All Episodes
Previous Next
July 30, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:32
July 30, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
With talent on loan from God, I am Rush Limbaugh, and this is the Rush Limbaugh program, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Thank you so much for being with us.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882.
Now, I want to clarify this impeachment, Mr., because Snerdley is exactly right.
Rush, the proof of what you say is how the media is already dealing with you, and he's exactly right.
I have never come out for impeachment, and yet I have.
I have never made a call for impeachment.
I have never demanded the House Republicans get going on this, and yet I am part of the conservative talk radio faction leading charge against the tyrant president.
Haven't said a word about it.
This is exactly what the media is going to be doing with everybody.
Here's what I think.
And I fall right in line with my friend Andrew McCarthy, who's really got all this started.
He wrote a book about this called Faithless Execution.
And his argument is real simple.
Impeachment is a political thing.
It's not legal in the modern era.
And until a political case is made, any attempt is pointless.
And the political case being made is what Jeff Sessions is talking about.
Jeff Sessions is claiming that Obama is acting in a lawless fashion.
Now, what is high crimes and misdemeanors?
Let me tell you what McCarthy, how Andy basically defines it.
He writes that his book argues that there is a crucial step in between the realization that high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed and the issuance of credible calls for impeachment.
The political case has to be built, that presidential lawlessness threatens our Constitution, our liberties, our security, and our standing as a republic under the law.
So the real question, high crimes and misdemeanors, equals, is a president's lawlessness and unfitness so thoroughgoing that we can no longer trust him with the power of his office?
If you want to know what high crimes and misdemeanors is, that's a pretty good way of getting there.
Can we no longer trust him with the power?
Is he using his power in vast expansion of what it really is?
And there's no question that that is happening.
But then there's the low-information voter out there who may not have the foggiest idea.
You're going to have to reach them.
You're going to have to reach Democrats.
Impeachment's going to have to be a bipartisan thing if it's to ever happen.
And we're so far from that.
And the Republican fear is that any real talk of impeachment is going to further the partisan divide and make the line of demarcation even wider, meaning the sides get even further apart.
But it's, I mean, the reality is that the political case could be made, but the political case can't be made by people like me.
It can't be made by people on Fox.
The political case has got to be made by political people.
And that just isn't going to happen.
It just isn't going to happen.
And I realize this, which is one of the reasons I'm not calling for it.
However, I want to be very clear on something here.
I do not accept the conventional wisdom that moving forward is instant death for the Republicans.
And I just went through this, so I'm not going to go through it point by point word by word.
But every political calculation the regime has made this year has blown up in their face.
And the greatest example is all these kids, unaccompanied children.
The reason this is happening is twofold.
Well, hell, there's actually a bunch of reasons, but I think there are two primary reasons.
One is to goad the Republicans into impeaching because Obama and the Democrats think that Slam Dunk win for them.
Second thing is use kids and you soften the opposition to the whole notion of illegal immigration because nobody wants to do anything to harm the children.
Witness the way Hamas uses children in the battle with Israelis.
I mean, even now, the children dying in Gaza are dying because Hamas is putting them in harm's way.
The Israelis are getting all the blame for it.
And the Israelis have their own PR problem.
They don't quite know how to deal with it because they're dealing with idiots in the media who have closed minds about what's happening over there.
I'll have sound bites to prove it later.
But the faces of children, you don't even need to see the faces, really.
All you need to hear is it's unaccompanied children that are fleeing war-torn, poverty-stricken, just horribly ravaged homelands.
And they're seeking safety.
And they're seeking milk.
And they're seeking a quality life.
Who are we to say, no, you can't come.
The calculation is that even the most hardline anti-immigration activist will soften when it's kids.
Well, that didn't work out, did it?
It blew up in their face.
It blew up in their face in Murietta, California.
Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, just found out that illegal alien children are being dumped in Indiana.
He found out in the media.
The regime didn't even tell him.
The regime is not telling governors that they're dumping these kids.
It's blowing up in their face.
It is not resulting in a softened attitude toward illegal immigration.
And I think impeachment would work out the same way.
But it's academic because it isn't going to happen.
But I want to go further and make one thing abundantly clear.
While I, El Rushbo, have not once advocated for this, despite the fact the media is putting me at the head of that class doing it, I do think it is a mistake politically for the Republicans to take it off the table.
There is no politics to be gained by taking it off the table.
The fact that they think there is is an illustration of just how deeply depressed they are.
I contend to you that the Republicans, for some reason, are suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.
After years of being called racist and bigots and sexists and extremists and hate mongers, they're just cowed.
They are none of that, but they don't know how to deal with it.
And they think their consciousness every day is that that's what people think of them.
That's not good, folks, for a political party and its elected officials, many of them, not all, to be running around with that kind of guilt and thinking there's no way out of it and so forth, and they're being that purposely maligned.
Put yourself in that position personally.
Imagine that everywhere you went.
Try this as an exercise.
Everywhere you go, you walk into a restaurant alone or with friends or with your spouse or whatever, or you walk into a store or you walk into a movie theater or wherever.
Imagine that everybody there who sees you thinks you're a racist bigot swine.
Well, I think that's what the Republicans think, that people think of them.
And they are hell-bent to prove it's not true.
And they're engaging in a lot of what I call negative action to prove it.
What is negative action?
By announcing there won't be any impeachment.
See, we don't hate the president because he's black.
We don't hate the president at all.
We're not raising this.
Not only do we not want to impeach him, but we're telling you right now we won't.
Please love us.
Negative action.
They're trying to gain credit for not doing something.
No greater telltale sign of the full defensive position the media have put them in and the Democrat Party after years and years of bombardment.
So they really think that they announced publicly there will not be any impeachment as though, all right, you guys aren't nearly as bad as we thought.
Okay, we'll think about voting for you.
It doesn't work that way.
But that's what they're hoping for.
They're hoping that by saying, no, hey, we're not going to do that.
All right, then you're not as bad as I thought.
Okay, we'll listen.
But when they take it off the table in any negotiation, you take something off the table you have just given up.
You've got to keep your options available.
Same thing, there was a guy, what was his name, Scalise, not sure, who announced earlier this week, under questioning, by the way, it might have been on Fox News Sunday, that there wouldn't be a government shutdown.
Why say that?
Why take that off the table?
You know what that means?
Jeff Sessions thinks the way to deal with a lawless president is to deny him the money to do what he wants to do.
And Congress has that power.
Every dime spent in this country originates in the House of Representatives.
Obama can sign everything he wants, but if the House doesn't authorize the money for it, it's academic.
Well, a government shutdown is what would happen theoretically if the Republicans exercise their power of the purse.
There's no reason in July to say that there won't be a government shutdown in October unless you think that the people will hate you less.
If you're running around carrying the baggage at Republican, that the people already hate you because of all the other government shutdowns, that you can score points by saying there won't be one.
Sorry, but that doesn't convert anybody.
It doesn't win you any support.
All it does is weaken your position.
Mr. Limbo, are you saying that you're for government shutdown?
No, can you listen to what I'm saying?
I'm talking about in a strategic negotiation.
You never give up that kind of an option.
You always make the other side think it's possible.
Same thing with impeachment.
Do you think Obama's doing the right thing by unilaterally getting rid of only our nuclear weapons?
I mean, that's like saying, if we get rid of ours, we'll show the Soviets and the rest of the world that we don't mean them any harm and they'll get rid of theirs.
Doesn't work that way, does it?
Never has worked that way, has it?
And yet that's what Obama wants to do.
He wants to unilaterally reduce our stockpiles, and I don't think he cares what the Russians do because what's on Obama's mind is America and his transformation of it.
So you don't take impeachment off the table and you don't take, you don't, in the middle of this, signal to the president that you will not deny him the money necessary for him to do this.
That's just, you know, Jeff Sessions is right.
Build the case for how the president's acting in a lawless manner.
You build the case that his lawlessness equals unfitness so thoroughgoing that we can't trust him any longer with the power of the job.
And if you believe that, then you do what you can to contain that behavior.
And one of the ways you contain it is the power of the purse by denying the executive branch the money to implement whatever these cockamaming ideas are.
If you take that off the table, well, you're just signaling to Obama that you're not going to take one step towards stopping him.
And so why should he stop?
I think the Republicans are making a repeated error.
The reason the establishment Beltway Republicans hate us conservatives, ladies and gentlemen, is Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat.
They think that's what happens if they nominate a conservative candidate.
They don't see Ronald Reagan and two landslide wins.
They see Goldwater.
So they say, we can't have a conservative.
Look at that.
I mean, Goldwater, we're in a landslide defeat.
And then they look at the impeachment of Clinton, and they think that that led to all kinds of embarrassments and losses and so forth.
But it is a lie that the Clinton impeachment hurt the Republicans in the next election.
Impeachment did not hurt the Republicans any more than Amnesty helped them in 86, which it didn't.
Okay, enough of that.
We've got to move on to other things.
We get back from the break, so sit tight.
We'll do that.
Just wanted to clarify what all.
We go to Denver.
This is John.
Great to have you, sir.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
How are you?
I'm glad to be on here.
Thank you for allowing me to put my two cents in words.
Thank you.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing fabulous.
I'm here in the mile-high city, and it's rained, so the smoke is clear, so I can breathe today.
Well, congratulations.
I came, I've been thinking of a very truthful and simple method of answering a question that any Republican might be asked about whether they support impeachment of President Obama.
And I believe it's also one that most Democrats, certainly I would say except for one in particular, could be in favor of, and that would be President Joe Biden.
He always reminded me of Dan Roden Rowan, and I don't even think that the Democrats want him, otherwise he would be the presumptive nominee for president rather than the government.
See, don't go making rash assumptions.
I think, and I don't know, but I mean, to make a blanket assumption that Democrats don't want Biden, I think, is to fall prey to the conventional wisdom that everybody wants Hillary.
And I am here to tell you that there are a lot of Democrats that don't want any part of Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton anywhere near the White House again.
Now, you wouldn't know that by accessing the drive-by media, but they are not universally loved.
Consequently, or not consequently, alternatively, there are a lot of Democrats who think that Joe Biden has been a pretty damn good loyal guy to Obama, even though Biden kind of stepped in it on gay marriage and forced their hand.
And even though he's a walking gaffe machine, at these two conventions, there has been no better endorsement of Barack Obama than the ones he got from Biden, including the ones he got from his wife.
Biden, if anything, is a, I mean, the one thing Biden knows how to do is kiss butt.
There's nobody better at it if they stand in the way of where he wants to go, and he's superb at it.
And I happen to know there are a lot of Democrats, I don't know if they're enough to elect him or not, but that think he needs to be at least shown some gratitude for his loyalty.
He's never tried to undercut him.
He has never done anything other than back up, buttress, and do whatever he can to prop Obama up at times when it's been tough.
Now, as it relates to impeachment, that would not be a factor.
Who would become the VEP?
If they're really serious at some point about impeaching Obama, it's not going to be, oh my God, we can't do it because it's going to be Biden.
Now, we don't want to give Biden a leg up on the presidential race in 2016.
If that's a factor, then they're not serious about it.
If you ever hear that we can't impeach Bob and give us Biden, then you know they're not serious about impeachment.
Impeachment's a very serious thing.
That's why they have it thrown around here as though it's just the next Social Security spending bill.
Kind of does it a disservice.
But, John, I appreciate the call.
I'm glad that you took the time and I appreciate it.
Stephen A. Smith was hired, like I was, by ESPN.
And Stephen A. Smith was hired and put on an opinion show in the morning on the network ESPN2.
He was hired because he says outrageous things.
Apparently not, though.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I have just been convinced.
I already was, let me put it that way.
I have just had the exclamation point attached to my being convinced that the Obama administration has chosen sides, and the side they've chosen is Hamas.
AP reports breaking news.
White House condemns Israel for the latest attack of UN school in Gaza Strip.
Now, the White House knows, ladies and gentlemen, that Hamas is using schools and hospitals As military outposts.
Already three schools have been discovered with rockets.
You remember how you found rockets in your school one day, right?
You remember that time your janitor showed you?
They are planting weapons that they intend to use offensively in hospitals.
And they're advertising the fact.
They're letting the Israelis know that this is where the ammunition that they're using is being stored, schools and hospitals.
This is why the Israelis are sending 20-minute warning shots before they attack.
The administration knows all this.
The administration knows what Hamas is doing.
The administration knows where Hamas is putting its armaments.
The administration knows that Hamas is killing its own children with this behavior, and yet they blame Israel.
And I'll tell you again: there's a predisposition to hating Israel or disliking, opposing, whatever in this administration.
There can be no doubt about it now.
But then now to invoke the children again, it's a repeat of what's happening here at the border.
The invocation of children anywhere is used to eliminate and silence and nullify any opposition.
So if it is tens of thousands of children crossing our border, shut up.
It's children for God's sake.
Where is your humanity?
And let them in.
So Hamas puts their own children in known targets.
Israel warns at 20-minute intervals, get out, we're hitting the target.
Hamas leaves their children there.
How dare Israel kill children on purpose?
Damn those Israelis, they hate children.
It's clear as a bell what has happened.
This is just awful, folks.
This is plain and simple, awful that this kind of attitude would be engaged in by us towards an ally.
And the drive-by media routinely now asks every Israeli guest, essentially, so why are you killing children?
Don't you have any shame?
Can't you stop with the killing of children?
And Hamas applauds.
PR victory after PR victory.
I watched this morning, does the name Hanan Ashrawe ring a bell?
I've been watching her.
She's a Palestinian spokeswoman, and I've been watching her since the 70s.
Imagine my shock when I learned that Peter Jennings had had an affair with her during his days as a foreign correspondent, by the way, when he was posted over there back in the trench coat days, back when every foreign correspondent had to wear the, I mean, I think that there was a, obviously the mall had a journalism clothing outfit store that was only available to journalists.
And in there was the approved journalist trench coat because they all wore one.
Well, now that's other things now.
But back in those days, Jennings wore his trench coat and he had an affair with Henan Shrawi.
And I learned that because I couldn't figure out it.
It seemed like whenever she was on ABC, there was never any criticism of the Palestinians.
Matter what it was.
There was never any criticism of the Palestinians or of Yasser Arafat, or any of this.
At any rate, I saw her on TV today and she's still bleeding.
The same old stuff and she's out there.
Why are the Israelis killing the children, the children?
They don't know how many children died this morning because of the Israelis.
I'm watching this and it's just everywhere.
So, as far as these people are, the Israelis are targeting and murdering the children.
How dare they?
And it's Hamas that straps bombs to their children.
It's Hamas that puts their children in these targets.
It's Hamas that makes targets out of hospitals.
Everybody knows it, and yet they continue to report a why and then challenge every Israeli guest with the lie.
Oh well well no, Netanyahu is not backing down.
But don't forget now, as I pointed out yesterday, they see, Netanyahu is no different than your average tea party person.
He's a vile, hateful conservative right-winger.
Oh, by the way hey, Obama's reaction to Boehner's lawsuit today.
Obama's out there.
You know what.
You know what.
We just need to stop the hating.
It's time to stop the hate.
What is this?
High school?
It is high school.
We need to stop the hating, meaning the only thing driving the lawsuit against Obama is the Republicans' hatred for him.
He does, he knows his audience.
The low information.
You know what?
Speaking of low information, how many of you have seen the movie Idiocracy?
Have you seen it?
Snirdly, you really need.
Have you?
Have you?
Have you guys seen it?
You really need to find this I'm.
Everybody sings Netflix's praises.
I can't even figure out how to log into Netflix but but but, but I can't.
Oh, through ITunes I can get in, but I can't log in anywhere else but ITunes.
But I don't want to.
Well, look at, I don't want to rag Netflix, but the search feature doesn't work either.
Okay, they come out with the latest issue of House Of Cards.
I'll just give you House Of Cards hit in February.
So I go to Netflix on Apple TV.
I put in House Of Cards, sorry, no results.
What is this?
I know it's there.
You know where I found it.
New releases I might like well okay fine, but why?
Why doesn't House Of Cards in a search term return it anyway?
I know there's not.
I'm take it back.
I love Netflix.
I'm not ripping Netflix.
It's fine and dandy if that's how you watch things great idiocracy.
It is a comedy.
A guy falls asleep and wakes up 500 years in the future.
and the idiots the blithering idiots have taken over the country that's the premise of the movie it's a comedy I happened to read I happened to see yesterday at one of my tech blogs I was engaging in my hobby one of the tech bloggers had just seen it and was just livid and outraged by it.
His take on it was that the movie equates wealth with intelligence and intelligence with wealth and stupidity with being poor.
And he thought that the movie was about eugenics and just getting rid of all poor people so that only the rich, intelligent people would be left.
I don't know how you arrive at that take watching it.
My take on it was entirely different.
But I don't want to give you my take until you see it.
So I'll give you a week.
And then you tell me you've watched it.
And then I'll tell you what, because it does, if I give you my analysis and you haven't seen it, it will destroy your own perception as you watch it.
Anyway, I see the clock here.
I have to take a brief time out.
I'll get back to Stephen A. Smith.
I was rudely interrupted by a screeching tone by that.
You're guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos, mistreatment of women, lawless president, all of that, and the good times, too, here at the EIB network.
Okay, so ESPN hires Stephen A. Smith.
He was a columnist for one of the Philadelphia papers.
He was an NBA specialist and expert.
He was hired by ESPN many, many moons ago, but he's been at ESPN for years.
And he had his own show late in the afternoon, I think over at Madison Square Garden or a little theater there somewhere.
Anyway, he's been on ESPN a long time.
And they then hired him, moved him to put him on this morning show and ESPN to Escape Bayless.
And they did that because it's an opinion show.
They wanted Stephen A. Smith to malve off.
And then when he did, he got in trouble.
It's an amazing thing.
Networks hire opinionated people say, you got to be who you are, bud.
That's why you're here.
They go out.
They be who they are.
And then if the political correctness police, i.e. the feminazis or the race industry or whatever, speak up, then all hell breaks loose and signar, you're gone.
And the thing that's happened here with Stephen A. Smith, he's been suspended for a week for controversial comments about domestic violence in the NFL, specifically as it relates to the Ray Rice case.
It is amazing, this suspension of two games and three games without being paid is viewed by apparently the cognicente, the politically correct, low-information crowd, as being way too insufficient.
That the NFL did not make nearly a big enough statement here.
And all kinds of analogies have been made to suspensions for what people consider much less problematic behavior.
And one of the excuses that's come from the NFL was, hey, you know what?
Our policy manual, we don't have anything in there for domestic abuse.
We're flying blind on this.
I mean, we've got a policy manual on substance abuse or DUI or performance-enhancing drug abuse or whatever, but we don't have anything in the manual of what happens when you cold cock your spouse.
So we're starting from ground zero on that.
Well, you didn't start big enough, they say.
Stephen A. Smith got in trouble by saying that sometimes women engage in behavior that can be provocative, and that was the no-no.
That doesn't matter because in no instance, in no circumstance, never ever should a man lay hands on a woman in a violent way.
Doesn't matter.
There is never any excuse for it.
Now, I was reading the Monday Morning Quarterback website today, which is an offshoot of Sports Illustrated.
And the writer had been castigated by people that read the website for not coming down hard enough on Ray Rice when he wrote about the incident last week.
I mean, he really got hit hard by readers, some of them who claim to be canceling their subscriptions to Sports Illustrated now because this is just, I mean, I can't believe you gave Ray Rice a pass.
And he alluded to something that he says he can't prove and hasn't seen.
He's only heard it talked about, that there is video from inside the elevator that nobody has seen.
The only video that's been seen is of Ray Rice dragging the fiancé unconscious out of the elevator.
But apparently, I read today where there are people who claim that the league has seen the video of what happened in the elevator and that it might have been a factor in the suspension.
But this is all speculative.
And I'm not speculating.
I'm just reporting to you what I happen to read today.
And it's been speculated that because of what's on the video from inside the elevator, that the suspension was not worse than it was.
Now, that would lead people to conclude that something went on in there that would, well, I don't even, I would go there.
There's nothing to be gained by going there.
However, I think Whoopee Goldberg and a number of other public figures have come out and essentially said what Stephen A. Smith said, but they have been ignored.
Nobody is getting on their case.
Stephen A. Smith has been suspended for a week and forced to make an apology that he read from a teleprompter.
Stephen A. Smith, by the way, has shown conservative tendencies, which is, I think, a factor here, which nobody is mentioning.
And I don't want to end up tarring and feathering him because of that.
But do you think Barkley would be, I mean, Barkley, the women of San Antonio are just a bunch of fat pigs.
Anybody gets involved, one of them is insane.
Hey, that's just Chuck.
You know, he's just a funny guy.
Well, Frank DeFord, who is NPR, Morning Edition, a former Sports Illustrated writer, today said that maybe Roger Goodell is just not good enough to lead the NFL in today's divided America.
Here's the soundbite.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's piddling suspension of Ray Rice of the Ravens for a mere two games for his apparent violent attack upon his fiancée has been met with shock and disappointment.
The larger question is whether Goodell is good enough to serve as the leader of the NFL.
In today's divided America, what other entertainment, what other institution means so much to so many people across all our class, educational, racial, and ethnic spectrums?
Really, don't we need someone of greater stature at the helm of the NFL?
Someone who appreciates that he should, if only symbolically, be the steward of all football America.
It is the power of football today that begs for a leader with greater perspective and sensitivity.
Wow.
Cow, so now the NFL is just another political institution.
And we need, like who?
Bill Clinton?
Who would have the stature to lead the NFL in this day and age across all of our class, educational, racial, and ethnic spectrums?
Talking about the NFL, we're talking, I know it's a big business and so forth, but anyway, I'm out of time.
There's more, obviously, and from you too, I'm sure, but we'll be back and continue after this.
You know, you talk about hypocrisy.
Here's Roger Goodell.
Not good enough now to lead the NFL.
He's so let everybody down, he didn't suspend Ray Rice enough for an alleged, by the way, from the same people who hoist Bill Clinton up on some pedestal and make him look like the best SO son of a gun that's ever lived.
But Roger Goodell, no longer good enough to lead the NFL.
▲
Export Selection