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Jan. 13, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:41
January 13, 2014, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 Podcast.
Well, my friends, how was your weekend?
Everything trusted and fine and dandy.
Did you enjoy the what?
No, no, no, no.
I knew it.
I was I knew it.
I was hoping it wasn't gonna happen, but here it comes.
I just knew it.
I don't even get a break.
When my birthday comes on Sunday.
And here's our cake.
By the way, nobody can hear you singing because the broadcast engineer has not faded the theme.
So nobody can hear you singing.
Thank you, yeah.
Start again.
You're gonna start again because nobody heard you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Ah, look at that.
You guys had some shirts made up.
Happy birthday too.
You guys heard it.
They actually had some uh there it is.
You're watching Brian.
If you're watching on the Diddle Cam, it's a t-shirt they had made up.
Highly overrated staff, EIB network.
You wear those shirts with pride, right?
No, and you've got a long sleeve uh uh sweatshirt type on.
Anyway.
And here's a birthday cake with what is that?
Six, nine candles.
Sixty-three.
So I was for my birthday, the staff gave themselves shirts.
Oh, I get it.
Six and three, isn't that is that what it is?
All right.
Well, uh it's hard to just make one wish.
Make sixty-three.
What's that?
Make sixty-three wishes.
More than that.
Well, let's give it a let's give it a whirl here.
Trick candles.
I can't believe you even went that's so the trick candles.
So I was turned 63 yesterday, and it was a Sunday.
And it was I I didn't I didn't do anything.
And it was j it was glorious.
I didn't do anything.
It was just another day.
John Cicata, 1994.
And I was thinking, since the birthday's on Sunday, there's no way the staff is gonna come in here and do it a day late, and yet here they did.
As you know, I'm not one who's big on being noted for a stellar achievement of living another year, unless you know you're in New York or per certain parts of uh the country, that's not that big an achievement.
But anyway, thank you all and for for the uh affection.
I know it's truly felt and uh and meant.
As I was saying, did you watch the uh NFL playoffs over the weekend?
You watched the Mannings.
I'll I'll tell you, um the league is losing control of these games.
That San Diego Carolina game, that that wasn't a football game after all.
That that was just that was just uh neighborhood street brawl.
The league is is gonna that's all I'm gonna say about this, but they're losing control.
And what's what's happening out there is not football.
At least just per se.
There's uh there's a there's all kinds of stuff going on in addition to it that to me as a longtime fan is uh is highly troubling, but that's that.
I'll tell you uh telephone number, by the way, if you want to be on the program, it's 800-282-2882, the email address L Rushbo at EIB net.com.
We have not, I have not spoken, I think at all, and if if if I have mentioned it's been very limited on the Alex Rodriguez situation in Major League Baseball.
But now that the suspension has been handed down and confirmed by the arbitrator.
This is a fascinating case study.
Not the substance of the suspension.
That's not the the way Rodriguez and his lawyers tried to handle this is just folks, it is one of the best teachable moments I could have come up with to show you just how much image media presence and handlers and buzz have come.
How far those those things have come in in trumping substance.
Now, in in this case, Rodriguez was ultimately done in by the substance.
I don't mean that as a I didn't mean that as a pun.
I'm talking about the substance of the reality of the story.
Don't get it.
I did that was a faux pas.
That was an absolute total faux pas.
Don't end by the substance.
Well, certainly he's headpicked up, he started laughing at it.
You really realize what you said there.
It's fascinating.
Rodriguez and his lawyers tried to win this in the court of public opinion, which didn't have a say in what was going to happen to him.
The court of public opinion was not present when the arbitrator conducted testimony, gathered evidence, and heard both sides present.
And by the way, speaking of that, Rodriguez didn't even present.
He and his lawyers walked out of the arbitration hearing and went right to the media to deny and lie and attack.
And I tell you what, it's almost as if Rodriguez's lawyers were studying the way the Clintons went after Ken Starr and the legal system during the Lewinsky circumstance.
The mistake they made was thinking that A, they could win in the court of public opinion when they couldn't, but that even if they had won in the court of public opinion, it wouldn't have changed anything.
It tells a lot about where our culture is and where our society is and how what's real isn't.
And how reality gets covered up and masked and camouflaged so that people at the end of an ordeal don't know what's what.
And the media is part and parcel of this.
Now, in this case, the sports media despises Rodriguez for whatever reasons, I mean some of them are obvious, but the sports media has had it in for Rodriguez as one of this guy suspended for forever.
So that in this case, the media was not going to be moved or persuaded to think otherwise.
But it was a total waste of money, is the point Rodriguez, I don't know how much he has spent on lawyers, but it all was wasted.
It was all spent on things that in reality didn't matter.
He still is suspended.
He's going to now, they say, take this to a federal court.
You know, I I don't know who's running this strategic, but these lawyers, I they're basically picking Rodriguez's pocket.
An arbitrator, there's no judge that's going to throw out an arbitrator's ruling.
The arbitration process, which has been agreed to by the players' union and the owners in baseball, has been set up specifically to avoid legal skirmishes and courtrooms and this kind of thing.
And all a judge has to do, if if a judge even wants to entertain this, all a judge has to do is say, well, Mr. Rodriguez, I don't see anywhere here a denial.
You say that you've never failed a drug test, but I don't see a denial here.
I need you to swear.
Need you to sign a sworn affidavit that you never took any of these drugs.
And he can't do that because then he opens himself up to perjury and the Martha Stewart result.
So it is apparent to me that Rodriguez thinks, or his lawyers think are a combination of the two.
And this is what is fascinating to me.
It is obvious that Rodriguez is attempting to salvage or to maintain or maybe enhance or promote His reputation in the post ban era, so that he might have some kind of a financial future after all this is over.
But it's just it's mind boggling to me that this entire route has been taken because it's been to avoid the reality.
He could have made a deal.
I'm convinced that Rodriguez could have made a deal early on and reduced the number of games.
There was a I think an openness to a to a settlement, but Rodriguez instead decided to go scorched earth on everybody else.
And there was no way that theory and strategy was going to change the outcome of the reality of what happened.
I.e.
he'd been suspended.
He's out of baseball.
He's down 25 million dollars minimum.
The Yankees don't have to pay him.
So he was scheduled to make 25 million dollars.
Uh next he's out that.
He's out whatever it's it's cost him with the lawyers so far.
And all of this, it seems to me, has been done so that when it's all over, Rodriguez isn't hated in the eyes of the public.
Seems to me to have been the only purpose of the strategy here.
And one of the techniques that was used was to try to portray Rodriguez as the victim.
And I'm sure, you know, these lawyers that he's got, they're Joe Tacopina and so forth.
These are big Democrats.
They're they're typical leftist trial lawyers.
And I'm sure that they fully embraced in their own lives this victim strategy, that there is that there is uh pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, the victim rainbow, and they've tried to make Rodriguez a victim here in all of this for the purposes of salvaging his reputation in the eyes of the public for whatever purpose that holds, I don't know.
But they never did deal with the substance of that which threatened Rodriguez and his supposed love of baseball and pursuing his continued dream here.
I uh the whole thing, the whole thing is mind-boggling.
You know me, I'm the mayor of Realville.
I I don't live in images, I don't make up images for myself, I don't try to craft images or anything similar to that.
I mean, I'm who I am, do what I do, and the chips fall where they fall.
And I don't try to massage or change public opinion about me.
A, I know I can't.
You're just gonna be who you are and let the chips fall.
This has been to me fascinating to watch.
The only winners here are the lawyers.
And that's financially.
The lawyers are not even winning in the sense of coming out with great reputations for strategy and victory because nobody won here on the on the on the Rodriguez, unless you want to count the lawyers in their in their back pockets.
So we'll spend a little bit more time on that.
That's just this is the overview here of the uh of the circumstance.
And it could be any story.
Uh it's not that it's Rodriguez and uh baseball and performance-enhancing drugs, it is rather the strategy and how he is and what that tells us, or rather what it tells me that I can then impart to you about our society, and because you know that matters to me.
I cringe every time I acknowledge that there are low information voters.
I don't want there to be low information.
I mean, no, no, there are and there will be, but I'd like to chip away at that.
In addition to that, another fascinating thing, Brian Lamb, the founder of C-SPAN, admitted on C-SPAN Sunday night, they had the uh, I guess booknotes all of his book.
We had an author on as a guest.
The author's name is David Bob, B. O. B B, and uh the book is humility, an unlikely biography of America's greatest Virtue.
And in this interview, Brian Lamb, who admits to being a regular listener, admits that he doesn't get what happens here.
In the sense that he doesn't know when I'm being satirical, facetious, or funny.
Not to me, again, this is personal, but to me, and in a business sense, this is fascinating to me, because here you have a very bright, very engaged, in touch, inside the Beltway figure, highly respected as intelligent, impartial, you know, everything that you would want.
Founder of C-Span, great reputation, the kind of thing Rodriguez would like to have when this thing's all over.
And he admits he listens.
He doesn't read Media Matters to find out what happens here.
He listens here.
And the author includes me in the people he's talking about with the virtue of humility.
And Lamb admits he doesn't get that.
I mean, this guy says he's the greatest thing on radio.
And the author has to tell him, well, you know, there's a lot of show biz.
And Lamb says, well, I must confess I don't know when he's doing show biz or when he isn't.
Which to me, it's not about Brian Lamb, which to me is fascinating to me.
Because folks, one of the one of the fundamental elements here of what I do is my knowledge that you get it.
And that's what makes all the rest of it fun.
Like when we tweak the media.
You know what I'm doing.
You know that I'm just trying to get a rise out of him, tweak them by saying something that might be provocative or outrageous.
Brian Lamb admits he doesn't know when that's happening.
Well, I have the sound bites for you coming up.
And you gov.com did a poll commissioned by the UK Daily Mail, I believe it was.
Let me Times of London.
And a poll commissioned with the Times of London, yougov.com.
And they polled the most admired people in America, and then they polled the most admired people in the world.
And they did this in 13 countries.
Yeah, here it is.
They went to 13 countries that have more than half of the world's population, and they asked people to name who they admire most.
Only those living were allowed to be listened.
And it was not multiple choice.
You picked the name yourself.
And in the Ugov.com poll of America, in last place at number 10 was Hillary Clinton.
Number nine was your host, me.
And the news over the weekend, Washington Examiner, a couple other places had it, was shock and dismay that the radio entertainment, not even television, the radio entertainer, Rush Limbaugh, is more admired in the United States than Hillary Clinton.
Yes, right.
I I don't have, I didn't even know this was going on.
There was no way I could stoke the poll.
There was no, I didn't even tell anybody, I didn't even know what was going on, so it's a legit result.
I just saw the clock.
I've got to take a break.
Not surprised, I even, if you'll recall, predicted this.
Obama is planning a bailout for the insurance companies.
Who oh, I mean it was an easy prediction, but I mean, just now it's it's coming true.
We also have, can I share with you something about this whole Chris Christie business?
And I said that when he first got into trouble, it was it was noticeable to me that none of the other wildebeests came to his defense.
None of the other rhinos, he was just left to sink or swim on His own.
And none of the Democrats that supposedly like him and have worked with him in Obama.
Nobody, nobody, nobody rushed to his aid.
Which is classic, by the way.
But there's something else about this.
Every if you if you watched the Sunday shows yesterday, which I didn't, I didn't get reports, transcripts, that kind of thing.
I can't watch them anymore.
I tried watching cable news the other night, and I just went nuts.
I just it just makes me mad.
It's it's so much of it is sophomoric.
Anyway, if you noticed all of the Republicans who are saying, yeah, he's in the clear if he's telling the truth.
The number of Republicans who are saying, oh yeah, but he's cool, man.
That was a great press conference.
If he's telling the truth.
What does that tell you?
It tells you that there's some doubt.
I mean, all those Republicans, a lot of them with that caveat.
Anyway, we'll be right back.
Don't go anywhere.
We announced on Friday, pretty close to the end of the program that there was going to be a release of documents surrounding Bridgegate.
907 pages.
907 pages of documents on Bridgegate.
What in the name of?
I mean, how is that even possible?
When nobody knew anything.
All there was was that email from the woman, Mary Kay, whatever I'm forgetting her last name.
Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.
And whoever got the email knew exactly what that meant, and they did it.
And there are 907 pages.
Now, now the feds get this.
If you haven't heard, the feds are looking into the money that Christie in New Jersey got for Hurricane Sandy Relief to find out if there is a connection between any of that money and Bridgegate or anything else.
And I sit here and I continue to be really shocked that the Republican Party thought an hour and 45-minute press conference could wipe all this away.
That's the kind of uh naivety I had in year two of my program.
I actually believed at one time that the media was interested in the truth.
And that when they were asking me questions, it was because they wanted to know what I really thought.
And thus I actually thought I had a chance to persuade them of things.
Whatever it be about me or my take on uh an issue or ideology, and I actually thought, and then and then when that didn't happen, and when I saw myself misquoted, taken out of context on purpose, I got mad and said these people weren't even listening to what I was saying.
I and I and I I because I was uh I was of I have good manners.
I was raised to be polite.
I was raised to answer people's questions.
It took me a while to understand that the media don't care what I think or say, that that's not why they want to talk to me.
The stories written before the it, I'll give you an example.
I can't tell, you can imagine I had HR can tell you the number of requests from television, Good Morning America, Today Show, you name it, national and local, about Rush Revere and the Brave People.
Oh, we would love to talk to Rush about his children's book.
And of course, the publisher is just dying for you gotta do some TV.
I mean, every author does TV.
I said, I am not going to accept any of these.
Why not?
Because they don't want to talk to me about the book.
They want to take the occasion to smear me on other things that they think they haven't had a chance to smear me on.
Take your pick of anything controversial, I've been that's what the the book is just what they will tell me they want to talk about.
And there might, in fact, be a couple questions about it, but that's not why they want to talk to me.
Now I learned this 23 years ago.
I learned especially what in my case, and I think every Republican ought to have this attitude, is why I'm sharing this.
I don't mean to make this about me, but I know for a fact that when the media wants to talk to me about my book that they don't.
And using experience guided by intelligence, I know what they would love to do, the vast majority of them, and of course they're exceptions, the vast majority would love to do hit pieces with my participation.
So I'm sitting here saying, why do these beltway Republicans not also get this when they have experienced it themselves?
When they have seen how Republicans, conservatives, whoever are treated.
Now, John Padoritz in the New York Post over the weekend had a had a piece.
I think it was Pedoritz.
Yeah, it was.
And it was a piece in which he was attempting to educate his readers into understanding that it was not just media bias that is causing the media to drop everything and try to expose Christie as a crook in Bridgegate and why they left Obama alone in the IRS scandal.
Podoritz says a lot of people don't understand This is his opinion, by the way, and don't totally subscribe to it, but there's a couple of elements of it that are correct.
He says that the reason why the media is going to the end of the earth to destroy Christie, and why the IRS scandal is no big deal.
It's not liberal versus conservative so much.
It's personal.
They are Obama.
I've made this point, and they all go to the same schools.
They all party together.
I mean, they they what when the press looks at Obama, they see themselves.
David Gregory sees himself, and he's not a crook.
F. Chuck Todd looks at Obama, sees himself.
Member of the DC establishment in good standing, card carrying goes to the right restaurants, goes to the right cocktail parties, uh, knows the right people, uh, went to the same schools.
They're one and the same.
This is Pedoris' point.
That they just don't, they can't even conceive that Obama's a crook.
Because they're not in their minds.
And they're all part of the same clique, and Obama happens to be the most popular guy in the clique, and there's no way.
So if if something happened to the IRS, it's because Obama didn't care.
Or people were doing it without his knowledge, like it would have happened with them.
And Pedoritz's point, there's no ideology to it.
I mean, there's bias, but it's bias based on the fact that they're friends and associates, and they come from the same place.
They go to the same places, and they're the same people.
And Christie's not one of them.
Try as hard as he might by embracing Obama a week before the election and doing this or but he's not one of them.
A, he's a Republican, so he can't be one of them, but B, look at him, he's out of control.
No discipline.
Uh, he's a bully, does all this stuff.
He's not one of them.
Now, the fact that they are all liberals, and Christie's not is also a factor, and I think it's more of a factor than Pedoris Pedoritz does, but Pedorit still has a point.
And I'm not the purpose of this is not to excuse the media for not going after Obama on the IRS.
I'm just one the point here is I don't understand why Republicans don't get this.
Like you you can you can look at all these Republican consultants and advisors who thought Christie hit a home run with that press conference.
Man, he did it right.
He came at it, and he didn't hide, and he took it all on himself, and he was factual, he was honest and he was nice, and he was he was uh it was forthcoming and he was engaging, he was charismatic.
And what that's not gonna impress them.
Christie can't impress them is the point.
No Republican can.
We're not one of them.
And the sad thing is, I think that attitude that all you have to do to get the media off your back is please them.
And whatever it establishes that those people are already occupying a position in their own minds where they're inferior and where they're defensive and where they need to prove themselves, and where they need to make the other side like them.
And I learned two years into my career that doing that's not possible.
You cannot become one of them when you're not one of them.
And you can't make them like you.
Membership in that club, it's really strict and unique, and you don't get to admit yourself.
Did they not see what happened with McCain or his McCain loved and adored until he becomes a candidate, then he becomes, you know, this dirty old man kicking kids off his front yard.
So that's what amazes me.
What amazes me is that they after all of this, after that hour and a half press conference, they thought a home run had been hit, and they thought the media minds had been changed in a Democrat.
And and I get the I'll guarantee they're sitting there stunned, folks, that this investigation is still underway, and that the feds are now involved because they thought that Christie had succeeded.
They thought Christie knocked it out of the park.
When it didn't matter, whether he knocked it out of the park or not.
This is the only guy beating Hillary in the polls, and they're gonna go destroy this guy, whatever it takes.
No matter what he says he believes, no matter policies of Obamas he signs onto or agrees with, or you know, doesn't join the Obamacare lawsuit, there's no he cannot buy their affection.
The only thing he could do is become one of them, and that switch parties.
And I jokingly suggested that's how he would get the presidential nomination after be on the Democrat side.
Jokingly suggested it.
A lot of people took it seriously, got mad.
But that's why I'm sitting here, I'm marveling at two things here today.
I'm marveling at the the theory, the thinking, the strategy behind trying to get A. Rod out of his mess, which was uh just mind-boggling to me, a total waste time.
And this continuing feeling on the Republican side that they can gain acceptance by the media in the Washington culture.
And so after that grand slam of a performance, now the feds are trying to find evidence that Christie might have misused Hurricane Sandy money, and they're trying to find out if he's lying about not knowing anything about Bridge Gate.
And they thought the Republicans inside the beltway, the establishment, they thought that this was ended because of Christie's great performance in a press conference.
And I'm not passing judgment on whether it was a good performance, and it's not my point.
My point, they thought it was, and they thought that'd be enough.
So, like Brian Lamb, so he doesn't understand me.
Well, I think I'm an open book, but I su uh i it's clear and obvious now that at the highest levels, the Republican Party, they still don't know who and what they're up against.
You know, I was gonna go to the Brian Lamb audio, and I'm gonna get to that, but I want to take this call.
I think I want to take the call.
I just barely scanned the subject line on my call screener monitor here.
I'll tell you what it says.
It's uh Kate, Carson City, Nevada, who says that she's confused.
Says you always told us the media tells us who they're afraid of by their pylon.
She doesn't think the media fears Christie like conservatives, but they are piling on.
Is that right, Kate?
Is that is that is that why you're confused?
Well, that's exactly it, Russia.
And first I need to wish you a happy birthday.
I've tried for years and years and years to call you.
Wait a minute.
This is this this is this is Fairfield Kate, right?
This is Fairfield Kate.
Fairfield Kate, Fairfield, California Kate.
Yes, one of my old callers from Sacramento.
I don't think I can go deaf.
I mean, I am deaf, but I mean I could lose my cochlear implant, I'd still recognize your voice.
Well, thank you, dear.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, Carson City Kate now.
Hey, listen, and happy birthday, and I prayed for you at Mass yesterday because I know you need the prayers, and I remembered.
So I'm I'm not myself for remembering.
Always need the prayers.
There's no question.
I know that.
Listen, I am confused because, like you said about uh John McCain.
They loved McCain until he became the candidate because they knew he was a rhino who couldn't win.
Okay.
Why aren't they loving on Christie?
Because he's another Northeastern rhino.
Well, McCain wasn't Northeastern, I get that.
But he's another rhino who can't win.
And I am confused by No no no no no no.
No, wait a minute.
When you when you say he's a rhino and can't win, that's what you know.
They don't.
All they've got, they live in the world of polls.
They've got two polls.
And the only Republican beating Hillary in 2016 is Christie.
That's all you gotta know.
That's all you have to.
They're not a f they are a little bit afraid of Christie.
But this is blood in the water and they're sharks.
This is instinct.
This is instinct, Kate.
This is but so they are so dumb, Rush.
They are so dumb that they do not yet know that Christie is a rhino who cannot win.
They don't know that.
No, because they have a Northeastern bias, and they think the Northeast determines who wins and loses elections, determines American culture, uh determines everything.
And Christy's a Northeastern.
And they know that Christie embraced her.
They know that Christie is trying to be like them.
And they are good people and they win.
They're they're they're a little worried about Christie in that sense.
Okay.
So McCain, McCain, they loved on him.
He was very much like Christie, but for whatever reason, they're choosing to go after Christie sooner than they went after McCain.
Well, because the opportunity presented it.
So there's blood blood in the water.
This is instinct.
It's not this is not this is not a strategy.
I mean, they didn't close the lanes themselves.
The Christie administration did that.
So this they just they just can't pass it up.
It's just the sheep hatred for Republicans in general.
Say that again?
Just it's just the sheer hatred for Republicans in general.
It's blood in the water, and they're going to go af go after him.
Yeah, there's a Republican in distress who wants to be president, go kill the guy.
Okay.
Because that's the equivalent of a shark trying to kill you.
But then my question is, what if he becomes the candidate?
What if somehow he gets through all this and Christie becomes the candidate?
Then then what does uh then what happens?
I mean, as a conservative, I'm confused because I'm I'm still confused by the fact that they're going after him and I understand what you're saying.
But then when he becomes the candidate and they've already used this, they can't really bring it up again.
They'll just bring it up again.
Recycle it.
Yeah, remember there's a bunch of low information people not even paying any attention to this, and I'll hear about it for the first time during a general presidential election.
Oh, I'm sure I'm sure you're right.
I'm just you know, like I said, yeah.
I know you're right.
But they're not gonna stop digging.
The point is, even if if Chrissy gets a nomination, it it it that that that won't deter them.
I mean, it they they don't accept defeat in the sense that you and I do.
It's everything's just a setback that might take them a little longer to get where they want to go.
Right.
Now Christie is tainted, and he's forever going the the the in the Lexus Nexus database.
Or in Google search, wherever you go, Chris Christie, I guarantee you Bridge Gate is gonna be the first or second thing mentioned about Chris Christie now.
Right.
Not that he did or didn't know, just that he was Mired in controversy, and that there was doubt, and that no Republicans offered to come forth and offer assistance.
This is so easily predictable.
This is what frustrates me about the Republicans not understanding this themselves.
But they don't.
I'm convinced they don't.
Anyway, Kate, I appreciate the call.
I'm j I'm sad I've run out of time and there's no it's a hard break.
I've got to go, but always great to hear from you and all the best.
And thanks for the prayers.
And we have a top of the hour obscene profit break, ladies and gentlemen.
But we'll be back.
We're just getting revved up here, just warming up.
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