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Jan. 13, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:48
January 13, 2014, Monday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Ha.
How are you?
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIV network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you with us.
The telephone number if you want to join us, 800-28288-2 and the email address L Rushmow at EIB net.com.
Now, this controversy in New Jersey over the spending, federal dollars, hurricane Sandy relief...
And Christie ran some ads that included him, and that they cost more than other ads would cost.
And then the Christie administration said, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, White House approved.
I mean, here's here here's what this is about in a nutshell.
AIDS to Governor Christie are pointing out that the Obama regime approved of the New Jersey tourism ads, which starred Governor Christie and his family, that a Democrat congressman has encouraged federal investigators to probe.
Using federal relief, by the way, folks, there one other uh thing to mention here about why they're going after Christie.
One of the things that is happening throughout the country, whenever Republican governors are elected, they happen to be cleaning up the messes that were left them.
And their states are ending up in much better circumstances than when the Democrats held the State House, whenever the previous administration was Democrat, and that makes the Democrats look bad.
And that's that's just another element here.
Christie, for whatever you want to, whatever your opinion of him is as a presidential candidate.
The fact is that he has come in and improved things somewhat in the process made his predecessors look bad.
That's just another reason why the Democrats, why they wanted to take out Bob McConnell.
But in the process of taking out McConnell, they've also taken him out.
The way they did it, they took him out of politics, scorched earth, smeared the guy to the point that he couldn't get elected to the Senate now, if that's what he wanted to next do, because he's damaged goods.
And this has Clinton fingerprints all over it.
And that's also what's happening here with Christie.
It's not, it's not just to, you know, the shark in the water excuses, perhaps one of the best ones I could give you.
They are sharks, there's blood in the water, and they go to the blood.
They go in for the kill.
And when you from from their standpoint, I mean the presidency is theirs.
All power in politics is theirs, and anybody outside trying to get it is deadly to them.
And whenever any of those threats start bleeding, these Democrat sharks just instinctively go into gear and take them out.
So that's a factor here.
But there's also a strategy behind it.
It's from the Clinton era and it's scorched earth.
It's it's it's what Rodriguez is doing.
Rodriguez's strategy is to trash the system, to discredit the system by refusing to even participate in it.
You'll hear some sound bites coming up that'll explain this.
And Rodriguez, just as your average Democrat, cannot testify to uh innocence.
Just like Clinton couldn't.
So instead, what do you do?
You trash and discredit the whole system.
And you go after the people running the system.
And try to destroy even the idea that you would be pursued.
Particularly and especially if you're guilty.
If you don't want to take the punishment, if you don't want to own up to it, and Rodriguez is obviously consumed with what people think of him.
And so that is what's guiding him in this.
Now, back to Christie and this money that they're investigating, Hurricane Sandy.
AIDS to Governor Christie are pointing out that the Obama regime approved of the New Jersey tourism ads, which starred Christie and his family that a Democrat congressman has encouraged federal investigators to investigate to probe.
Using federal relief money after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the state of New Jersey ran stronger than the storm ads promoting tourism on the state's beaches.
The stronger than the storm campaign was just one part of the first action plan approved by the Obama regime and developed with the goal of effectively communicating that the Jersey Shore was open for business during the first summer after Sandy.
That is a quote from Colin Reed today, who is a Christie spokesman.
CNN reported earlier that New Jersey Democrat representative Frank Pallone asked the Department of Housing and Urban Development over the summer to look into whether it was appropriate for New Jersey to spend 25 million dollars on hurricane relief money on ads on TV promoting tourism.
Christie and his family starred in the ads, prompting criticism from Democrats who said, well, hey, the guy's running for re-election and he's using federal money to basically do commercials for himself.
So that's what they're looking to.
Now the timing of Pallone's announcement of the probe is raising eyebrows.
Because it comes days after Christie found himself in this scandal over to Bridge Lane closures.
Today Christie's office welcomed the review of the Sandy Relief funding expenditures and said that they were confident it would indicate the TV ads were appropriate.
There was a, you know, there was a bid process here, and there were some ads that were much cheaper, but could have been run, spend less money making the same case that did not include the Christie family.
The ads with the Christie family were chosen by Christie.
They cost a lot more than the other bid.
And so now the Christie people are saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on a minute.
We had that all approved by Obama.
Which isn't going to matter.
Not gonna matter.
Obama doesn't know anything either.
Remember, he didn't know about the IRS, he didn't know about his website problems, so he certainly didn't know that Christie was going to star in ads promoting tourism using Obama money.
So the Democrats are just gonna say, ah, goes this Christie team starting to squeal here again, whine and moan, trying to make themselves out as one of us.
But they're not.
And meanwhile, McCain, what if McCain's out there?
McCain Suti said, what'd McCain say?
Well, McCain basically is another one of these Republicans who said that he thinks Christie has put this behind him.
If he's telling the truth, is that not amazing?
All these Republicans offering the caveat.
I mean, very few of them.
I don't know of any, actually, it might be a couple.
Do you know of any Mr. Snurdley and the Republicans saying he's telling the truth?
I know he's telling the truth, and that that's it.
There's nothing more here.
Nothing to see here.
They're all.
Okay, none that strong.
They all have the caveat.
He's in the clear.
Great performance knocked it out of the park if he's telling the truth.
Okay, here's the Brian Lamb soundbites.
Now I talked about this at the beginning of the hour.
This is somewhat, I admit this is little inside baseball.
It's fascinating to me as a broadcast professional.
And, you know, I do a program here, and there are classic elements to it.
You know, I've often said that what it is that's made this program unique.
I mean, it was when we first hit 1988, there wasn't anything on the radio like it.
A there wasn't anything nationally conservative in the media.
And uh, what is it you're doing?
Well, make sure that said, well, we do two things.
We take serious discussion of issues, we do that, and we combine that with irreverent Satire and parody and humor, and there's credibility on both sides.
The fact that I sometimes get funny does not destroy my credibility on serious issues with my audience.
And I would tell them back in the days I thought they actually cared to hear my answers to their questions.
I said, look, if um if you're watching Nightline, Ted Koppel comes out and does a 10-minute joke monologue.
You say, wait a minute, I'm not that it's not going to fit.
It doesn't make sense.
Ted Koppel is a very, very, very serious guy.
You make jokes.
You'd feel uncomfortable and out of place.
That doesn't fit.
And with the same token, if Leno Carson, whoever, uh Letterman came out and literally gave you a 10 to 15 minute serious monologue on serious issues.
They waited, especially the studio audience to be looking at each other.
What are we doing here?
What is this?
It's not why we're here.
But my program does both.
That's what I told them.
And herein lies a problem for me potentially, because I am leaving it up to you, the audience, to distinguish which is which.
And having you in on the joke is 99% of the fun.
And you know it, like when I you know when I'm tweaking the media, you know, saying something just to get a rise out of them so it'll be talked about, or they get outraged about it later that night or the next day.
We have fun doing this.
But Brian Lamb told us, guys, I don't know.
And he's a regular listener.
He's a smart guy, and he's been around forever.
As long as the program has.
So here's the setup.
He's interviewing the author of a book.
The book is called Humility, an unlikely biography of America's Greatest Virtue.
Now that's a fascinating title to me.
It's a fascinating premise to me, actually.
Humility, one of America's greatest virtues.
The author of the book is a man by the name of David Bob.
Bob with two B's on the end.
And I am included in this book on humility, and that's what Brian Lamb admits here he doesn't get.
Here's the first soundbite.
If you look around today's entertainment world and you apply your book on humility to the biggest successes, and one of the biggest successes in our lifetime is Rush Limbaugh.
400 million dollars over eight years that he's paid, according to the reports.
And he spends his whole time on the radio telling you he's the greatest in history, that it's the excellence in broadcasting network and all that.
And here's a clip from one of his discussions one day about American exceptionalism.
How do you explain that these kind of folks are so successful?
Okay, now that let's let's stop for just a second.
Here's a guy doing a book on humility as one of America's greatest virtues, and I'm in the book.
And Bryan does not dislike me.
Now, don't misunderstand.
It's not that.
But he hears talented on alone from God, and I guess he thinks I'm actually saying I'm God.
Uh or documented to be almost always right, and I I guess he thinks I. So he's confused.
And he's asking this guy to help him out.
And he plays a soundbite of me talking about American exceptionalism.
And this is it.
We are created with the natural yearning to be free.
And it is other men and leaders throughout human history who have suppressed that and imprisoned people for seeking it.
The U.S. is the first time in the history of the world where a government was organized with a constitution laying out the rules that the individual was supreme and dominant.
And that is what led to the U.S. becoming the greatest country ever because it unleashed people to be the best they could be, unlike it had ever happened.
That's American exceptionalism.
Putin doesn't know what it is.
Obama doesn't know what it is, and it just got trashed in the New York Times.
Now, you and I, I I really do.
I've said this before, and I really you and I, it's like a very large family, the familial relationship here.
Not familiarity, but familial family.
And you know what I mean when I talk about American exceptionalism.
I'm not saying we're better than everybody else.
We're not that we're superior because we're here.
It's not that we are the exception to the rule that most people have lived in tyranny in the world, and that most people have lived in poverty in the world, and still do.
Although that's changing rapidly.
We are the exception to the rule of dictatorship, tyranny, bondage, all the American experiment is the exception.
That's what makes us different.
That's the exception.
And I've always said this.
And I don't know how that becomes we're better than everybody, because I specifically say that's not what it is.
So here's how the author I mean I'm even surprised that clip was used.
If your point is that I'm out there saying I'm the greatest thing in the world and uh never been anybody better and all that, that clip is actually talking about the greatness of the country.
Anyway, here's what the author said, who again his name is David Bob.
But Rush Limbaugh is saying there has uh good truth to it in the sense that America did put individuals front and center.
But they were also individuals rooted in a community.
I think that a lot of the self-promotionalism that we see, sometimes part of a persona, a lot of that that Rush offers is tongue in cheek, some of it not.
You know, it's interesting.
I've listened to him over the years.
Who knows when he's tongue in cheek?
He's incorporated humor very ably, and I think that's one of the reasons why he's been able to be on the air and so popular for so long.
And some of that humor comes at his own expense.
Some of it doesn't.
You know, sometimes moving back and forth between it and sometimes being serious and sometimes very humorous.
One thing he's always serious, though, about is this claim of American exceptionalism.
Anyway, what is is from a strict business sense.
What is fascinating to me about this is Brian Lamb is is not a low information person.
He's not dumb, he's not ignorant.
He admits to listening a lot, and he doesn't know when I'm using satire and when I'm not.
Now, one thing that we do know, and I don't know whether Brian Lamb is conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, I have no idea.
Don't care to know.
That's not my point.
Uh but but the left, we know has no sense of humor.
I'll never when Media Matters first started, their very first week, I was all over the place.
I was the I was the lead item on their front page.
And what it was was all of the things I have said about feminism over the years.
And I read the list, and I've forgotten half of it, and I was laughing my butt off.
I was the God, this is the most hilarious stuff, and half of it I had forgotten I'd said.
It was just uproariously funny.
They didn't see any humor in it.
They were literally over the top outraged, and thought somebody saying those kind of things should be shut up and sent away.
And I remember early on in this program thinking that 90% of the people who also heard those things would think they were funny, and that these people were a small minority, and I it was a learning experience because when you're talking about liberals and people on the left, I mean, the only people that are funny, you got Letterman, John Stewart, uh there's only five or six of them that they allow to be funny.
They have no sense of humor whatsoever.
Snerdley just told me that the Brian Lamb sound bites scare him.
Because if somebody that engaged and that smart doesn't get it, that's scary.
You should to try to comfort you, Mr. Snerdley.
Brian Brian Lamb once said, not long ago, and I'm paraphrasing him.
He said, uh I've been listening to both sides for so long, I don't know what I think anymore.
Well, I mean, that's quite telling, isn't it?
I mean, he's been in the middle for so he's been right down the middle there in C Span, and he's had everybody on all sides come in, and now he just has no clue what he thinks anymore.
Uh I'm look, I again I'm paraphrasing, but that's that's what he said.
And he there might have been a tinge of humor when he said that.
But Brian Lamb doesn't come off as a as a funny guy.
Now, one other thing about this Chris Christie business, I understand the Tea Party is not rallying his defense because they've got issue problems with Christie.
But the Republican Party isn't either.
And the reason why, I think, folks, I'm going to try to explain this, is close to being a profundity, so hang on.
Now, if you're on hold, I want you to hang in there, because we're going to get to phones real quick.
But this, I think, if I do this right, is telling it's important.
I want to take you back.
Talk about Chris Christie and why there is not a huge wave of people defending him.
Thank you.
The Tea Party isn't, because the Tea Party doesn't like him.
The Tea Party does not think that he is a conservative.
The Tea Party, this bridge gates one thing, but basically embracing Obama, screwing Romney, that was all it took.
That at one time, and you're done.
But the Tea Party's not Christie's buddies.
The Republican establishment is Christie's buddies, and they aren't even defending him.
They've all got this caveat.
He's home free if he's telling the truth.
If.
Now, can I contrast this with something for you?
Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill.
Clarence Thomas nominated Supreme Court by George Bush 41.
The moment he was nominated, the left's long knives came out.
That was their seat, Thurgood Marshall.
Clarence Thomas, Republican, conservative, traitor, Uncle Tom.
When this all happened, I didn't know Clarence Thomas.
I had never met Clarence Thomas.
I had to read about Clarence Thomas to find out who he was.
From the moment Paul Simon, Democrat Senator Millinois, and his wife actually was one responsible for this, if you want to know the truth, dragged Anita Hill forward.
Snerdley, you'll remember this because you've been here the whole time.
I began the biggest full-throated defense of Clarence Thomas that there was.
And yet I didn't know him.
I had never met him.
I had to read and find out who he was, and you know, is about his life, the things he had done, where he'd worked, gone to school, and yet, I didn't feel I was taking a risk at all in a full-throated,
never-ending, full-fledged, not only defense of Clarence Thomas, but an attack, a returned attack on Anita Hill and the Democrats.
Now, how was I able to do this with such confidence, not having met the man, not having known the man.
I don't do things for show here.
I don't do things to get noticed here.
I remember I was in, I think it was either Tulsa or Oklahoma City on their Rush to Excess tour.
I was doing an appearance on Saturday when the Anita Hill stuff really hit, and all of the outrageous allegations, the pubic carrow and the coke canon, all that sexual harassment stuff, and I can't tell you how livid I was.
And I spent the entire almost two hours on stage that night was a Saturday talking about this.
How sick it made me and how angry it made me.
And the reason that I, with total confidence, and I have been fully vindicated, by the way, was able to defend Clarence Thomas against it.
I knew he didn't do it.
I knew he didn't do it, and I didn't know him.
But I learned about his character.
I learned about his family, and he was conservative.
He was courageous.
He was a conservative African American.
I learned that they had tried to destroy him at Yale because he didn't get in with affirmative action.
He had betrayed them.
He betrayed the civil rights coalitions because he climbed the ladder without them, showing that it could be done.
I learned very quickly that Clarence Thomas became the biggest threat breathing to people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
The biggest threat alive to the civil rights coalitions.
Because Clarence Thomas was living proof that a minority could reach the pinnacle without having to be a liberal or a Democrat or part of that whole civil rights coalition.
And I also knew that the people attacking him were totally capable of lying and making things up.
The left, the Democrats.
Take your pick.
Biden.
Take your pick up him on that committee.
Ted Kennedy.
I knew their character.
And so without knowing Clarence Thomas, without ever having met Clarence Thomas, I knew he didn't do it.
I've since gotten to know Clarence Thomas.
He's become a very good friend, and he didn't do it.
He thwarted all of that by standing up for himself at those hearings, if you'll recall, by finally accusing the people of conducting a high-tech lynching on him.
But what was it, folks?
I didn't know Clarence Thomas.
What was it that made me I didn't even think I was risking anything?
I really didn't.
If I if if I'd had the slightest doubt of his innocence, I would have never opened my mouth.
If I thought that there was just a tiny thread of possibility that what Anita Hill was saying and what the Democrat witnesses were saying, I would have stayed silent.
But I didn't.
I went to the equivalent of the mountaintops and started shouting.
Now why?
Character, conservatism, and the people who are, and my knowledge of the left.
And I only bring this up because there isn't any of this going on for Governor Christie from anywhere.
Now, partly, the fascinating thing about this, I'm not saying it's not deserved, don't misunderstand.
My point is that the Republican rhinos, the Republicans in name only, the Tea Party have an ideological basis for not running to Governor Christie's defense.
They disagree with him on policy.
They felt that he betrayed his own party and cause with that embrace of Obama and sabotaged his own party in their quest to win the White House.
They've got substantive reason.
Now the people on the right who who support Chris Theater launching, there's no, and this is the problem with the Republican Party.
There's no foundation there.
There's no ideological basis on which to defend Christie is my point.
They're rhinos, they're Republicans in name only, they're establishment types.
Washington's the beginning and end of everything, and what happens there, but whatever you have to be to succeed there is what you do.
And so Christie may well be worth defending is my point.
I don't know.
He may well be worth a Clarence Thomas type defense.
But notice that nobody is coming forth with one.
They've all got that caveat.
He's home free if he's not lying.
He's home free if he's not lying.
This is not a comment about Governor Christie.
So please don't misunderstand or be confused.
I'm trying to illustrate the word Lee the emptiness.
What of the Republican part?
What do you what are you?
No, it's not.
It is not my purpose here is not to comment on Governor Christie.
I'm trying to make the point that over there in the in the Rhino Club, the Republican establishment.
The wildebeests.
Yeah, whatever you're there's there's no.
There's nothing.
There's not an ideology, there's not a belief system, there's not a foundation on which to base a defense.
As I had with Clarence Thomas.
And by the way, he's not alone.
I have also offered full-throated defenses of Sarah Palin and Robert Bork.
And a whole bunch of people on Miguel Estrada.
I mean, the left has tried to take out people on our side with cheap lies, phony accusations, like they did with Clarence Thomas.
They've done it with Bork.
What Kennedy did to Robert Bork to me to this day still.
And what they try to do with Clarence Thomas is just near criminal, even though it all falls within the purview of the First Amendment in politics.
It was just Carl McCall.
Well, but yeah, but Carl McCall.
I wasn't defending Carl McCall ideologically.
I was not defending Carl McCall because his own party abandoned him, and I was illustrating something there.
Ended up raising money for Carl McCall because here's a Democrat part.
And the Democrat Party threw him overboard.
And they supposedly are the ones championing black people.
And they're the one throwing him on the ash heap.
So we raised a little money for him here to try to defend him.
Now, okay, you mentioned Clinton.
Why do the Democrats go to the mat defending the Clintons?
Knowing his character and his background, it's precisely because of his character and his background that they do it.
It's because Clinton has a track record of beating us every time he opens his mouth.
And that's why they love him.
They love Clinton's ideology.
Now, we don't have enough data here to track the left defending Obama because there really hasn't they haven't done anything but that.
I mean, that explained that earlier.
But I'm just I really looking for the word here, not surprised, although that fits.
Just every Republican who has entered the fray defending Christie has to put a caveat out there if he's telling the truth.
Now, if there were a fervent ideological foundation, if there was a substantive reason of believing in Governor Christie, then this whether he lied wouldn't matter.
He'd be out there defending him left and right just to make sure the Democrats don't get away with this.
And I'll admit that was part of the reason that I jumped into Clarence Nuggets.
No way they were going to get away with this if I had the ability to have a little bit of something to do with it.
There's no way I'm going to sit there and put up with this.
I've done enough to find out he was a fine man and know this is a witch hunt they were seeking destroy.
It had happened with Bork.
It was intelligence guided by experience, and it took not one shred of risk on my part to do it.
But it's and it's not just Governor Christie.
Do you note the Republicans any one of their brood comes under assault and they throw them overboard?
Satisfy the sharks, then make the try to make the sharks go away.
Satisfy their hunger and their appetite so that maybe they'll go away and forget about it.
Sarah Palin, throw her overboard.
Get rid of her.
Any number of scooter libby, throw him overboard.
Get rid of him.
You name it.
I gotta take a break.
We'll be back after this.
Don't go away.
Here is Lou in uh sha.
What happened?
Is Lou still there?
Oh, gee, what was Lou gonna say?
What was it?
What it did the call screener line, he's there.
Lou, Lou, the call screener said you'd hung up, but you're still there.
How are you?
I'm here, Rush.
Great.
It's a pleasure talking to you.
You've said that you counted on your listeners to get it, and we do.
But I'd like to take you back to a time when I didn't get it, when it took me 20, 25 minutes to get it, and that's when you endorsed Bill Clinton for president.
Oh, yeah.
Well, that was supposed to take 20 minutes or so for you to get.
You you were right in your right on line there.
Yeah, I I uh was frustrated, angry, disappointed, heartbroken.
Um I I don't know.
I could describe what it was, and then I I finally I worked myself up into a tizzy.
I don't know if that's a Pennsylvania word, but I paced back and forth, I wrung my hands, I I stuck my hands, pulled out my hair, and till I finally said to myself, uh, I could never do this.
And as soon as I said that, I it was like a light, it was like an aha moment.
I thought, he could never do this either.
You could never do this.
And I had a big laugh when I thought, this is satire.
And you were right.
Yeah.
You were right, but it it it it it you know, that was a fascinating experience.
It I was I was going nuts trying to get people to hear me about Bill Clinton, so rather than say it, I thought I would demo the kind of guy Bill Clinton was.
And I basically I endorsed Clinton and took ten minutes in doing it.
And then the phone calls came in from people who betrayed angry, let down, another conservative.
Just fallen by the wayside.
They thought of me this totally let down, and I denied it.
What do you mean?
I didn't endorse Clinton.
What do you mean I just heard you?
No, you heard wrong.
I didn't.
Besides, that was in my youth.
You can't hold me accountable for things I did 10 minutes ago.
Gotta take a break.
Back after this.
Would you believe uh I haven't even gotten to I maybe three percent of what I prepped today have I even talked about?
So I got a whole stack of stuff here yet to go.
And the A Rod stuff.
Um so it's all coming up.
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