watergate will end his presidency, and it won't.
The Democrats are worried about this Fifth Amendment thing that Lerner took, and Dr. Grauthamer said last night, this on Fox.
Here's why this has legs.
You now have somebody who's going to plead the fifth.
In a court of law, the jury is not supposed to interpret that as hiding something.
But this isn't a court of law, and we aren't a jury.
The fact that you have a committee headed by a Democrat in a Democratic Senate who's leading all this, who yesterday submitted over 40 questions about the IRS scandal and said, I have a suspicion there's a lot here we don't know.
This thing is going to go on and it could be fatal.
That's what you are hoping, isn't it?
You are.
You are invested in that happening, aren't you, Snerdley?
You really think that's where this could go?
Well, I would too.
Don't misunderstand here, but I'm not trying to be a pessimist.
You know, that's not me.
I am the mayor of Rielville.
Obama, he's singing, and when he says this thing is going to go on and it could be fatal, it means fatal to Obama.
Well, like, yeah, I don't know.
Impeached, what is fatal?
End of administration, whatever.
But the woman took the fifth.
It took 45 seconds.
The low-information crowd isn't even going to see it.
I got to take a break here, folks.
Folks, the time is flying here.
It's the fastest three hours every day in media and the fastest week.
I mean, it's already Wednesday.
Anyway, we have to take a break here at the top.
Some people need to regroup.
I don't.
I could keep going.
But others have to regroup.
We'll do that, and we'll be back before you know it.
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