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Aug. 5, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:08
August 5, 2013, Monday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Well, Major League Baseball suspended everybody else.
But they haven't suspended Arod yet.
But that's coming, said Well, hang on here a minute.
It won.
There we go.
Yeah, I had to throw a switch.
Something all of a sudden sounds different, but it's okay.
Anyway, greetings and welcome back.
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh, the final hour of our busy broadcast day here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
If you're on the hold, hang in there.
Hang in or be tough because we are going to get to you.
There's a fascinating story out there today.
My copy of it comes from Breitbart.com, but it's elsewhere.
No, I take it back.
It is exclusive to Breitbart.
I've got this three different ways here, but it's it's all from Breitbart.
The chairman of the Republican National Committee.
You know, I thought I remembered how to pronounce his name.
Is it Rince Prebis?
It's Rentz Prebis.
It's not Rheinz, it's not it's not Rentz, it's Rentz as in Hair Rentz.
Okay, Rent's Prebis.
This, I'm just gonna read it to you the way the the reporter at Breitbart wrote the lead.
On Monday, RNC Chair Rince Prebus sent stinging letters to NBC and CNN concerning their recently announced decisions to produce movies celebrating the life of Hillary Clinton.
The Republican National Committee sees the odd programming move as an in-kind contribution to Clinton's presumed campaign for president in 2016, as a result.
The party will formally bar Republicans from partnering with the networks on any primary or presidential debates in 2016.
Here's the relevant passage from the letter that Prebus wrote CNN.
I find CNN's actions disturbing and disappointing.
Your credibility as a supposedly unbiased news network will most certainly be jeopardized by the decision to show political favoritism and produce an extended commercial for Secretary Clinton's campaign.
His letter to NBC reads in part, I find this disturbing and disappointing.
NBC cannot purport to be a neutral party in American politics, and the credibility of NBC News already damaged by the partners partisanship of MSNBC will be further undermined by the actions of NBC Universal executives who have taken it upon themselves to produce an extended commercial for Secretary Clinton's nascent campaign.
So let me summarize.
The chairman of the Republican National Committee has sent letters to NBC and CNN saying, if you guys go ahead with your plans to make these Hillary movies, we will not participate in any debates that you moderate in 2016.
Now, I assume that this is thought to be an aggressive move.
Now, I myself am struggling to maintain my composure here.
In other words, if you guys don't produce the Hillary movies, then we will happily show up for your biased debate coverage.
and But if you do, if you go, if you produce these Hillary movies, we're not showing up.
We're not gonna we're not gonna sign off on you moderating any of our debates.
Now there's a maybe some people might find this uh good or admirable or whatever.
I actually think that the chairman of the RNC could send this letter and simply say we're not going to participate anymore in debates moderated by your journalists.
And don't make the Hillary movies part of it.
Okay, so they cancel the Hillary movies.
It's okay then to let NBC's biased moderators and journalists, savage Republicans in debates.
My point is the GOP, the RNC, ought to pull out of all of these debates that show up on MSNBC, on NBC, on ABC or CNN.
There's nothing to gain.
You know, it's it's the same for for my whole life, what I've been hearing.
Well, Rush, it is what it is.
And the media bias is what it is.
And the Republicans, I mean, guy running for president, if he's going to act like he's afraid of NBC, then how's he going to deal with Al-Qaeda?
Or if a guy's going to act like he's afraid of Wolf Blitzer and CNN, how's he going to deal with being president?
That's not the question anymore.
The question is why should the Republicans actively participate in something designed to defeat them?
Why should the Republicans actively willingly, happily participate in debates moderated by people who want to make sure people at the end of the debate do not like them and will not vote for them?
Well, Rush, the Republicans, yes, that's true, but they have to go there because that's the nature of the game.
That's the media.
You can't change it.
These Republicans, they got to go in there, and they got to show that they can deal with that.
And they got to go in there, and they got to deal with these media people, and they got to beat them back.
Well, I don't disagree with that as an operative philosophy, but the debate format may not be the place to do that.
There have been random occasions where it's happened, and if you'll recall, the Republican who takes out after the media in those debates gets unending standing O's.
Remember Newt, Newt Gingrich, I think it was in the South Carolina primaries in debate.
Almost.
Well, I don't know how close it really was, but almost reignited his presidential campaign by throwing something right back at a biased moderator.
You know, it's a it's a curious thing.
And I don't know that anybody has the uh ultimate total right answer.
Because there might be, if you don't show up at the debate, and the way that is reported, Republicans refuse to participate in debate moderated by NBC journalists.
And that starts news coverage of Republicans as cowards and all this.
And I understand that.
But at some point, if you have candidates who are not going to push back against it, who are going to accept the bias and the stacked deck, then it's a problem.
Where this is really rooted in problems, something that I learned early on when I I first started getting national media attention, interviews and so forth.
And it was based on an assumption born of naivety.
The mistake I made was that I could convince a journalist he was wrong about me.
Or I could convince a journalist he was wrong about the way he was looking, he or she was looking at a story.
And I learned that's not possible, because that's not what it's about.
The left-wing journalists are not there to be educated or informed.
That's not their purpose.
They're there to impugn and demonize And defeat.
And it's one of the reasons I don't do this anymore, because there's nothing really it's it's I remember the first two, three, maybe four years.
I'd do these interviews, and I I'd actually go into them thinking that I had a chance to persuade the reporter that they shouldn't be liberal or wrong about something or something else.
And then when it was over, then I would I would watch it and I'd analyze my performance within that context.
It was always wrong.
And I learned you can't.
And this you can't change their minds.
You can't persuade them.
That's not why they want to talk to you.
They don't want to talk to conservatives because they're really interested in them.
They don't want to interview conservatives because they're fascinated by what they're saying.
And wow, there might be something to learn here.
It's not that at all.
Their purpose is to impugn and bismirch.
And you see it wherever it happens.
You see it in a debate, you see it in a sit-down.
There are exceptions, but for the most part in the mainstream media, this is what you're talking about.
There's uh not a it's not a level playing field.
So the chairman of the RNC and say, look at you guys do this Hillary stuff, you're giving her whatever, four-hour miniseries commercial.
Screw that.
You do that, and we're not showing up at your debate.
Well, let's not show up at the debate anyway.
Because they're gonna do the four-hour Hillary infomercial, whether they do a movie about her or not.
Or whoever the Democrat candidate is.
Anyway, interesting to think about.
I just I saw this and I I know that uh this this is the RNC getting aggressive.
This is the RNC standing up for themselves.
This is this is the RNC getting tough.
This is the RNC out now fundraising.
Gotta take a quick time out.
Telephone calls and other things next, don't go away.
Here is Leo in Minneapolis as we go back to the phones.
Hi, Leo, I'm glad you called.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you, Rush.
I just wanted to get back to what you were saying about how it's dangerous that people are cynical and sad that people are cynical about these threats in the Middle East, and I think that that gets to a broader pessimism and cynicism in American life and culture today.
Like in the economy, for instance, a lot of people either aren't looking for jobs or think that the best job they can get is the new 30-hour work week jobs, the temp jobs.
That and I think that that broader pessimism is the thing that's actually the greatest problem facing the country.
I think people don't believe that they can make it, and that's sad in my opinion, because America has been a great nation and can still be a great nation.
All right.
Now, this is interesting.
This, despite the sigh, I only sighed there because of the breathing pattern, independent of your call.
There was not a sigh of frustration.
Actually, I'm very excited about this.
Because your point is that you think young people and maybe a lot of people have no optimism about their future in this country.
Yeah, especially young people.
Especially young people.
Okay, why?
Now we just had news last week.
A record number of millennials, that's uh the age group 18 to 28, I think it is, are living at home.
It's like 21 and a half million of them still living with their parents.
I think that a lot of millennials look at this economy and they are having trouble getting jobs either because they got like a degree which isn't not necessarily useful in the real world, or because just the economy's tight and they are living at home with their parents, and they don't think that it's possible for them to be able to do well and to be able to get a good paying job and to live the American dream essentially essentially, sorry.
Okay, well, let's let's examine this.
Let's just take your premise.
A lot of young people and and I'm not arguing with you here about the uh the the cynicism about government.
I think that's real too.
But I'm I'm I want to focus on your theory or your assertion that young people have no optimism about their future, about their success.
Um why is that?
And uh because didn't they get the president they voted for?
Well, sometimes you get what you ask for and you don't want it.
But and I think that a lot of them didn't vote for Obama last year.
Obama lost a lot of support from young people last year.
A lot of people didn't turn out to support him.
And I think that as Republicans and conservatives, we need to be the party of optimism.
We need to be the party of things can be better, we can make things better.
And I think if we do that, we'll be able to help restore the economy and make America better.
I agree with you a hundred percent.
It's called conservatism.
I agree with you.
And there is a huge shortage of that in Washington.
Exactly.
Major shortage of it.
But it needs to be articulated like that.
It needs to be articulated in we can make this economy better.
We can make America great again.
We can make your life.
Well, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
But Obama said all of that.
That was part of his campaign in 08.
And it was part of his campaign in 2012.
Look, I'm not shouting at you.
Sorry.
But the millennials voted for Obama like crazy.
What I don't care what their turnout was in 2012.
They, as much as anybody, young people, for one of the first times in American electoral politics, a presidential race, young people did show up.
They elected this guy.
Now if they're sitting there all depressed over the fact that there's no economic future, how in the world do they not associate him and his party with that?
Because it's the Limbaugh theorem, exactly as you say.
The media doesn't associate him with that, and young people, especially young people, spend a lot of time on the internet and they read various left-wing blogs and such.
I understand that, but the guy's been president.
I know the Limbaugh theorem, but just walk me through this.
Let me walk you through it.
We've got five and a half years in.
We've got people going to school, coming out indebted for the rest of their lives for their education.
And as you said, some of their degrees are worthless in terms of practical application.
They were idealistic.
Obama was it.
He was the answer.
They reelected him.
I'm at a loss to intellectually understand.
I know they go to the internet and they see all this rampant liberalism everywhere.
And uh I know what they think of Republicans, and I know they probably think of conservatives, but despite that, how can they not be upset with the policy makers of the moment.
I don't think that they're really paying attention.
I think that a lot of young people don't listen too much to what's going on in politics, and they just hear someone say, Oh, Republicans are horrible because they hate gay people or something.
Yeah.
God knows what.
Yeah, I know.
And they're opposed to gay people getting married or republicanism.
Whatever rhetorics or something.
Whatever the rhetoric of the day is.
And I think that part of the reason Obama won is he said those things.
He said this he was lying, but he said that we can make the economy better and that he would be able to be the great unifier and such.
And I think that that's part of the reason he won is he said that and people believed him.
Yeah, but I'm gonna tell you something.
If you're right, see here's the point.
They're living in a reality.
If you're right, if they're depressed, because they've got no optimism about their economic future.
So I I guess I'm I'm putting myself in a situation in the past, you know, I've maybe been more politically aware than people my age, particularly when I was younger, but I certainly did associate the policies coming out of Washington in the day with the economic circumstances of the country.
I never I never thought that a president was trying real hard to fix something and it just wasn't working.
I always thought the president had the ability.
Because my former depres was Reagan.
Look what Reagan was able to do.
Um th I I just I'm I'm bothered because I know you're right.
I know you're right, and yet these people that you're talking about are angry at people who haven't had a thing to do with their plight.
I think that you especially probably paid a lot better attention to this than most people your age.
I think that there are people my age who I know who do pay attention to this and do understand that.
It's just that there's unfortunately not enough of them.
How old are you?
I'm 18 years old.
Oh I thought you were I'm sorry.
You're I I thought you were in your forties.
Oh no, I'm a young person.
I've been listening to your show for a while.
Okay.
All right.
I for some reason I just assumed you were a dad.
I don't know why at the sound of your voice.
It's nothing more than that.
Oh.
Um.
Okay, so you're actually speaking for yourself and for others in your life.
I'm speaking for what I see among my peers.
Yeah.
Well, don't you just feel like wringing their necks when they start talking this way?
Yeah, it just bothers me.
And no matter how much I try and explain it to them, I feel often I just can't get through.
They don't seem to understand.
What kind of things you tell them?
I try and explain to them how the economy in the past has always been grown by capitalists essentially, by people who had a great idea and didn't listen to people saying they couldn't do it.
Have you ever told them, hey, there's a recession, but you don't have to participate, you can go out there and make yourself anything you want, hard work, get out there and try.
Yes, I have said that.
I didn't necessarily use those words, but I have said that hard work and has kind of reaction do you get?
Um They're cynical about it, right?
A lot of people agree with me.
Some of them say, "No, it's pointless," because I think they're cynical about everything.
And but I do think that's a good idea.
All right.
Look, I gotta take a break.
I want you to hang on.
Okay, because I've got to take a break.
It just yet frustrates these people are voting for the people they're doing this to them.
Back with Leo in Minneapolis.
Leo is 18, and I didn't know that when we started a call.
You're very articulate, Leo, and the uh the quality of your voice sounds to me like you were a father talking about uh your impression of young people rather than one of them.
I'll tell you what I think, just in a really distilled way to explain this.
I think the uh young people you're talking about who are depressed, have no optimism about their economic future.
I think they hate the Republican brand more than they might blame Democrats or whatever's happening.
I agree with you.
And I think that's what you're talking about when they read the blogs and they read everything on the internet and all this leftist never-ending assault on what they think Republicans are.
Republicans are anti-woman, they're anti-gay, they're anti-gay marriage, they're anti uh young people doing what they want to do, they're anti-marijuana legalists, they're and they're just they're no fun, they're a bunch of stuffed shirts, funny duddies, you know, old-fashioned rich white guy racists.
I agree with you.
That's exactly what I see.
And I think getting back to what you said earlier, when when I tell people or when someone tells someone that they can in fact make it, I think it's easy for them to listen to that and say, Oh, yeah, that might be right.
But when it comes down to doing it, I think that hearing it and doing it are two entirely different things.
That's that is such a key.
I don't know who these people are because we're talking about them in a in a very broad generic scene.
Yeah, I don't I don't want to use any names, but no, no, I'm not asking you to.
I just I think that you know these people that you're talking about, many of them have been propagandized or brainwashed, whatever term you want to use, toward liberalism for most of their lives, and really in their classrooms, beginning in well, probably elementary school, but all the way up junior high, high school, sorry, middle school, high school, and certainly into uh into college.
And they've had all of this this propaganda thrown at them.
And it's it's it's just down to the they're living under people they voted for, but they do not associate the people that they voted for as the problem.
It boggles my mind intellectually.
But then when you tell them hard work, see I think some of them have been conditioned against even that.
I've I I think there's a I don't know what percentage it is, but it's fairly large.
Young people have a awfully high expectation of having what they want really soon in life.
And if they don't see it happening, then they get a little bit down in the dumps over that.
And your concept about or your notion about the concept of hard work, um and fighting against the odds and and not depending on on others.
Plus these people have been drilled through their whole lives with this conflict resolution stuff of being nice, you know, be aggressive, always be tolerant and understanding of the failures around you, and don't don't try to be better than anybody else.
Don't keep score in softball or baseball, whatever.
It's a whole collection of things that has them beat down.
I know.
And that just seems so foreign to me personally.
I I look at life and I say, I can do something.
I can do something great because I have skills and I can learn things and I can work and I can be successful in life.
And you've got passion.
And you have you have a positive attitude about your future.
Yes.
And I think that just getting back to the thing about the Internet, I wish that more Republicans would be able to figure out how to more effectively message on the Internet.
Because I know a lot of people conservatives look at the internet and say, oh, all these things going on in the internet are stupid.
I think that it really just reflects the user base so much as I think if Republicans could use the Internet more effectively to communicate their message, that it would work.
And I think that a lot of Republicans aren't doing that.
Well, I know how you feel.
It's almost analogous to the uh let's say in your case, the Republicans are your team.
You want them to win.
And you you you want to be proud of them, and you want to see them uh doing things that you would do, and you don't.
You don't see any of that coming out of it.
And I want to see that because it's good for America.
It's not just I want to see Republicans win because they're Republicans.
I want to see Republicans win because that's good for America.
Well, see, that's the that's the thing about conservatism.
And I've every speech I make and every so often on this program, every opportunity I get when it comes up, I do my best to explain conservatism in a at a base root level.
We love everybody.
We want a great nation.
We want everybody to do well.
We don't see black female when we look at people.
We don't see groups, we don't see victims, we don't judge people by the color of their skin, we don't make judgments on them on that basis.
We see people.
We see human beings.
We want to see people as many as possible pursuing excellence.
We want to see as many pe we believe conservatives will and this is gonna be laughed.
You wait, you you're gonna see this quote in the internet, Leo.
It's we laughed out of the ballpark.
But we conservatives think these Norman Rockwell portraits are possible, and that there's nothing wrong with them.
We want solid neighborhoods.
We want solid community, and we want people working together in them.
That's how it all works.
We want a strong moral fiber.
We want an emphasis on right and wrong because of it's it's the best for people.
It's really a uh frustrating thing to see it mischaracterized.
Well, I've got you.
Go back and grab soundbite number one.
Uh because I want to play this soundbite of Dr. uh Dr. Benjamin Carson, because this is what the Republicans are up against, Leo.
He was on C-SPAN yesterday, and a caller called and asked him his opinion of me, and then he asked Dr. Carson whether he thought I was positive or a negative impact on society.
And he said something uh that I is really insightful.
Here it is again.
I think Rush Limbaugh serves a very useful purpose in our society because he breaks things down.
He looks at things, he analyzes it.
You know, uh uh s some of his analysis, you know, I might not agree with.
But a lot of them I do agree with.
And because a lot of people have tried to demonize him, people look at what he says in light of that demonization as opposed to the merits of what it is.
Now that's what we're up against, Leo.
What he's saying is, you know, I could come out and I could have the most brilliant, correct, a thousand percent correct analysis of something.
But the left would say, well, he's a liberal he's a racist, he's a sexist, and they would discount everything I said because I don't have the credibility to say it.
Whether it's right or not doesn't matter.
They've already, I've been demonized, and my credibility has been destroyed among the media and the Democrats and the people that see this.
I'm not I I can't be right.
I I it's not possible because I'm such an evil person.
And this is what they've done.
This is what the left does to any credible conservative Marco Rubio, you name it, Ted Cruz.
I mean, I can the names never end.
Sarah Palin, they pop up.
The left, anybody they think is effective, they will set out to destroy.
And uh this in turn uh makes Republicans afraid to pop up, get their necks chopped off, their heads chopped off.
So it's a it's a Democrats have perfected this thing, and the Republicans don't know how to deal with it, Leo.
You can have the best rational and intellectual argument, but if there's a good emotional argument to counter that, people be more persuaded by the emotional argument because a lot of people have strong emotions.
And I think that that's part of the problem is the left primarily uses emotional arguments, which work.
Yeah.
And conservatives, conservatism is based on intellectual and rational arguments.
Exactly.
And people are less willing to listen to that as it wouldn't.
I always said conservatism is an intellectual pursuit, and liberalism is the easiest choice you can make.
All you've got to do is like I use this example.
You're walking down the street and there's a homeless guy pushing a shopping cart, and the liberal goes, oh, that's so horrible.
We've got to do something.
Wonderful person, compassionate, caring.
Conservative sees that person and says, hmm, we've got to find a way to get that person working.
And that's considered mean.
It's considered mean to say that people can do things for themselves.
Yes.
And that's really sad.
I want to be able to do things for myself personally.
I don't want to have to be dependent.
I want to be able to be successful and wealthy on my own.
I don't want to have to depend on government for my prosperity.
Well, Leo, hang in there.
Don't, whatever you do, don't let them, don't let them.
You don't sound like you're the kind that will, but don't let them intimidate you into uh being silent.
Because it's going to be you're 18.
It's going to be people like you that are going to uh be the hooks for turning this around.
And I don't mean to put pressure on you, but people like you are going to be crucially important in helping others who don't to see the light.
I'm really glad you called.
I thank you a lot.
I've got to take a brief time out, folks, but sit tight because we got much more right after this.
No, no, I think I think kids today have very good reason to be depressed, given who they voted for, the amount of the national debt that they owe, given how few of them are supposed to uh support as many who are going to be retired.
Wait a little wait till these young that are already depressed, wait till they find out what their health care costs are going to be and why.
Wait a little wait till they figure that out.
And then watch them try to blame that on Republicans too.
But I still I still I know all the stuff about the Republican brand and all that stuff, but they still voted for this.
They voted for it.
You know, so dig in.
You know, it's like Stephen Ratner the other day talking about Detroit.
The guy said, aside from voting in elections, the people of Detroit had nothing to do with what BS precisely because of voting in elections, Detroit is the way it is.
Ratner was trying to exempt the population of Detroit having any responsibility of what happened.
They own it.
They voted for the people that destroyed that town.
And it's the same thing here.
I'm one of the things that my sympathy level is not all that high.
Okay.
Learn it, love it, live it.
But Rantner said, aside from voting in elections, the people of Detroit have no responsibility or culpability.
They got exactly what they voted for.
Liberals always do.
They get exactly what they vote for.
Anyway, here's uh Donald in Walnut, California.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Well, it's my pleasure indeed, Rush.
Uh, first of all, f uh full disclosure, I don't own any Apple stock or any Apple products about 25 or 30 years ago when I started using computers.
I took the Microsoft fork in the road.
And unfortunately I didn't take the Apple fork in the investment road because I would have been very, very happy.
But nonetheless, the the situation with the shakedown, the this attempted shakedown of Apple reminds me so much of what happened when Jim Barksdale of Netscape complained, sniffled to the government that that mean old Microsoft was embedding this browser.
And unfortunately, Bill Gates showed up before the Senate committee and and essentially bent down and grabbed his ankles and instead of using the defense that Hank Reardon used in that shrugged, which I would have loved to see if he had said that he doesn't recognize them as being spokesman for the public, and that the public who are his customers, they can curtail his profits any time they want by not buying their products, and then said would say thank you and get up and leave.
That would have been wonderful, but unfortunately it didn't happen because I guess Well, let me tell you the you're the second guy that's compared the Apple shakedown to the Microsoft.
But I don't think I don't think the Department of Justice tried with Microsoft what they're trying here with Apple.
The Department of Justice has asked a judge to let the Obama administration run iTunes, run the Apple store on the premise that Apple is screwing everybody.
Everybody at Apple voted for Obama, too.
This is another example of this kind of stuff.
What a rousing start to the week.
And on some of this stuff, I feel like I barely even scratched the surface.
But you see, there is tomorrow.
And tomorrow we'll be here in 21 hours, and I'm looking forward to being back.
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