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Jan. 9, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
39:40
January 9, 2014, Thursday, Hour #1
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Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 247 podcast.
Yeah, I'm going through the uh audio soundbite roster here that Cookie gave.
Did you know that I am part of the Christie story?
I was.
I was part of the Christie story on the cable news networks all night last night.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, you hear it.
What did I spent three minutes on it yesterday?
Anyway.
Greetings, my good friends, and welcome Rush Limbaugh back at you.
Three hours of broadcast excellence from the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The telephone numbers 800-282-288-2, the email address lrushbaugh at EIB net.com.
So Christie's fired a couple people now.
Back on December 23rd, he was first asked about this on a on a sort of a radio town hall meeting.
He was first asked about this, and he told people then his staff assured him there was nothing to it.
You didn't know anything about it.
Nobody knew there was nothing to it.
He um expanded on that a little bit today.
When the story began to take off, he told his staff that uh look, you got one hour.
I'm gonna have you debriefed by somebody counsel in my office.
You got one hour.
And he said that he feels totally betrayed.
The people in his office lied to him about it, lied to his counsel about it, and so a couple people have been fired as of today.
And he spent now going over an hour with the media in New Jersey, and it's it's it's a the media's turned on this guy just like they turned on McCain.
It was predictable.
He's getting questions that presidents used to get.
He hasn't, for example, been asked.
Tell us, Governor, what do you like about the job?
Uh uh, what are the surprises that you didn't expect?
Well, what is your day?
He hadn't gotten anything like that.
These have been probing pointed questions that are rooted in a media that doesn't believe him.
Or is acting like they don't believe him.
Um they're going they're going full bore, and he's bearing up under it well.
Um, but it is nevertheless, it is the Obama defense.
I didn't know any of this was going on.
Now there's a lot to say about this.
We're spending now an hour press conference on lane closures on the George Washington Bridge.
We haven't spent this much time in a press conference on four Americans dying in Benghazi.
We haven't spent this much time on the IRS scandals targeting the Tea Party.
We haven't spent this much, I mean, with questions to the president about these things.
Yeah, there have been congressional hearings, though.
We haven't had anything like this degree of interest in any of the Obama scans.
I even got F. Chuck Todd from the White House demanding that Christie fire somebody.
If he doesn't fire somebody, then he's gonna be in real trouble.
Well, Obama hasn't been firing anybody.
The media hasn't been demanding that Obama's heads role and his staff for some of the giant, I mean genuine screw-ups that have taken place.
But folks, there's something bigger than the details here going on that are extremely troubling.
I and I was I was thinking this last night a little bit into this morning, and I was trying to find a way to explain exactly what I was thinking in a in a in a brief penetrating and cogent way.
And it was rooted in the fact that regardless who knew what, look at what actually happened here.
In in an I guess an effort for political payback, somebody in the governor's office decided to inconvenience the people of New Jersey and New York, particularly Fort Lee.
So yeah, the governor's office, somebody there deciding to get even with another politician, to not actually do anything to the politician but to make life tougher for citizens.
It was citizens inconvenienced here in Fort Lee, and in some cases there were medical emergencies involved.
It was people that were in the the governor, the mayor Fort Lee wasn't particularly harmed by anything that happened here.
I mean, he was the target, but the payback was to inconvenience us or the people that live in that region.
I came across a column today, a piece by uh Carol Platt Lebeau.
At uh she might pronounce it LIBO.
I'm not heard her name pronounced.
It looks like it's L-I-E-B-A-U.
It could be Liball and Libodeau.
I think it's Carol Plattle, but anyway, it's it's at Ricochet.com.
And it just it nails what I was thinking about last night and this morning.
I got this right like at 11.30 this morning.
The problem with Christie's Bridgegate.
And she starts this way it's too early to tell whether or how much the Bridge Gate scandal is going to damage Chris Christie's presidential ambitions.
But then she says, to me, the matter is eerily reminiscent of the IRS scandal involving systematic harassment of conservative individuals and groups in the run-up to the 2012 election.
Indeed, it would be amusing to see how the press would respond were Governor Christie to proffer verbatim the same excuses presented by Obama, which he's essentially done.
I didn't know.
I didn't I asked and they lied to me, and I didn't know what was going on.
Here's the difference, though.
If Chris Christie were a Democrat, and I mean this, folks, I'm interrupting the Carroll Platt-LeBeau thing.
I'm getting back.
This is not part of what I was going to tell you.
This is another thought.
If Chris Christie were a Democrat, I'm telling you right now, the press would be celebrating the guy.
They would be, they'd be celebrating the toughness and the no-nonsense manner in which this guy is dealing with political opponents.
If he was a Democrat, even if the governor, I'm sorry, the mayor of Fort Lee was a little bit of Democrat, doesn't matter, they would be, they wouldn't be trying to damage Chris Christie at all.
This would end up being a resume enhancement because this is a guy who goes after his enemies.
If he was a Democrat, they'd be praising.
This is the kind of thing they would want him to do against conservatives and Republicans.
But he's not a Democrat yet, and he hasn't announced for the presidency, but everybody assumes he's going to.
And so the press, some people are surprised that they've turned on him this quickly.
Well, it's not that they decided to turn on him, it's they've got the opportunity here.
He is, in many people's eyes, the Republican front-runner for the nomination.
There are plenty of Republican establishment types that want Christie to be the nominee that think he can be the Northeastern moderate Republican that can finally win the White House.
A lot of the Republican consultant class thinks that Christie is the answer.
A lot of the inside the Beltway Republican establishment types think he's the answer.
Because he's tough and he handles the media well, but he's not conservative.
So he's got a lot of support, and the media knows this.
So here's a prominent Republican that the Republican establishment has invested high hopes, so let's do what we can to damage him.
But here's the overall point.
Let me give you three quotes from Carol Platt, LeBaud today.
And we've mentioned these before.
You know, my...
My focus is always when I do the program on you on the audience and the American people at large, Whether Governor Christie or President Obama were personally aware of the abuses perpetrated on their behalves is irrelevant.
On some level, both Obama and Christie set a tone in their administrations that signaled that this kind of hardball would be tolerated, that a culture had been established of get your enemies.
Obama, they bring a knife, we bring a gun.
I want you to get in their face and punch it.
You know, you know that any Democrat who goes out and rips Republicans to shreds is loved and adored by the media.
So her first point, and it's it's right on the money.
Whether they, Obama or Christie personally were involved.
And in both cases, they're saying, I didn't know.
Uh I had no idea that this was going on.
And I'm embarrassed.
The point is they didn't have to, it's like the IRS scandal.
You know, I had during the Obama IRS scandal, they were targeting the Tea Party.
You heard it.
There were people who called here and said, Rush, there's got to be a smoking gun.
There's got to be.
Either Obama called the IRS people, the White House, there's got to be a member, there's got to be a smoking gun.
I said there won't be.
Obama put people in there who are going to do his bidding without having to be told.
That's why they're chosen.
It's like when the Van Jones discovery was made.
There's a communist in hiding and waiting in the White House.
People call how did this get past Obama?
How did he not know?
He knew, and Van Jones was in there for a reason.
Eric Holder is over at the Department of Justice for Reason.
Obama doesn't have to pick up the phone and tell Holder what to do.
He knows Holder is Obama.
The IRS people are Obama.
They're going to do what Obama once done because that's who they were before they were appointed.
Obama knows who his friends are.
He knows who his compatriots are.
He knows who his soulmates are.
He knows he puts them in these positions.
He doesn't have to send them instructions.
He doesn't have to have a meeting with them.
They know what he wants, and he knows what they will do because he knows that they will do what he wants, so they get put in these positions.
And that's the culture.
And the point here is that whether, in this case, Christie in the lane closures in Fort Lee or Obama and the IRS or Obama and Obamacare, or Obama Fast and Furious, Obama Benghazi, whatever, whether they were personally aware was irrelevant because they had established a culture in their regimes that said this kind of hardball is tolerated.
This kind of hardball is okay.
This kind of hardball, in fact, gets rewarded.
The second point here is that something about the IRS scandal and the bridge problem does seem new to politics, despite learned media people discussing it as politics as usual.
Oh, Rush, come on, you know, they're payback all the time.
An elected official will pay back people that uh didn't run with him, didn't support him.
It happens all the time, right?
Yeah, but the point is that this is new, and the reason it's new is also why it is profoundly troubling.
Yeah, politicians always played hardball with each other.
Now, however, there seems to be a new willingness to do it, play hardball by involving innocent civilians as the pawns.
Now, the Obama hardball, the IRS, was targeted at conservatives.
Tea Party people, they were denied tax exempt status that had a dramatic impact on their ability to campaign.
They're average Americans, they're civilians, they're not in Politics.
Certainly not electoral politics.
So the regime in practicing political payback was going after citizens.
And here in New Jersey, it wasn't really the mayor of Fort Lee that was inconvenienced.
It was the citizens of Fort Lee.
The inconveniencing of the citizens of Fort Lee in terms of the political payback, the political hardball, using civilians, innocent citizens as pawns in this political payback game is indeed troubling.
And as Ms. LeBeau writes here, that's a sign of a political or governing elite that no longer has respect for the citizens that it's supposed to represent that they serve at our pleasure.
Everything has now been reversed.
And it's just another bit of evidence that the government's grown way too big, way too oppressive, it's become much too powerful, and all of this signals a threat to liberty, and it really has no place in a in a healthy and free country.
And I think that is the overall the larger point here that I think makes a tremendous point, an abundant amount of sense as an utter disregard for the people in economic policy, in Obamacare, I mean, who matters the least in all this?
American people.
And that's what has people like the Tea Party and you and me paying attention.
That's what has us, among many other things, so irritated, and in some cases frightened.
But then let's bring back into this a sense of proportion.
If we're going to say that lane closures to the George Washington Bridge and Fort Lee are a scandal, and that a Christie Stafford did this for whatever reason, and we would assume, because the staffer thinks that Christie wanted this to happen, or the staffer thought, well, this is my job, this is how I'm going to gain points.
That's what I mean about culture.
But which is the bigger scandal?
This staffer who's been fired using the public as pawns for petty political payback against the mayor of Fort Lee, or the scandal of Obama using our soldiers in Afghanistan as pawns for his political ambitions.
Or Obama and Hillary using our soldiers in Iraq for their political ambitions.
According to Bob Gates' book, Hillary and Political, Hillary and Obama opposition to Iraq purely political, and his Obama's portrayed as a guy doesn't really believe in the Afghanistan war that he escalated.
So he's sending Americans into battle to potentially die in a mission that he doesn't even support and isn't even behind.
Or Obama care, but what what the lane closure thing in New Jersey is a big deal.
It's uh it's uh because it it's an indication of mindset and so what really does it even compare to some of the scandals that have come out of the White House.
I gotta take a break, folks.
Sit tight, we'll be back.
Don't go away.
Look at let's build on the point for just a second, and let me ask you to remember the government shutdown.
Remember what some of the things Obama decided to close?
The World War II Memorial.
And World War II vets who had planned for the only time in their lives to go visit it were denied because it had been shut down.
And yet Obama opened it For a group of supporters for one day, I forget who they were and what the purpose was, but it didn't have to be shut down.
Obama took the occasion of the government shutdown.
And in his way of paying back his political enemies, he inconvenienced the American people.
And it wasn't just the World War II memorial.
There were any number of the Grand Canyon was shut down and the sleigh ride at Jellystone Park, all of these things.
And the regime did this on purpose to inconvenience the people.
And that's the point that all this political payback is taking.
Now it in it's the people of the country being dumped on, the people of the country who are not deserving of any political payback.
And that bridge closure, the lane closure in Fort the same thing.
And what that means, what that indicates is just exactly how little esteem elected officials actually have for us.
I remember what it was.
They closed down the World War II memorial, the regime did, Obama did during the government shutdown, and they opened it back up, the D.C. Mall.
They opened it for a pro-amnesty rally, remember?
That largely illegal aliens showed up for the pro-amnesty rally.
Okay.
But it was closed to World War II vets.
Now let's play a little game here.
Based on what's Christie, by the way, is still talking.
His press conference has gone longer than the lanes were closed.
Let's do a little game here.
Let's reverse.
If Obama were governor of New Jersey and the lane closure controversy had happened while he was governor, and he's doing a press conference, he would go out there and say that the charges were all politically motivated.
He would find somebody to demonize in the opposition party and say he didn't know anything about it.
He hadn't had time, he's got far more important things to do than worry about this, and he's going to get to the bottom of it, and he's going to talk about how this is just savage's politics as usual.
This is the kind of stuff I'm fighting.
This is the kind of stuff that's been going on since my predecessor, and I vow and I promise I'm going to get to the bottom of this, and I'm going to make sure this kind of stuff stops because this is not who we are.
If Christie, based on his performance today, based on what he said, if Christie were president, and the IRS scandal happens and some of the other things, he would fire whoever was involved in the IRS scandal.
He would dismiss Kathleen Sebelius immediately.
He would release the truth on Benghazi, and he would take Pelosi and Reed to the woodshed for the Affordable Care Act, based on what he's done today.
Heads have rolled.
He's fired people.
He'd say, I've been personally let down.
These people lied to me.
They told me everything was ready to go.
Obama, he said, Everybody told me the website was ready to go, but no heads have rolled.
Just a slightly thing.
Let's listen to some audio sound bites of Governor Christie.
Now, this was a long time ago.
This is over an hour.
He's been speaking an hour and a half, continuing to answer questions in the press.
We just have um uh three short bites here.
The first one he apologizes, it says he was humiliated by all this.
I come out here today to apologize to the people of New Jersey.
I apologize to the people of Fort Lee, and I apologize to the members of the state legislature.
I am embarrassed and humiliated by the conduct of some of the people on my team.
Says he was humiliated because some members of his staff were so stupid.
I would never have come out here Four or five weeks ago and made a joke about these lane closures.
If I had ever had an inkling that anyone on my staff would have been so stupid, but to be involved and then so deceitful as to just to not disclose the information of their involvement to me when directly asked by their superior.
He is referring to a radio show town hall meeting that he uh participated in on December 23rd on New Jersey radio.
And he made a joke uh about this when it first came up when he was first asked about it.
The joke had to do with oh, yeah, I've been out there, I've been moving the cones myself.
And what he said here, I would have never made a joke about this if I had known, if I had an inkling that anybody on my staff would have been so stupid to be involved in this.
So he's making it very plain here that he didn't know, and furthermore, when he asked his staff, they all lied to him.
Do you know that the U.S. attorney is looking into this now?
Oh, yeah.
The U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey is looking into this.
There is a federal inquiry.
In fact, here's the headline at the Huffing and Puffington Post.
Federal inquiry into Chris Christie Bridge scandal faces uphill battle.
So that's the Chris Christie Bridge scandal.
And they admit here that a federal inquiry uh faces an uphill battle.
But the Huffing and Puffington Post, which means all of the left take your pick, salon.com, whatever the lunatics on the left all now believe that there is massive federal state corruption going on that Christie is involved in, and they are now on the war path to prove it.
And they want a federal investigation into this.
And the U.S. attorney is gonna say they're gonna look into it.
They're look, they're looking, they're looking into it.
Well, this is who the Democrats are.
I'm not kidding.
We've got lane closures, and uh the the left is demanding a federal investigation, and the U.S. Attorney of District New Jersey, that office is alluding to the fact that they just might felony traffic jamming, I don't know what it is.
But anyway, Christie, very clear here.
I didn't know about it.
They were they lied to me.
So what what he's done now, he has given, he's made a target.
If the if anybody can find a shred, a tweet, a Facebook post, an email that indicates Christie did know about then East Toast.
And the, well, here's the thing, you know, the NSA knows.
The NSA, the White House probably knows.
I mean, the White House and the NSA, I mean, they read my email, they monitor this program.
Think they're not listening to what Christie's emails are saying, and so.
So we will see.
Here's the um next bite, Christy, governor of New Jersey, basically saying he's not a bully.
I am not a focus group tested, blow-dried candidate or governor.
I think you asked me a question after the election.
Are you willing to change your style in order to appeal to a broader audience?
And I think I said no.
Because I am who I am, but I am not a bully.
Well, closing the lanes, the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee is a bully tactic, but again, it's against the people.
I mean, how did it how did it really hurt the mayor of Fort Lee?
That's the that's the much larger concern here is is how these elected officials are exacting their payback.
And that payback that they're engaging in with each other manifests itself as massive inconvenience or violation of uh bunch of uh circumstances against us.
Just as Obama's IRS scandal.
Okay, now let's go to the audio symbol, but I mentioned the top of the program that the uh cable news networks have made me a part of this story.
If you were listening to the program yesterday, you know that I might have spoken about this for three to five minutes at the very beginning of the program.
And that was it.
And at the time nobody knew anything.
All we had was the allegations.
And what I said yesterday was, and by the way, I'm I'm waiting for something else.
Do you think Obama will call Christie and offer some support?
Do you, Mr. Snertley?
You think he might?
You think Christie might get a supportive phone call from Obama.
I hang in there, buddy, it'll be okay kind of phone call.
I mean, let meet me under the boardwalk, let's talk, meet me on the boardwalk, let's talk.
They're buddies, I know they're buddies, but Obama, you know, hey, Christie did his best to pull Obamas out of the fire, by the way, Virus Visa.
Will Obama now decide to uh help Christie a little bit with some moral support here.
Just the question.
Anyway, the point that I was making yesterday was that the reason people are looking into this is Christie was angry that he didn't get the vice presidential nomination from Romney.
Christie did the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention.
He didn't even mention Romney.
This is the convention where Romney's gonna be nominated and launched into the campaign that's gonna take the White House away from the Democrats.
The keynote is supposed to be the Saturn V rocket that launches the candidate.
And the candidate's name wasn't even mentioned.
And they asked Romney about it, and he was well, you know, Christy, Governor Christie, no question, Governor Christie is uh totally uh supporting here for candidates no doubt whatsoever.
In fact, after the speech, if you'll recall, some were saying for a keynote, it was kind of dull, kind of low-key.
Snoozer, in fact, it wasn't the typical Christie speech.
It did not meet or surpass expectation.
And then everybody remembers Hurricane Sandy hits one week before the election, and there is Christie, arm in arm with Obama one week before the election.
So that all of that this is basically all I said yesterday.
And in making the point that if the story in Fort Lee is about closing lanes to the George Washington Bridge for payback, well, we know that that Christie does engage and can engage a payback.
And I gave those two examples.
And that little point has made me a central figure in the story in cable news.
And I'll show you.
I got to take a brief time out, we'll come back and play those sound bites for you.
See, you people, I know how folks, 25 years.
By now, you take me for granted.
I'm I'm here every day, I'm rock solid, you can count on me.
When I say I'm gonna be here, I'm gonna be here.
And when I'm here, it's 150%.
And it's just it's it's sort of gosh rush, I can't believe they're 25 years.
Why do people still care?
But they do out there.
And for some reason, they think it's advantageous to their side to insert me into every one of these Republican-related scandals or stories back after this.
Okay, now here's another question.
As we all know, Governor Christie uh just yesterday, uh, I believe, and frequently many times prior, has talked about how he's different.
He's different because he's shown he can work the other side.
He said, and it's not that we don't have arguments, we have arguments.
But at the end of the day, we put it all aside and we work together.
We get things done in this state.
I know how to work with the other side.
I know how to cross the aisle and get things done for the people of New Jersey.
Okay, given that have any of the Democrats that Governor Christie claims that he can work with come out and supported him.
Not that I've heard, have any of the rhinos, the Republicans today, the moderate Republicans.
If any Republican establishment types come out and said that they support Christie, they they haven't.
This is the thing, folks.
This is the thing.
The Republican, when any of them get in trouble, I mean it's like a bunch of wildebeests.
If a lion in Africa attacks a wildebeest, all the other will to be scram and get out of there and offer no assistance whatsoever.
You've seen it on National Geographic.
You've seen in all the earth shows, all the animal shows, animals eating animal shows.
You've seen it all.
And the Republican Party is the same way.
When one of them gets in trouble, nobody steps up to defend him.
They all stand aside and wait and see how it's going to end up because they are afraid to get involved or be tarnished.
Even though Christie has denied any involvement, fired two staffers, and has claimed he was lied to.
Even with that, none of the Democrats who Christy claims that he works with and gets along with have come out and supported him.
And no Republicans have either.
It's so typical.
So, so...
No Republican establishment media types.
In fact, I guess one of the funniest things I saw last night.
I'm not going to mention any names because I don't want to embarrass anybody.
But there was a young millennial type conservative commentator who was trying to make a point.
He needs to resign.
If it's been shown that he was directly involved and he closed those lanes in inconveniently, he needs to quit.
And then the same commentator said that could be the perfect setup for Christie's presidential aspirations.
Because after he quits, he'll gain respect.
He'll gain new respect.
He has quit.
He's not going to put up with this.
And then when he decides to make it official or run for president, he'll have newfound respect and newfound power, and it could totally and I'm reading this and I'm saying, was this written?
Well, never, I just stunned.
So the point is.
No help.
Christie's out there in dangling.
He's still speaking.
Folks, it's coming up on two hours, and he's still doing this presser.
So no rhinos and no democrats.
The Democrats, I wonder if Christy knows this.
The Democrats want him gone.
The Democrats are going to try a federal investigation.
The Democrats are going to try to do anything they can to get rid of him.
While he's out there talking about how he can work with them and get things done.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
I promised I was going to do sound bites.
But It's the constraints of time, folks.
I simply there isn't any, and I had to make those bullet points so sit tight.
I promise the sound bites of the drive-by is inserting me front and center in this story at the top of the next hour.
Okay, Keith just finished speaking.
I was just gonna say that maybe also needs to fire the person who comes out and announces the end of press conferences.
There's always a staffer that comes out and says, okay, thank you very much, everybody, and then everybody leaves.
And maybe he should have fired that person.
So almost a two-hour press conference out there.
I think it's over.
Fox bumped out a long time ago.
It's so typical.
So so no Republican establishment media types.
In fact, I guess one of the funniest things I saw last night.
I'm not going to mention any names because I don't want to embarrass anybody.
But there was a young millennial type conservative commentator who was trying to make a point.
He needs to resign.
If it's been shown that he was directly involved and he closed those lanes in inconveniently, he needs to quit.
And then the same commentator said that could be the perfect setup for Christie's presidential aspirations.
Because after he quits, he'll gain respect.
He'll gain new respect.
He has quit.
He's not going to put up with this.
And then when he decides to make it official or run for president, he'll have newfound respect and newfound power.
And it could totally and I'm reading this and I'm saying, was this written?
Well, never.
I'm stunned.
So the point is.
No help.
Christie's out there in dangling.
He's still speaking.
Folks, it's coming up on two hours, and he's still doing this presser.
So no rhinos and no democrats.
The Democrats, I wonder if Christy knows this.
The Democrats want him gone.
The Democrats are going to try a federal investigation.
The Democrats are going to try to do anything they can to get rid of him.
While he's out there talking about how he can work with them.
And get things done.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
I promised I was going to do sound bites.
But well, it's the constraints of time, folks.
I simply there isn't any, and I had to make those bullet points so sit tight.
I promise the sound bites of the drive-bys inserting me front and center in this story at the top of the next hour.
Okay, Keith, just finished speaking.
I was just going to say that maybe also needs to fire the person who comes out and announces the end of press conferences.
There's always a staffer that comes out and says, okay, thank you very much, everybody.
Then everybody leaves.
And maybe he should have fired that person.
So almost a two hour press conference out there.
I think it's over.
Fox bumped out a long time ago.
Oh, he did.
Okay, it's over.
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