Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And testing.
Oh, all right, not too bad.
Still fighting the ravages of the common cold virus.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Actually has worsened a bit overnight, but were I not to tell you, you wouldn't know.
Because of my high degree of commitment and professionalism.
Highly trained broadcast specialist and all wound up, ready to go.
It's Friday, so let's uh hit it live from the Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Oh, yeah.
All righty.
Open line Friday.
Where once again we extend an invitation to people that call a program to expand the boundaries.
Whatever.
The people who get through today want to talk about is where we go.
Whether I'm interested in it or not.
The only question is, will I fake caring?
Because I can do that.
I can be a Democrat.
I've learned it.
I've got it down pat.
I can be a Democrat in the next instant.
All you got to do is be able to fake caring.
And pretty much you can pull it off.
So the question is whether I will fake caring about what callers want to talk about or act like I don't care.
It just depends on each individual call.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882, the email address.
So is it any wonder?
So we have Il Papa hosting the uh the president.
Um still not convinced that the president thought he was going on vacation.
And when they rolled up to the Vatican, he said to the secret server, where are we?
He said, Where's the Vatican, sir?
Oh, I thought it's a vacation.
Well, all right, well, let's go in.
And there are two versions of what happened in the meeting between Il Papa and Obama.
And of course, now we're forced to have to make a choice as to who we believe.
Obama says that he and the Pope talked about just a coincidence, things that Obama talks about.
Income inequality, uh contraception, this kind of the Vatican says that uh the Pope kind of took Obama to school on the social issues and gave him some homework reading assignments.
That's right.
There are two distinct different versions of the meeting between the president and the Pope.
And as uh Dr. Krautheima pointed out, well, here we go.
What do we have here?
We've got we've got a man who is the spiritual leader of a billion people who believe he is infallible, versus a man who said, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, and if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.
Who are we gonna believe?
Kind of comes down to the Pope when you uh when you put it there.
Um, well, no, that's it's a none of Bloom is off the Messiah Rose.
I don't think there's anybody, I don't mean somebody, but I mean the number of people think Obama's still this messianic figure.
That's uh all by the wayside.
I mean 26% approval for Obamacare.
It is at an all-time low.
And I'm folks, I cannot emphasize this enough.
The real horrors of this law have not really impacted a majority of people yet.
Because of all the delays and the waivers, and when when when the real I don't know how to put it, when the meat of Obamacare actually makes itself known.
When people find out what this really is, it is going it's not gonna be a pretty sight.
And it is not going to bode well for the Democrats, no matter what.
Something also interesting.
Just a little juxtaposition.
Yesterday we had story after story after story on the latest crime wave in this country, and that crime wave is corrupt Democrat officeholders, mayors, state senators, you name it.
In fact, want to show you something on the dental cam.
Let me turn it off and zoom it in because the NRA, this is how you do it.
The NRA has come up with an Yeah, okay.
The NRA already out with an ad in California about San Francisco Democrat Leland Yee.
And I want to hold this up to you.
I'm going to describe it because those of you who don't have a dental cam, not going to be able to see it.
It's a picture, billboard-shaped, of a smiling, happy San Francisco Democrat Leland Yee.
On the left side, under his face, says State Senator and in red.
And 2006, A Plus, rated by the Brady campaign and National Gun Control Group on the right side of his face as you look at this, 2014, arrested by the FBI for trafficking firearms.
Are you ready?
There is the ad.
Now that is how you do it.
The NRA is already out.
Is that not a perfect-looking billboard?
There you have San Francisco's Democrat Leland Yee.
All right.
Now I will widen the picture from the Diddle Cam back out and turn it back on for those of you who subscribe.
And there we go.
So in addition to that, we had all these other mayors and stuff.
And what did ABC's World News Tonight open with last night?
Seven minutes with Chris Christie.
Worse than Obamacare and lying about the number.
They they opened with seven minutes.
In a 22-minute newscast, a seven-minute interview with Governor Christie over this Bridge Gate business and his own internal investigation, which exonerated him.
And that's the name of the game.
That is how the Democrats at ABC News decided to circle the wagons yesterday.
So we'll have more detail on the Pulp, by the way, and uh and also this crime wave that is sweeping.
By the way, I've run to a bunch of people.
I offered a theory uh yesterday.
Because a lot of people say, you know what, there's not one Republican here that has been stung by the FBI.
Every one of these major elected figures indicted for corruption, gun trafficking in this case, child pornography, and other case, they're all Democrats.
And I said, uh, and people were saying, man, Rush, this is like a rogue operation, and the FBI is part of the regime, and here they are turning out Democrats.
Well, it's possible.
I didn't say it is.
I said it's possible that what they're doing, they know these guys are in trouble.
They know they're eventually going to be discovered, so let's just get rid of them now in late March, rather than have this come out closer to the election.
And then I said, we'll know for sure, if that's what this is, if the Republicans, if any Republicans' indictments are announced, say in September or October, and I can't tell you the number of people who sent me notes last night, said I think you're wrong about this.
I don't think they're already Republicans.
I think I uh I it must have been eight people that told me they think this is strictly Democrats, and this is a tip of the iceberg.
And so much hope there is, I'm telling you, what this means to me is all these people were just they do not they want this to be a rogue FBI.
They want this to be the FBI working undercover even behind the screens of the regime trying to undermine the regime to protect the country.
There's so much hope in the fact that that's what this represents.
And I hope they're right.
I hope they're right.
We'll find out it isn't gonna take very long.
Now, Larry King, uh, ladies and gentlemen, who was bumped from CNN a Few years ago, replaced by Piers Morgan, appeared on the Rubin report.
It's an internet show.
And it's hosted by Dave Rubin.
I have no idea who Dave Rubin is.
I don't know what his internet website is.
But Larry King will apparently go anywhere in order to be interviewed.
And they were talking about the state of CNN today.
Now you got to keep in mind here as you listen to this.
You gotta keep in mind that King was canned.
Don't care how they dressed it up, resigned, retired, after years and years of service, and here's the picture to go watch, and five free stitches for the wound of your choice for all the great work you did.
It was fired.
Contract wasn't renewed.
They said, Lair, we're moving on.
So now Lair is out there, and he's talking about CNN and their coverage of the Malaysian jet and just in general.
They'd advanced nothing in that story but conjecture.
It was breaking supposition, breaking speculation.
The other day, while CNN and some other cable news networks, I'm sure, were doing airplane coast to coast, wire to wire.
Ten people in Washington were killed in a mudslide.
The president of the United States is in the Netherlands.
He's talking to China about trying to get China to at least stay neutral in the Russian situation.
No coverage.
That is abysmal.
And no coverage of the Democrat crime wave.
By the way, the Christie story, just to put it in perspective, that was the first seven minutes of ABC's world news tonight, it's five months old.
The Chris Christie Bridge Gate story is five months old.
So here's Larry King ripping in the CNN.
Nothing new.
He prayed, in fact, he's late to the game on this because others have preceded him.
However, from an unfazed Washington Post, news speed data shift search for missing Malaysian jet liner nearly 700 miles away from thought to be target area.
They don't know the first, they still don't know what's going on.
The Malaysian Prime Minister comes on and says, hey, it landed out there, it crashed out there, there's no loss, there's a total loss of life, there's nobody, and it's just over with, and it's it's it's the end of it.
And so they started looking where this guy said everything went down, and all of a sudden now, the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370 shifted to another section of the Southern Indian Ocean on Friday after new analysis by investigators indicated the aircraft was traveling faster than previously thought and therefore ran out of fuel much sooner than previously thought.
But wait, but wait.
Wasn't there scientific consensus that the plane went down in the earlier place?
But that doesn't get to the point.
CNN must be overjoyed.
What this is.
Well, what are you talking about it for?
I'll tell you why.
Because the textbook example of how the drive-by media and their experts can be so certain one day.
And then the next day, the previous day never happened.
So certain on one day, so decisive.
This is where it is.
This is what happened.
And the next day, uh oh, what we told you yesterday, uh, forget it, it's no longer operable.
They just switch on a dime.
Meaning they don't know anything.
They still haven't any idea, and they're all over the ballpark.
So the debris search now moves 700 miles.
CNN is just orgasmic.
It's just keeping the story alive.
It keeps being reborn.
It was only a week ago that we were told Malaysian authorities and their experts knew exactly where the plane must have gone.
Remember because of that ping.
This in Mar set in StarMet, in Setmar, whatever satellite firm in the UK, they had tracked that final ping, and then they had compared it with Doppler Reflections.
And they compared that with the uh um the astral plane configuration on the backside, and that told them where it went down four hours from Perth, Australia.
And that's where now all of a sudden forget that.
Well, wait a minute, what about the debris there?
Well, forget that, because we found a whole bunch more debris at the other place.
There was scientific consensus, folks.
Just like global warming, where this plane went down.
Now forget it.
It's now 700 miles away.
So the anchors at CNN and the directors, the producers all have to just be ecstatic because the story is reborn.
Meanwhile, all this other news continues to happen.
And I is it about time that we start searching for America instead of this airplane.
I frankly, folks, am more interested in where our country has gone.
And I wish we would have just as intense a focus on what has happened and where our country went down as there has been on this airplane.
I will develop this as the program unfolds.
Take a break here, we'll come back and explore the dilemma that we all have over who to believe about what happened when Obama, the Messiah, met Ilpapa.
Fine and dandy, it is open line Friday.
Andrew Malcolm, writing at Investors.com, President Obama, whose poll approval numbers hover weekly around 40% among Americans met Thursday with Pope Francis, whose approval numbers among the same people are at 76%.
And now you know why Obama sought the meeting.
He wanted to bask in the glow of the more popular figure.
The two elected leaders exchanged presents.
The vicar of Christ gave the ex-state senator a copy of his book, The Joy of the Gospel.
The 44th president and first American Messiah gave the Pope a box of fruit and vegetable seeds from his wife's garden.
Did you know that?
Did you just hear me say that?
The Pope gave Obama copy of his book, The Joy of the Gospel.
The president gave the Pope a box of fruit and vegetable seeds from his wife's garden.
The first meeting of the new Pope and President Obama closely watched because of the Democrats' concerted efforts to bring religious institutions to heel in this country.
Primarily through his requirements of his botched Obamacare legislation, forcing some people to violate their conscience.
Now, according to Obama's version of the Vatican meeting, their discussions focused on poverty and income inequality.
Which, if that were true, would fit well with Obama's political programs domestically.
On his papal discussions, Obama was vague on health care details.
And we actually didn't talk a whole lot about social schisms in my conversations with his holiness Obama said.
In fact, that really was not a topic conversation.
Obama stated the Pope didn't touch in detail on his Affordable Care Act, not a, you know, and note the fudge words in detail.
Obama said the Pope didn't touch in detail.
Now the Vatican's version of the Obama encounter was strikingly different.
The two men had a cordial meeting, a spokesman said.
Their talks involved a discussion on questions of particular relevance for the church in that country, such as the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life, and conscientious objection.
Neither side mentioned the Obama administration's legal Prosecution of the little sisters of the poor for the nuns' opposition to birth control mandates.
The Vatican version said nothing about the alleged Obama Pope Francis income inequality discussion.
What do you bet that they didn't discuss income inequality?
What do you bet?
Look at we got two completely different versions of what happened here.
We really do.
Obama came out and made it sound like the conversation was all about Obama's political agenda.
And how much the Pope is in favor of it indirectly.
Breaking news, ladies and gentlemen, from CNN.
Searchers have found something.
Period.
That's it.
We have found something.
They don't know what it is, but something has been found.
Greetings and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, open line Friday.
And as I observed yesterday, isn't this interesting?
Here's the here's here's President Obama, and he shows up at the Vatican yesterday, spends uh few minutes with the Pope.
The media is all over it.
They want to know everything that was said.
What did Obama say?
What did the Pope say?
What did the president say when the Pope said what he said?
And what did Obama say when the Pope said what he said?
What did the Pope say when Obama said what he said?
All this happened in less than two hours, and yet for twenty years, Barack Obama was in Reverend Wright's church and not any interest whatsoever in what Obama heard in that church.
I find it fascinating.
Let's go to the audio sound bites.
Because I'm gonna tell, you know, the this whole notion of income inequality and so forth.
Obama comes out and says that basically we talked about my political.
He didn't use those words, but income inequality and all these other things are Obama's agenda.
You know what Obama knows?
Oh, I'm gonna tell you what I think Obama and the and his handlers think.
And I'm I'm a little out on a limb here.
Actually, Friday, I do want to start with sound bites four and five instead of skipping them.
I I admittedly am out on the limb here.
I'm going to tell you what I think, based on my intelligence, guided by experience, coupled with how flawlessly I am able to perceive, understand, know, and predict liberals.
The Pope's at 76% approval.
Obama's sitting there barely 40% and plunging 26% approval for his signature piece of government reform legislation.
So, in a major twist, used to be world figures wanted to get near Obama and bask in his light and benefit by association.
Yesterday it was the other way around.
It was Obama attempting to bask in the light of the Pope.
But I don't think Obama has much love for Christianity, Catholic Church.
And I say that based simply on his total disregard for their religious beliefs when it comes to his health care plan and particularly abort fashions and contraception.
It seems like Obama is enjoying sticking them in the eye.
And I think, as uh is the case with a lot of leftists, the Catholic Church is reviled and hated because it is.
You can't move them.
They are not a political organization that responds to external pressure and either modifies, modernizes, changes, or what have you, according to the political and cultural mores of the day.
The church is what it is.
The left hasn't been able to move it at all on the things that they think are crucial to eliminating all judgment.
Haven't been able to move them on uh on female priests, priest marriage, gay marriage, abortion, you name it, the church doesn't move.
And even this latest Pope, when they thought they had a reformer, because the guy's out there spouting economic policy that is very much collectivism.
Oh, wow, maybe we got a guy we can work with here, and he's not working with them.
So I think there's some resentment.
I don't think there's any doubt about that, but Obama's still got to bow down and go in there because he's in deep trouble.
But I also think that they really believe that they can come out after this meeting and characterize it however they want.
And the Vatican's not really going to embarrass them by calling them liars or maybe even something softer.
They figure that the Vatican will put out their version, but that the Vatican they don't think the Vatican will pick a fight with them.
They don't think Pope Francis will pick a fight.
So Obama can say, oh, yeah, we talk about income inequality and uh poverty and raising the minimum wage.
I and the Tea Party, whatever else he wants to say that they talked about.
And he knows that the Vatican is going to put out their version.
It may be totally different, but they're not going to pick a fight.
And Obama knows he's got the domestic media on his side, so whatever he says happened in there, they'll dutifully report, and he'll carry the day.
And it didn't work.
And it didn't work because Obama and the Democrats and his political party today have nowhere near the moral stature of Pope Francis.
Nowhere near the moral stature of the Catholic Church, and they know it.
And it frosts them, I think.
I think it really, really bugs them.
Now let's listen to a couple of telling sound bites from Obama.
While Diane Sawyer was uh speaking with Chris Christie for seven minutes on a five-month-old story about Bridgegates.
Scott Pelley, CBS Evening News, was interviewing Obama, and they aired it today on CBS this morning.
We got two bites.
Scott Pelley said, can you give me a sense of what it's like to be in the presence of Pope Francis?
Now, do you think that question irritates Obama?
Do you think Obama says to himself, what are you talking about?
Why aren't you asking the Pope what it's like to be in my presence?
But of course he can't say that.
So he takes the question, sees it as an opportunity to portray the Pope as Obama wants the Pope to be seen, i.e., a fellow Democrat.
Here's how the first soundbite sounds.
He's a wonderful man.
He projects the kind of humility and kindness that is consistent with my understanding at least of Jesus' teachings.
He seems to have a good sense of humor.
I think that his simplicity and his belief in the power of the spiritual over the material reflects itself in everything that he says and does.
And I I suspect, my senses is that he's a little bit uncomfortable with all the trappings of being Pope.
Really?
Well, now we know that Obama's not the slightest bit uncomfortable with the trappings of being president.
He'll think nothing of taking 900 people to The Hague.
What did I see?
45 automobiles to get his entourage around and nine airplanes.
I got the number nine in my head.
I know it's 900 people.
Now, this bit about the Pope, my sense is it Pope a little bit uncomfortable with all the trappings.
He doesn't have to have any sense of it.
That's been reported from the first week of Pope Francis's papacy.
He made it plain he didn't like the trappings.
He went out and walked among the people without the Pope Mobile.
He didn't move into the papal apartments, which are lavish and very luxurious.
Made a big deal.
Obama didn't sense anything.
All he's got to do is be told by people that read the news.
That the Pope has eskewed all that stuff.
But you see how Obama, given the question, wants to be able to portray the Pope as just another Democrat.
So Pelle, after hearing Obama say, my sense is he's a little bit uncomfortable with all the trappings of being Pope.
Pelley said, embarrassed by them, do you think?
Well, You know, that that's not his style.
And that is part of why I think he has been so embraced around the world.
Because people get a sense that first and foremost he sees himself as a priest and as a disciple of Christ and as somebody who is concerned with the least of these.
And you know, nothing's more powerful than someone who seems to uh live out their convictions.
So Pelley was desperate to know if the Pope was embarrassed by the trappings.
Does he live like the Koch brothers, Mr. President?
Is his house as nice as the Koch brothers?
Does the way he walk around as he dressed the way the Koch brothers dress?
Is he embarrassed by it?
Oh, he's like a typical rich Republican.
And over, oh no, no, no, no.
One of the reasons it's been so embraced is that he's got a sense first and foremost he's a priest and so forth.
So now we go to Fox News.
And Bill Hemer, this is yesterday, spoke with Fox News analyst Father Jonathan Morris about Obama's meeting with the Pope.
And Hemer said 52 minutes, it went longer than some people expected.
What's your sense about how this conversation would have gone with each man?
The Vatican released a summary, and it was a surprising summary.
What did they say about things in the United States?
That the Pope expressed concern about religious liberty.
We know what he's talking about there.
About conscientious objection, we know what he's talking about there.
He also talked about immigration reform.
Those are pretty clear things, as well as human trafficking.
But those are hot button issues, I would say not expected by most journalists.
Absolutely not expected by most journalists because most journalists expect to believe Obama's version, which is they talked about things that matter to Obama.
And this is what I mean.
The Pope, the Vatican put out their own version of things.
They didn't pick a fight with Obama.
The regime puts out what happened, the Vatican puts out their version of it.
Nobody's calling anybody a liar here, but it's now a question of who do you believe?
And there's no contest when it comes to that.
So the Pope expressed concern about religious liberty.
And uh Father Morris said, Well, we know what that's about.
And we do.
That's Obamacare, hobby lobby, any number of things, uh, involving birth control pills and contraception and religious freedom being denied.
Umcieness objection, we know what that's about.
Immigration reform.
And then uh Hammer said, Well, there was a book that was given to Obama, right?
It's the Pope's encyclical, and there's a statement in there, a phrase or a quote on behalf of the Pope, who says it's not a progressive position to take a human life.
I'm paraphrasing, but that's essentially what it says.
It's not a progressive position to take a human life.
That, folks, what do you what do you call that?
The Pope gives Obama a book that makes that point has that passage paraphrased.
That's kind of a slap.
It's the Pope.
Look, I know you're a liberal.
I know you're progressive, but there's nothing progressive.
There's nothing far-reaching.
There's nothing modern, there's nothing cool, nothing hip about taking a life.
And here is Father Jonathan Morris' reply.
It's not progressive to solve problems by taking human life.
And the Pope gave this to him basically as reading material.
And uh President Obama responded by saying, I will probably read this in the Oval Office.
I don't know if that was a nervous or uncomfortable response to a rather surprising thing, the Pope giving you reading material.
But he also in that document talks about some of the things that they agree on, including making sure that we don't just go to a kind of a radical capitalism that leaves aside the poor.
So they do share quite a few things, but um the Pope did not pull any punches, that's for sure.
Yeah, and they agree with radical capitalism that leaves aside the uh the poor.
Um radical capitalism.
Well, anyway, that's basically a summation.
Now we'll go to domestic analysis of all this.
Just a couple of more sound bites.
Gotta take a quick time out, but we'll be back before you know it.
And I'm gonna get some phone calls in here in the first hour.
Can somebody tell me where radical capitalism is practiced?
Is anybody know where there is radical capitalism happening?
As Father John Morris uh described it, a radical capitalism that leaves aside the it ain't us.
How many trillions of dollars have been transferred from the working to the producer to the producers to the poor in this country just since 1964?
It's a shocking, it's like $10 trillion that we've spent, folks.
Don't he leave the poor aside?
Anyway, Juan Williams not happy with the Vatican version of things.
Not happy, what at all.
He was on special report last night, the All-Star panel.
And Chris Wallace said, "Won, you think that in a sense that these were two world leaders each trying to accentuate the positive to their home base?" This is a tale of polarized American politics being superimposed on a meeting between the Pope and the President.
What we have is a situation where then the Vatican puts out a statement that was probably written before the meeting, Chris, that was influenced by the American bishops who wanted a statement that would touch on these controversial issues and help them here at home.
Oh, I get it.
So Juan Williams thinks that the American bishop somehow hijacked the Vatican's version.
The American bishops went in there and they wrote the Vatican version of the meeting of the Pope and Obama before the meeting took place to make sure that their domestic anti-Obamacare agenda was in the Vatican's version.
The American bishops somehow went in hijacked the Vatican version.
They wrote it without the Pope knowing, and without anybody in the in the Pope's office knowing before Obama even got there.
Next up, Dr. Gradema.
And uh this was uh Chris Wallace.
So, Charles, uh any questions, any comments about this?
On the one hand, you've got the Bishop of Rome, the Holy See, of whom a billion co-religualists believe in his infallibility.
On the other hand, you got a man who said, if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.
If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
So who are you gonna choose?
That's an excellent point.
You got the Pope, he's infallible to a billion people.
On the other hand, you got a guy who said if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor.
Even the normally reserved and buttoned-downed Fox All-Stars had to let go with some some laughter.
But don't you just love these conspiracies?
Yeah, the American bishops, they hijacked the Vatican Report.
They went in there and they wrote it before the meeting even took place.
That's what had to happen.
Because there's no way that our young president could possibly be embarrassed this way.
For real, the bishops.
By the way, this this the question of playing to their home base.
Um the bishops playing to their base, their political base, the Pope playing to his base.
It is the American media which is trying to attach American politics to the Catholic Church, not the other way around.
And that's the problem.
The American left has been trying to attach its politics to the church and influence the church to change, and the church has told them to go pound sand for decades.
And the American left is hellbent.
They just think the church is another political organization.
They just got to keep working on and working on it.
Meanwhile, the the uh I'm sure the Pope is mindful of politics.
Don't misunderstand, but it's not like the Pope's got to play to his base.
I mean, he's elected, yeah, but by the College of Cardinals, and there is no impeachment.
And I have to run for re-election.
I mean, to compare these two guys, two elected leaders there's no comparison in these two in that sense.
Brief.
Brief break here, folks, at type will be right.
And we are back.
Folks, I'm sorry, I really intended to get into a phone call in uh in this hour, but didn't make it.
So we'll uh we'll take even more calls in the next hour than we normally would.
Obamacare at 26% approval.
And I I'll tell you, I think this is an AP poll, by the way.
It's APGFK, and I'm gonna I think there are some Democrats that didn't pay attention to Selinda Lake earlier this week and now shocked over this.