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Feb. 14, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:45
February 14, 2014, Friday, Hour #2
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All right, so the new republic's all upset about the carbon footprint that all of you people are making with all the Valentine cards or something.
Not making it up.
New Republic raining on Valentine's Day.
You people sending Valentine's cards, you are destroying the planet.
You're contributing to climate change and global warming.
Because of all the CO2 created and making it, shipping it, flying it, mailing it, transporting it, producing it, all of that.
But isn't it kind of cancel with all 16,000 airline flights canceled?
Think of all the CO2 not put in the atmosphere.
Live from the Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
I mean, seriously, what kind of person do you have to be to get up on Valentine's Day?
And start wringing your hands over the carbon footprint of all the Valentine's Day cards being sent.
Great to have you, my friends.
It's Open Line Friday.
Rush Limbaugh 800 282-2882.
And the email address, L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
Open line Friday means whatever you want to talk about is fair game.
I mean, we don't complain about the electric bill and that kind of thing, but what I mean is Monday through Thursday, we take calls that are oriented around things I'm discussing.
Because those are the things I care about.
And I am going to be much more fun to listen to if I care, but if I'm if I'm bored, you're not going to want to listen.
But on Friday, run the risk of me being bored.
What?
What book?
Well, I've I tried not to overdo that.
The new book went available for pre-order a week ago today.
And I've I've talked about it.
I've talked about it three times since last Friday.
Maybe four.
That's plenty.
And now I'm talking about it again.
You just brought it up.
Rush Revere and the First Patriots, the second in our children's history book series featuring Rush Revere and his time traveling horse Liberty.
Coming on the heels of the first inaugural effort, Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims.
And it's a pre-order now.
It comes out on March the 11th.
It's at uh Marnes and Noble, Amazon iTunes.
And it's uh, you know, I'll I'll mention I read some some some uh review emails yesterday that we're getting.
But it's all really exciting.
It's going gangbusters, people are eating it up, and it's a the there's a mission to these books.
We're not just doing this to do it for some career exercise or whatever.
There's actually a mission here to teach young Americans the truth of the greatness of this country, the history in a truthful manner to counter what they're gonna be told or are being taught in the in the public uh school system.
But and it's so much fun to do.
And this this next book uh is you know, you hope every effort is better than the previous one, but you don't want to diminish the previous one by saying the second or the third one's better, because the the first one was great, but you um uh this one's got some some things in it that I just loved doing.
Uh and the device we have with the time traveling horse, being able at talking horse, being able to go anywhere in American history and take students, Rush Revere is a substitute teacher at middle school, takes some students with him, takes his iPhone.
It's just so much fun to do.
And feedback is is been tremendous.
It's written for 10 to 13 year olds, but it's for everybody.
Audio version, by the way, uh I mean.
It is a the audio version I did that for the second book too, and it's available for pre-order, and it is off.
If I if I that the segment where Rush Revere is in a debate with the king over how he's treating the colonists.
Uh-oh.
I I I've I've I rewound out, listen to myself do it.
What's a question?
Uh, Another another question in there.
Yeah.
You can do anything.
We go back anyway.
If if if Rush Revere and Liberty want to try and travel back to Bill Clinton's president, say don't take that pizza from her.
We can do anything we want.
That's the point.
This horse, the device that we created, Liberty, the time traveling talking horse can go anywhere in American history.
And and Rush Revere, of course, is uh in the saddle.
Time traveling, sometimes they take some students.
It's it's fun.
But yeah, we could do that.
We could we could go back and talk.
Did you know this Steve Malzberg, our old buddy from the old WABC days?
He was interviewing Larry King.
It's sad what's happened here.
It is really Larry King says, I never seen bias.
It doesn't exist.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Aren't in meetings.
We don't sit around and say, okay, we're gonna destroy this guy today or build a good.
Bias, I've never seen it.
And then Walsberg said, Well, what about wanting to brought what do you mean?
Are you telling me Clint's been accused of rape?
What a kind of conspiracy.
Larry, uh Lisa Myers, uh NBC, the whole 30-minute segment, 60 minutes to the It's a crook.
Are you telling me Clinton was accused of rape?
You people make everything up.
It was just amazing.
So...
Yeah, I just came across that this morning.
It's sad.
It it's but it is what it is.
All right, let me grab this call.
We we seldom take calls in the first segment, monologue segment, but we got uh now I look, you know I should preface this.
I've only got two lines up here.
Snurdley types two lines of what the caller wants to say.
Sometimes the callers lie and they start talking about things that they didn't tell Snerdley they were going to talk about, in which case they don't last very long.
You do not hear me get rid of them, but they are dispatched.
And but only two lines, it's it's uh it's just a brief summary.
But the two lines here make me think that this could be somewhat interesting, and a question I don't get very much, which also makes it intriguing.
So let's see if Snerdley heard the guy right or if the guy was telling Sturdly the truth.
See, every time you go to the phones, it's an adventure, folks, for me, and then for you too.
But despite what I think it says up there, sometimes it's it's nervous for a caller.
I understand they're sitting out there, they're on hold, and then all of a sudden snurdly put you're next, and they freeze up, and then they hear me say, and sometimes they just totally forget what they wanted.
I've been there.
You know, I'm I've been a caller back in my um, and I know what it's like.
So I try to be compassionate, understanding, tolerant.
So let's see.
Albert, San Francisco, thank you for calling, sir.
You're on open line Friday, and it's great to have you here.
Hi, Rush.
Um, I had a question for you.
Um it's a two-part question, really.
Well, it's basically the same question.
Last Friday, you uh read from uh the op-ed from the journal, the Wall Street Journal, about how um talk radio was a big reason why immigration failed uh this time.
Um it was an editorial, it wasn't actually an op-ed, it was an unsettled editor.
The one that Paul Jigel wrote.
Um so and then you had a caller who it was, I think it was the last call of your show last Friday.
You asked him a question, he didn't answer it.
So you asked him you were talking about um O'Reilly's interview with President Obama, and you asked him, why does he think that O'Reilly was bashing conservative media talk radio?
So my question to you is um it's related to both of those.
Why is it that the so-called conservative media like the journal and so-called Bill O'Reilly conservative always bash basically you since you are talking radio?
So that's my question.
Okay, that's pretty much what I thought you were gonna say.
So my my two lines of summary based on what you wanted to ask me are are accurate.
And I'll tell you, you have put me in in a uh in it in a sort of a challenging position here to answer this, Albert, because it's inside baseball, and I don't know how interesting that is to people.
Secondly, um you're asking me to explain why I think others view me the way they do.
And I don't know that you can ever win doing that.
Um this is not what you're asking me, but just to give you an example.
Let's say I knew somebody that you know, and and that they're being very critical of you, and I said, Albert, why did I hate you?
You know, it it's it's you you you you might know, uh and you might be you might be dead on right, but when you start explaining it, it's it's uh a little bit uncomfortable.
But I'll do my best here uh to to explain to you, because at the I think the fundamental question you're asking, correct me if I'm wrong, because I want to answer what you're asking.
You're basically saying, okay, we have conservative media here, but then there's branches of it.
And some branches don't like talk radio, which is me, Rush Limbaugh, but yet they're conservative.
Why?
What what is the what why why do so many or some of these conservatives not like limbaugh, be it about immigration or whatever else.
And you're probably looking at this as all conservatives on the same team, and you don't understand it.
Am I close?
Yeah, exactly.
Yes.
Well, there are there are uh solid answers to this.
But I don't know, I don't know if I if if it serve any purpose here in answering them.
Let me let me take a break out.
Don't go away.
You you stay on hold out there, and I will ponder uh the best way to deal with this.
I mean, the journal immigration thing will be easy.
Um, but some of the other aspects of this, it gets into marketing and positioning and professional career calculations more than it has to do with issues in in answering the second half or phase of your question.
So let's uh and it also has to do with with uh uh talk radio slash conservatism slash me.
I mean, what's the image in the drive-by media, racist, sexist, bigot, and there are a lot of people don't want to be thought of anywhere close to that.
And the safest, fastest way to distance yourself from being thought of as one of those is to criticize me.
So it's it's a it's an effort to insulate themselves.
But I got to take a break.
We'll do that.
We'll come back and continue here in just a second.
Open line Friday, Ill Rushball back after this.
And we're back, and great to have you wish uh with us, Rush Limbaugh and Open Line Friday back to Albert in San Francisco.
Albert, let me, there's an overall answer to your question here, be it the Wall Street Journal or some of these other people you asked about, and it is this.
A lot of conservatives make a huge mistake and set themselves up, assuming other people are conservative, because they occasionally say things that sound conservative, but when the pedal hits the metal, they're not really conservative.
A lot of people think if you're on Fox, you're conservative, and that's not necessarily the case.
Um so I I think the root of understanding it is to is to understand really who is conservative and who isn't.
And there are a lot of people who try to pass themselves off now and then as conservative, but but if they're challenged on it, they'll deny it.
Because they don't want to take the heat of being one.
And they'll say things like, well, I'm not one of those right wingers.
I know I'm uh I'm not a reactionary, I don't make up my mind to advance.
I uh blah blah blah.
But there's their professional considerations, too.
I mean, if if you if you are in the media and you want to be Mr. Conservative, sorry, the job's taken, it's filled.
You gotta go somewhere else.
So maybe you can be Mr. Moderate.
Maybe you can be Mr. Reasonable right way.
You find a niche for yourself.
Because the media conservative leadership is taken.
I'm it.
So where are you going to put yourself then in the in the media and the professional media structures?
There's all kinds of uh explanations like that.
The Wall Street Journal and why they rip into talk radio.
They resent us.
They really think that we are the only reason they haven't had amnesty passed.
And they the real question is, and you you ask why is the journal attacking me?
To me, the real question is I can't figure out why the Wall Street Journal thinks amnesty is the way to go.
I that's that that befuddles me.
I don't know how you call yourself a conservative and you are in favor of amnesty.
It just the two don't go together with me.
California is the future of this country and the Republican Party if we do amnesty, and that is plain as day for anybody to see.
And if somebody can look at that and not recognize it, I am really puzzled.
I don't know how you not see that.
But then again, who is it, Albert, that runs advertising in the Wall Street Journal.
You are still there, are you not, Albert?
Yes.
Okay, who runs advertising?
Who's buying advertising in the Wall Street Journal?
Uh different corporations, like corporations who want amnesty, low-skilled labor.
Big and small.
Yeah.
Big and small.
So that the journal has, I mean, just like any other business, they've got their clients.
Uh, and if you look at the journal editorial position over the years, it's always going to fall in line.
Sometimes they're right on the money.
I mean, they've Jigot and his buddies have written some of their best editorials lately in defending Apple against the attempt by the federal government to put a monitor in there 24-7 to guard against them violating antitrust law.
I mean, the jerk the editorials that they have written against Judge Denise Coate and this this.
It's a most amazing.
This judge has assigned one of her friends who has no experience in antitrust law to be the monitor for Apple in antitrust violations.
He's charging $1,100 an hour and is not qualified.
He's had to go hire another lawyer who is an expert in antitrust at another thousand dollars an hour.
Apple got a bill of 150 grand for 10 days.
They have to pay it.
The judge appoints to me, just a friend of hers.
And the journal has been exceptional in informing their readers about that circumstance.
But when it comes to amnesty, when it comes to immigration, the Chamber of Commerce, uh and and whoever is is running American business and the Republican establishment is calling the shots there, Albert.
And the Republican establishment, Chamber of Commerce, uh it it they're not, they they don't look at this as a political issue at all.
They're not look very not very much of one.
They're not looking at it ideologically.
This is pure cheap labor.
Pure, I mean, Tom Donahoe, the Chamber of Commerce guy's out again today or yesterday, and he's out, he's saying, the American people, American workers are either unqualified for the work we have, or they just refuse to do it.
And that's why we've got to pass amnesty.
I mean, it's it's pure selfishness.
The impact on the country apparently doesn't matter to them.
So it's not even, you know, the people that are pushing this, uh, they're not doing it because that's what conservatism is, or because they're conservatives.
This is strictly, you know, their own personal policy preference that's being plugged into a conservative framework and attempting to benefit from that when it when it really isn't.
Well, talk radio has a direct connection with the American people, Albert.
More than any other media, we have a direct connection, a bond of connection with our audience.
The journal does not have this bond with their readers.
Uh no, nobody else talk radio is unique in the bond that it creates with its audience.
And I could explain why in five minutes if you care.
But because of this bond, and because of the trust, when we tell them, when I tell them what amnesty is going to mean, they believe me, and they agree with it, and they let their members of Congress know they don't want any part of it.
And so the answer is there just too much democracy going on for people.
They're not happy with that.
Don't go away, Albert.
It's open line Friday.
Great to have you with us, folks, and back to the phones to Albert in San Francisco.
Okay, and I gave you a long-winded answer.
Did I get anywhere close to what you uh hope to hear?
Uh yes, yes.
Thanks a lot, Rush.
Anything else?
No.
No, well, yeah, uh well, I guess well, Riley, why O'Reilly bashes you, but why do you think Well that's the question you asked the caller last week and he didn't answer?
Um I I think just to probably just to probably say what you said earlier, just to show that he's not homophobic, racist, whatever the case may be.
That's what I think, but uh, you know, I'm not really sure.
Uh look, uh this is hoping you would get the right answer, because I can't say it.
I wish you could say it right.
Uh well.
If you know what it is, you say it.
I don't know.
Oh, you don't.
Okay.
No, I'm not.
Look, look, it's here's the thing.
Um, let me a lot of people in media are obsessed with their own image.
And they do everything they can to create one and live, but I don't I do not care about my image because of what I was talking about mere moments ago.
The bond of connection that I have with you people in the audience.
You know, you I don't I don't need an image for you to know who I am.
You listen here every day, you know exactly who I am, you know what I am and what I'm not.
You know when there's BS about me in the media, and I know you know, and that's that's enough for me.
I don't I'm not obsessed with with media campaign, PR image campaigns and that kind of thing.
That's my only concerns you, the audience.
Other people are really obsessed with that.
And the uh what look, whenever you hear somebody who you think is a conservative, say, look, I'm not one of those right wingers, I'm one of those extremists.
The reason they're saying that, because they don't want to be lumped in with the everyday criticism the media makes of conservatives.
I take that, by the way, as a badge of honor.
I I'm not troubled by it at all.
Then there's professional jealousy.
There's any number of things here to to explain it, but it it's largely professional calculation.
It has nothing to do with with image.
I I would just I just caution a lot of people that that whenever you're watching somebody into me, you think it's conservative.
Many times they're not really.
Anyway, Albert, I appreciate the call.
Let me move on.
Who's next, Snurdly?
Where are we going next?
done it.
John in Miami, your next open line Friday, great to have you.
Hello.
72 degree clear blue sky ditto, Rush.
And same here, man, same here.
Great to have you.
So um while I was on hold, I developed a name for the theory that I have, and it's the what are you gonna do about it theory that the administration has.
And it goes something like this.
Um the obvious answer that I see to a uh tyrannical dictator running the country, changing the laws is the courts.
And that would seem to be it would seem to me that every company that didn't get special dispensation by the administration would then have standing to challenge the favors that are being granted to everybody else.
In other words, the companies uh under a hundred.
So why then aren't people pursuing action uh against illegal activity?
I think the answer is easy.
Companies that are companies that have a hundred people or more are run by not reckless managers who have better things to do than pick a fight with the government who will then audit them, inspect them, what have you.
So that's uh what are you gonna do about it, theory?
How do they do?
Well, the problem one of the if I understand you, if I understood you correctly, one of the problems with going to court, if you're one of these businesses that you you would say has standing that's being irreparably harmed or harmed greatly by um what Obama is doing, I would I would I guess my answer would be the biggest reason they don't is they're fit they're afraid.
It's fear.
Everybody's afraid of this guy.
Everybody.
The Republicans inside the beltway are petrified.
They're petrified of Obama, they're petrified of the media.
Way too many people, if you ask me, are afraid of the media and afraid of Obama.
And the fear of Obama is racial.
They're just they're just scared to death of being called racists.
And that may sound simplistic, but I I beg you to not discount it.
You'll never have any of them admit it, by the way.
They won't even go so far as to admit it.
But it's abject fear of being called a racist, and then there's the real fear of suing, even if you even if you are granted standing, you can't compete with the money the Department of Justice has in defending the president.
You just can't.
You will take your country, a company, and bury it.
And so the prevailing attitude becomes one of survival.
Let's try to weather this and let's hope other aspects of our system deal with this.
Let's hope the political system deals with it.
Maybe other areas of the uh of the judiciary, maybe the state legislatures will at some point get serious with an Article V uh constitutional convention.
Uh but it's it's it's fear, and Obama's well aware of the paralysis that people have.
And he takes advantage of it fully.
You know, let me go back to uh something that the previous caller was asking about in terms of the Wall Street Journal and and attacking talk radio for freezing amnesty in its tracks.
I have had on several occasions, three different occasions, folks, meetings, two of them actual dinners, with either ranking representatives of high elected officials or elected officials themselves.
And they have done their best in one instance to persuade me that I was wrong, the way I was looking at immigration reform.
And the other two meetings did not try to tell me I was wrong.
They tried to tell me that I was not correctly understanding their objectives, that it wasn't amnesty, and they spent a lot of time detailing the minutiae of their proposals.
And it was stuff filled with green cards and e-verification and all of this gobbledygook bureaucracy that never stood a prayer.
But they believed it a hundred percent.
They thought it was the solution.
And at every one of these three meetings, and This is the point.
And they've taken each of them that I'm talking about here have taken place in the last three years.
At each of these meetings, high elected officials, not the Obama regime, but there have been Democrats at these meetings.
And in and I have been told, if, quote, if you call it amnesty, it's dead.
And they have sought to explain to me how it isn't amnesty.
And they have done their best to show me how it isn't amnesty.
It is going to take time for these people to be granted citizenship and blah, blah, blah.
And they've really gone to great lengths to try to persuade me.
They haven't succeeded because at the end of the day, it is amnesty what they're doing, even though they may not even admit it to themselves.
Now the point of this is the journal says that talk radio is killing it.
And these people wanted to talk to me because if you call it amnesty, it's dead.
Why?
Why does what I call it matter?
Now, in the journal's opinion, for some reason elected officials are afraid of me.
You know, that's a popular bit of conventional wisdom.
That Republicans are afraid of limbaugh.
So one day, I'm the de facto head of the party.
The other day, I'm just an entertainer.
Then the next week, I'm the de facto head.
And then the next week, I'm back to just being an entertainer.
But the journal is of the opinion that elected officials are simply afraid to incur my wrath.
Now, why?
What does that really mean?
Well, what it means is that who they're really afraid of is you.
Not me.
It's you.
I am one person.
Okay, so I get on the radio after they propose their amnesty bill and I rail against it.
Big whoop.
I'm one person.
Nobody's afraid of one person.
It's not me they're afraid of.
What they are angry at when you strip it all away, is the fact of this bond that I have with you, members of my audience.
You happen to believe what I tell you, which is very smart because I'm not lying to you.
I do not say things I don't believe for any reason.
I don't want to advance the things I believe on false premises.
I don't want to get a bunch of people supporting me on basis of lies.
I tell you exactly what I think about everything.
And those of you who end up believing it then become, I guess, a very vocal and big group of people who let your elected officials know, and that's what the journals actually editorializing against.
They don't think, let's put it this way.
I guess they think that if if talk radio weren't in existence, that you wouldn't think what you think.
If this show weren't on the air, then you you wouldn't care, and you'd be all for amnesty, and you wouldn't be bugging members of Congress and all that.
And it's a popular misconception that everybody's made since the first day of this program, which is that you are a bunch of Pied Pipers, and uh I'm a Pied Piper, you're you I'm a Svingali, and you're a bunch of mind-numb robots, and you're just executing my marching orders every day.
Even people on the right apparently think that.
And nothing could be further from the truth.
The truth of the matter is you believe what you believe.
I come along.
I happen to be in 1988, the first national media voice saying things a lot of people agreed with, and so I was simply validating what people already believed, giving them a little confidence in it.
They weren't alone, but you're not sponges and mind-numbed robots.
You're just the exact opposite.
You're among The most informed and educated, intelligent people in the country.
That's what bothers them, I think.
So they just conveniently blame talk radio for it.
But when these elected officials come to me and say, look, don't call it amnesty, because it's not, and you're going to kill it.
It means the same thing.
It means if I call it amnesty, you're going to believe it's amnesty.
You're going to because I'm saying it.
And then you're going to call members of Congress and they're going to end up being paralyzed.
And they just, if talk radio wasn't here, then none of that would happen, and they would get it sailed through like a hot knife through butter.
And I don't think that's the case at all.
I remember it wasn't too long after this show started, Time Magazine or Newsweek, one of the two, actually did a cover story on is there too much democracy?
Is there too much citizen participation?
It was a cover story.
I'm pretty sure it was a cover story.
It was after 1994.
Yeah, it was after the Republicans won the House for the first time in 40 years.
And it was, is there too much democracy?
Are there too many people participating?
And the presumption was that you didn't know what you were doing, that you were nothing much my numb robots, and you got me on the radio telling you Democrats bad, Republicans good, you swept the Democrats out.
Oh no, there's a problem with democracy, and it's all my fault.
Because if it weren't for me, you wouldn't be voting the way you're voting, thinking the way you're thinking.
That's what they don't get.
That that isn't the reason you do what you do.
I got them long here.
I've got to take a break.
Sit tight back after this.
Let me say one more thing about this, folks.
If if if you'll pardon me if you'll indulge me here.
As I I got an email during the break.
I've never been threatened at one of these meetings with senators, members of the House, uh, representatives from uh Bush administration.
I've never been threatened.
These dinners, these meetings have always been totally above board, and they have there has been an honest attempt by these people to persuade me that I'm wrong and that it isn't amnesty and so forth and so on.
And uh one of these meetings, one of the Democrats changed the subject, started to talk about the next election, and started asking me what I was gonna do, and he started talking to me in the language of electoral politics.
What are you gonna do about the demographic in Arizona and District 4?
I said, well, wait, wait, wait a minute.
I said, this may help you get you you guys don't understand.
I don't look at the country the way you do.
I do not tailor my message for this group here or that group that I don't come in here every day and say, you know what?
I'm a little light on women lately.
I better talk about women's.
I don't do that.
You guys do that.
You guys will come up and you'll come up with a campaign message or a supposed position or a piece of legislation, and you're you're trying to fool people.
I don't, I don't do that.
I I don't, I don't even see those demographic groups in my audience.
That to me, they're just human beings, they're people, they're men and women, they're adults, and they're Americans, and that's as far as it goes.
And this Democrat threw up and saying, oh, okay, okay, okay.
And he was happy, because he thought he had me.
Because I did not understand how elections are won.
And he may be right about that.
But I don't look at this radio show as winning elections.
I've in fact when I've talked about winning elections in this program and you know, pretend here that I'm a candidate, what have I said I'd always do?
Whether the group is Hispanic or women or homosexuals, I've got a message for every American in the country.
What I want the country to be.
And this is what I would tell you in hopes that you would vote for me.
And it wouldn't be tailored to whatever somebody's skin color is or their sexual orientation or any of that.
But that's what politics is.
But I'm not that.
And I said, you guys, I said it might help you to understand I I I'm not opposing what you guys want to do because I think my audience wants to hear me oppose it.
Now I oppose it because I really do.
And then I tell them why.
And if they believe me, they believe me.
But it there was it was crosstalk because they politicians do tailor ads and messages for groups of people.
Well, we're short on Hispanics, that's why we got to it.
I don't look at it that way at all.
And they do.
And it's time for another obscene profit timeout.
Don't go away.
We'll be right.
It was Time magazine, folks.
It was January 23rd, 1995, and the cover story headline was Is Rush Limbaugh Good for America.
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