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Oct. 17, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
October 17, 2014, Friday, Hour #2
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Time Text
I don't know.
First, we get a raw cutthroat politician as the Ebola czar.
And then we find out that evidence of Saddam Hussein weapons and mass destruction was purposely ignored.
It's Friday, folks, Open Line Friday.
Let's go.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Great to have you here, El Rushbo, executing assigned host duties flawlessly.
Zero mistakes.
I never make any.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the...
By the way, I intended to get a lot of phone calls in in the last hour, and I didn't.
I didn't even get one phone call in.
I got a hustle to make up for that in this hour.
But there's still too much that I need to address first.
And no, I have not, if you're just tuning in in like the last half hour, we spent the opening moments of the program talking about the nomination or the selection of Ron Clain as the Ebola czar.
He's not, it has no experience in healthcare, in medical, none of it.
He's a pure politician.
He was in charge of dispersing the money in Obama's stimulus bill.
Ron Clain was in charge of payoffs.
Ron Clain determined who got what and what they were going to do for it.
Ron Clain authorized all the money to Solyndra.
Ron Clain, former chief of staff to Al Gore, former chief of staff to Biden, and worked for Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee when they attempted to destroy Clarence Thomas.
This is the guy who is the Ebola czar.
He doesn't know the first thing about Ebola.
Nobody in this regime knows anything about Ebola.
And they're looking at it purely as a political opportunity.
And this selection of Ron Clain as the Ebola Tsar is all the proof anybody needs.
But before getting back to the Ebola stack, I want to just close the loop on a couple of hanging curveballs, if you will, from the previous hour on the blockbuster story that's in the Daily Beast today.
Written by Eli Lake, insiders blame Karl Rowe for covering up Iraq's real weapons of mass destruction.
It turns out that U.S. military found remnants of sarin and mustard gas and there was also yellow cake, enriched uranium that was found and was shipped out of Iraq in 2008.
Look, I don't want to repeat myself because it would require another half hour, but I would be remiss if I didn't review some of this because the effect on the country and the Republican Party because of the five years of lies,
distortions, undisguised hatred still affects the politics in our country to this day.
The short version is that when Rick Santorum informed the White House in 2005, 2004, that U.S. military personnel told him they'd found sarin and mustard gas shells while doing their duty in Iraq.
Santorum took it to the White House.
Yeah, yeah, we know we don't let sleeping dogs lie.
We lost that issue, and we don't, because these are not the same WMD.
These are pre-1991 chemical weapons.
This is not why we went in there.
Although it was.
See, that's the thing.
It was.
It was all Saddam.
It was all lies to the U.N.
It was all violations of U.N. resolutions.
It was all part of the mix.
The state of the country in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, the unwillingness to just let threats go idly by without reacting to them.
Saddam was clearly huffing and puffing and threatening to do even more.
You can't, after 9-11, just be lackadaisical and cavalier about that.
So he organized the invasion of Iraq, and for five years, the people of this country were driven to abject hatred for the Republican Party, for George Bush, for the White House, the institution of the presidency.
And in some cases, they were driven to hatred of their country at large because the Democrat Party and the American media in conjunction worked tirelessly day in and day out to discredit everything that was going on, not just the Iraq war and not just the war on terror, but everything the Bush administration was doing.
And none of it was replied to.
None of it was answered.
None of these lies, none of the criticism, none of the defamation, none of it was responded to.
It was allowed to stand.
And the attitude continues to this day.
I am more convinced than ever that the paralysis of the Republican Party stems from those five years of never-ending defamation that the White House chose to ignore and not reply to.
There were numerous reasons why.
Well, we're not, you know, we have such reverence for the office that we're not going to respond to these political charges.
We're not going to get down in the gutter with these people.
We're going to maintain the aura of the office above all of this.
Well, yeah, that's fine and dandy, except you have a bunch of people who voted for you who are being tarred and feathered in the same way.
You've got the U.S. military as an institution under daily assault.
Do they not deserve to be defended as the good men and women they are who were doing nothing more than following orders?
Is there nothing worth defending?
For five years, we're all asking ourselves, what the heck?
And we learned that the theory behind not responding was just ignore it.
The news cycle will produce a new story tomorrow, and everybody will forget about this.
But if we engage and we start trying to reply to this stuff, it's just going to prolong the story.
It's going to be even worse.
But nobody forgot anything.
Everything just ended up being piled on top of one after another.
Now, in this article in the Daily Beast, There's a guy who says that these chemical weapons that have been found that Santorum found and that Rove and the White House did not want to deal with or acknowledge did not want to use the information to defend themselves, to defend the war effort, they just didn't want to use it.
One guy in the article says, there's no reason to.
These chemicals that these troops found in 2004, they're no more dangerous than what's underneath your kitchen sink.
There's another guy in the article who says, the reason, the real reason that we didn't, that the White House did not respond to this is that they didn't want the Sunnis in Iraq to know the weapons were there.
How convoluted is that?
We go to Iraq to eradicate weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein's bragging all over the world and every intelligence service in the world says he has.
We go there and we don't find those, but we do some years later find evidence of Saddam's previous foray into chemical weapons and nuclear.
And we say, no, we better not say we found it.
We don't want the Sunnis in Iraq to know that the weapons were there.
What are the odds that ISIS got its hands on some of this stuff?
What do you think the odds of that are?
Look at what happened.
The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, MI5, MI6, every intelligence agency in the world was brutalized and called out for lying, and then their integrity was called into question.
Well, you know, Bush and Cheney, they made them lie.
Bush and Cheney made them make them because Bush and Cheney just wanted the oil.
And Bush and Cheney just wanted to get the oil from hell of Britain.
And Bush just wanted to go in and evince Saddam's attempt to assassinate and he did.
There was no oil and no blood for oil and there wasn't any weapons of mass.
This kind of hatred and irrational hatred was built up over five years.
The intelligence agencies were brutalized.
Their integrity was under assault every day by no less than the Democrat Party in the media.
Our own national security institutions are brutalized to the point nobody was trusted about anything.
And that survives to this day.
And think about the soldiers.
Think about the uniformed military people.
They sign up.
It's a volunteer force.
They sign up to defend their country.
I had a troop visit in Afghanistan.
I heard them say that.
I asked them a simple question.
I had a unit of the Texas Air Guard flying our group around on a C-130.
Afghanistan, what are you guys, young guy, what are you doing here?
That's how I defend my country, sir.
And they meant it.
There wasn't any PR.
They weren't trying to impress me.
They meant it.
That's why they were there.
That's why their families were at home, why they were there.
Imagine those five years when everything they're doing is called into question.
Their own integrity is called into question.
They're being accused of terrorism.
They're accused of terrorizing Iraq women and mothers and children in their homes at night.
And John Kerry's out there with John Murthy saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is horrible for our troops to do this.
Before there was ever any evidence.
And those troops end up being exonerated.
But who knew about that?
It was so many years later.
And I think that survives to this day.
Just a giant dispiriting of all of these great institutions brought to us by the Democrat Party and the American media and allowed to happen by a Republican White House that chose not to respond to any of it.
Again, for political purposes.
And that, the political purpose, the political calculation was, we need to put this stuff behind us as we go into an election cycle.
We need to get this stuff buried.
We need to get this stuff off the news.
We don't want the media talking about this stuff anymore.
And the only way to get the media to shut up about it is for us not to talk about it.
That was the ongoing theory.
If we talk about it, if we engage, if we react, it's only going to prolong the story, keep it on the front page.
We don't want it on the front page.
We lost the battle.
Weapons of mass destruction, there weren't any, so let's just let sleeping dogs lie.
Miscalculation, because with all of these lies that succeeded, the Democrats were more emboldened than ever.
And it led to people like Dick Durbin going to the floor of the Senate and comparing our troops with Abu Ghrab to people that ran the Soviet gulags and the Nazi stalags.
Oh, not to mention all of this crap about torture.
Oh, we were torturers.
We were torturing everybody.
We had black sights.
We were renditioning the innocent all over the world and just torturing them.
We were waterboarding them and we were being mean.
We were cutting out their fingernails.
We're collecting electrodes to their eyebrows.
And yeah, it was horrible.
All of this five years, unanswered.
All because it was thought this was a loser issue.
And my point is, folks, and I think it's, I think it's crucial.
I think it's pretty important.
This attitude continues to this day.
This attitude.
No, no, no, let's not talk about it.
No, let's not respond.
No, let's not reply.
That's just going to keep it in the news.
Let's forget about it.
Let's move on to the next story.
Let's hope they forget it.
It's the same thing.
Every time there's a big budget fight, what do the Republicans do?
They threaten to engage the Democrats on it.
Last minute they don't.
to kick it down the road and promise to do it the next time.
So what we have here is an attitude in the Republican Party that's scared to death of the media.
Scared to death of the left.
Because of those five years, the Democrats and the media showed what they're capable of.
The Republicans don't want to go through that again, so don't make them mad.
Don't engage them.
Don't call them out.
Just hope.
Maybe even agree with them on things like amnesty and maybe they'll stop doing this kind of stuff.
I'm convinced we are totally defensive because of what happened between 2003 and 2008.
We have an attitude, the GOP that wants to persuade the American people Republicans are as nice and as compassionate as Democrats are.
And for that reason, we got to get rid of the Tea Party.
You know why?
Because an attitude that also survives to this day is that conservatives and people that believe in limited government, well, they come off as mean.
They come off as extreme.
They come off as hostile.
And we in the Republican Party can't afford to come off like that.
So we have to publicly denounce the Tea Party and conservatives and limited government people and the NRA because they come off as mean.
Rather than defending, rather than embracing, rather than joining forces to beat the left, we're still cowering in fear.
And I think this, I think there is an attitude at the upper levels of the Washington Republican establishment that assumes the country is already lost to the liberals.
The left has won.
They've won the culture and they're winning politics.
There's an attitude that the left has won and that we can only occasionally expect to run the government.
And when we occasionally run the government, we're going to make the most of it.
We're going to get those committee chairmanships.
We're going to be in charge of the money and we're going to take care of people we need to take care of.
We'll lose the next time, but we're going to win occasionally.
And when we do, we want to be in charge of the money, too.
It's defeatist, and it's no way to build a party or a movement.
And all of it stems.
I'm convinced all of this stems from a political decision in 2005 at the White House, from 2003, actually 2008, for five years, to let this stuff go uncommented on.
It is Open Line Friday, and time to go to the phones.
We'll start at Saratoga Springs, New York.
This is Jim.
Thank you for waiting, sir.
I appreciate it.
Hi.
Hello, Rush.
I just wanted to reiterate everything you were saying.
It's so true.
I mean, I knew this back in 2006.
I can remember the liberal, the pathetic media, putting posters up saying WMD, zero, Iraqi, I mean, American soldiers like 4,000.
This whole thing is coming out now because of a few things going on, like the New York Times article, Rick Santorum.
I don't know why he didn't come out stronger and defend this, but this is why we have eight years of Marxism in the White House and liberal politicians is because the administration, I'm painful me to say this about my own president and that I used to support vividly about everything, but I don't know why they would not defend, you know, finding these weapons.
It's the whole thing about not articulating conservatism.
I think establishment has Republicans have this genetic flaw that they cannot stand up and fight for what their gut principles are.
And I think they knew this all along, but Karl Rove decided not to let it continue on because they thought that would lose their, possibly lead in the 2006 election, which it did.
They got blown out of the water.
So that was a waste of time.
I think Kyle Rohd made a huge error.
And the advisors that were advising President Bush, this is so irritating to me.
And I think that the country needs to come out and say, you know what, President Bush, we did find these weapons.
Do you remember that White House correspondence dinner when Bush made a fool of himself saying he's looking around the podium for weapons of mass destruction?
He goes, well, I don't see any here.
I don't see any there.
And the audience was all laughing hysterically.
Do you remember that?
I do.
It was just, it was so sad to see that.
And we all knew that there were weapons there.
Saddam Hussein killed his own people.
The Kurds were killed by chemical weapons.
And yet, nobody said a word because the liberal media and these leftists that run Washington, D.C. are disgusting.
And this is so good that you bring this up.
And I just wanted to express that point, why we have administration we have today.
Well, I think you're on the money.
And if you note, the same philosophy exists today.
Don't respond to any of it.
The racism, sexism, bigotry charge, the war on women, all of this crap.
Just let it go.
Staying with the phones because it's Open Line Friday.
This is Jeremy in Minneapolis.
Welcome, sir.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Yes, sir.
Thank you very much.
Maybe from the other angle, maybe they felt they didn't have to be vindicated in the press to be a patriot, you know, by keeping stuff quiet and not letting other people know where them chemical weapons were at.
You know, kept them out of getting in, you know, the wrong people's hands.
And, you know, here with the press and everything, I mean, we have one station and we have talk radio that actually tells us the truth.
And no matter where they, you know, let that out about the chemical weapons, it would have been spun the other way.
I mean, a local politician here that ran against Michelle Bachman, Jim Graves, you know, he says that it's the Americans that made the chemical weapons, so we're still at fault.
But no matter which angle they go, they're still in trouble.
Okay.
Now, here's there are a lot of people that have that viewpoint that no matter what you do, the left is going to attack it.
No matter what you say, the left is going to try to discredit you.
The problem is, if you simply let that dictate your behavior, you're always going to end up losing, if you ask me.
That attitude concedes we cannot beat the left, which is sadly where I think a lot of Republican Party thinking is today.
We can't beat the media.
We can't beat the left.
And therefore, we need to make of ourselves the smallest targets we can be.
And the conservatives make us too big a target.
And the Tea Party makes us too big a target.
They're too loud.
They're too anti-establishment.
And they come off as extremists.
And it affects the way people think about us.
So discredit the Tea Party, disavow conservatives, and just slink along trying to be as unnoticed as you can.
Is there any better example of the philosophy than this election?
They're going out of their way to be invisible.
The Republicans are.
Because they think the Democrats are imploding.
They think to engage and to take an opportunity here to build a coalition to build a connection.
Well, the American people are fed up with this.
Build a connection.
Tell them why.
Join them.
Present yourselves, the Republicans, as their champions.
No, no, no, no.
Media will eat us up.
No, no.
Media will tear us up.
No, no.
We'll just sit by and let the other guys commit suicide.
We hope.
Political suicide, of course.
That's what I mean.
This attitude survives to this day.
Well, look, you can say that you understand it, and I do, but I don't agree with it.
I think they think it's gotten them survivability.
Boehner's still the speaker.
They're still in office.
Individually, they're still in office.
They may not run the Senate.
They may not have a whiteout, but they're still in office.
They still have their power, whatever it is.
I've described all of this in previous efforts to characterize it as PTSD, shell shock, what have you.
And I really, as I learn about this WMD incident, I'm more convinced than ever.
Not only did the media and the Democrats in those five years make their own rabid supporters insane with hatred, it also had a profound effect on the way Republicans deal with the public as well.
I mean, they're literally afraid of their shadows, like groundhogs.
Well, I don't know if groundhogs are afraid of their shadows, but They don't want to get noticed.
Anyway, there are exceptions to it, of course.
Talking about general party-wide philosophy.
Barry in Princeton, New Jersey.
Hello, sir.
You're next on the Russian Limbaugh program at Open Line Friday.
Hello.
Nice talking to you, Welsh.
I appreciate the chance to speak with you.
I want to bring up something to you about why it is this guy freedmen should be fired.
The ineptitude.
Can I share this with you?
Yeah, sure.
Sorry, they talk about, oh, they're broken travel.
It's really hard to track these people.
Wash, in a line of work I do, I can't describe it, but let me tell you something.
The passport never lies.
The country of origin is always there.
We simply have to say, look, you're from these countries.
You can't come in.
It's that simple.
It doesn't matter where you went.
If you went to Timbuktu, nothing matters.
I'm sorry, you're from these countries.
There's a danger to our citizenry right now.
We have to hold off and you're allowing you to the country.
If you're an American that has a right to come back, let's open up Ellis Island again.
We'll give you free Wi-Fi and TVs.
We want to hold you here for three weeks to make sure that you're safe to come back in the country.
I just want to see your thoughts on that.
You have people applauding out there.
I'm sure, Barry, thanks for the call.
You remind me of something here.
Before the Daily Beast story hit, let me tell you what I had at the top of the stack today, which dovetails exactly, it was an Ebola stack.
The top of the stack was Ron Clain.
The top of the stack was we've got a politician.
I mean, a raw, just bare-knuckle politician as an Ebola czar.
I mean, I can't tell you how hopeful I am that at some point people figure all this out.
But anyway, the second thing I had was this story, and I alluded to this yesterday afternoon.
I think it was in the second hour of this program.
I told everybody I had stumbled across something out there.
AP had a story that they were embargoing until after 4 p.m.
And that story is this.
Africa stems Ebola via border closings and luck.
And I had found out that this story was in the pipeline and it was going to run after 4 o'clock and I was violating embargo.
And I said, what the heck?
I'm not a subscriber.
And here's the story.
Health officials battling the Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa have managed to limit its spread on the continent to five countries.
They're very proud of their efforts there.
These African leaders are very proud they have contained Ebola to five countries.
Let me make a brief pause here, take a brief pause to make an illustration.
Isn't it kind of refreshing to encounter leaders of nations who are thankful the disease has not spread to other nations?
What I mean by that is, there are people in this country who think these African leaders ought to have a little bit more compassion and not start talking about how happy they are the disease didn't spread.
It would be okay if it spread beyond these five countries.
Why shouldn't other people get it if the people in these five countries have it?
This political correct attitude that exists out there in that regard is going to sink us too.
And that attitude manifests itself thus.
We can't close our borders.
It isn't fair that we don't have Ebola and they do.
Okay, so the five African countries have Ebola and we're going to close our borders to them.
They can't come.
That's not fair.
If they get it, we should get it.
Why are we any better than them?
We're not any better.
Just because they have it doesn't mean we shouldn't get it.
And if we take steps not to get Ebola because they do, that's discrimination against them.
That is an active politically correct theory today.
And yet, I had the story yesterday afternoon.
These five leaders, these five African nations, very happy they have contained the spread of the disease to their five countries.
And they were telling, they're eager to tell everybody how they did it.
The officials, the leaders of these five African countries credit tighter border controls.
They credit good patient tracking and other medical practices.
And they also credit good plain luck with keeping Ebola confined mostly to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
I don't know how much plain luck is here.
The most important thing they did was close their borders.
Senegal, Senegal did so well in finding and isolating a man with Ebola who had slipped across the border from Guinea in August that the World Health Organization today will declare the end of the disease in Senegal if no new cases surface.
Now, Senegal is just a hop, skip, and trip from these three African nations where Ebola has broken out.
They closed the borders.
Only one guy snuck in.
They found him, addressed it.
These people are very proud of their efforts.
But the reason the story is such an important and meaningful one, because it's the only common sense thing that's happened here.
People have closed their borders.
Other nations have.
Belize has announced that they are not going to let a cruise ship dock.
UK Daily Mail, Ebola scare on the Caribbean cruise ship, woman quarantined in her cabin.
Passenger is a healthcare worker at the Texas Presbyterian Hospital.
She handled clinical specimens from U.S. Patient Zero Thomas Eric Duncan.
She's in good health.
She's shown no symptoms of the virus, but they have her quarantined on the cruise ship.
It has also been revealed that Belize, the Caribbean superpower, joined us in one of our Iraq war coalitions.
It's been revealed that Belize is refusing to allow the ship or any of its thousands of passengers into port due to fears over Ebola.
That's a common sense thing to do.
Okay, here comes a cruise ship, 1,1,500 people.
That's a big economic opportunity.
I guarantee you, downtown Main Street Belize is looking for that ship to disembark.
And they want these people coming through and finding what's there in the Lalik shop, right?
But Belize is saying, no way, you got somebody on that ship that might have Ebola.
We're not letting the ship dock.
We're not letting anybody get off that ship and come into our country.
And nobody's calling them racist, sexist, bigot.
Philippines, the same thing.
A lot of countries around it, but us?
Oh, no.
No, no, no, no.
That wouldn't work.
Oh, no, no, no.
That would be discriminatory.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
We can't do that.
It wouldn't be fair.
Oh, no, no, no.
That's not how you stop it.
It's a carnival cruise ship.
Belize refuses entry to carnival cruise ship carrying Texas hospital worker who may have handled Ebola victims specimen.
I need to ask a question.
So far it seems to me, and I know it's early, A lot of people, Thomas Duncan, patient zero, came into contact with a lot of people outside the hospital, right?
But as far as we know, only those in the hospital have become affected.
Infected so far, right?
We have two nurses.
That's it, right?
We don't, obviously, he came in contact with people living at the apartment complex.
He came in contact with people on the airplane en route to Dallas.
He came in contact, was sent home from the ER.
There were people in the ER that he was seated next to.
I'm trying to look for glimmers of hope here.
And I don't want to be premature, but Thomas Duncan did come into contact with a lot of people.
And so far, only people who treated him are showing symptoms.
So far, that's what I mean, that we know of.
Is that relatively, I mean, is it true, or am I grasping at straws here?
Well, that could be a hopeful sign if it holds up.
Because he's come in contact with a lot of people.
It may indicate that just casual contact is not enough.
We'll have to see.
But I want to be right about it.
I'm not sure I'm right.
Is it just two people?
Okay.
All right.
Just the two nurses who treated him so far have come down.
Okay.
Got to take a break.
Be right back.
Don't go.
Yeah, I know the incubation period, they say 21 days.
So it's premature to say, but it's at least a hopeful sign.
And we hope it holds up.
And the nurse, the two nurses, the second one on the airplane, Dallas, Cleveland, Cleveland, Dallas, 132 people, hose down the airplane.
A lot of people have come in contact with people who have the disease so far.
Only a couple of nurses who treated a patient are showing symptoms.
So we'll wait with bated breath.
Here is, we have a 12-year-old on the phone named Madison from Oklahoma City calling about the adventures of Rush Reviewer series.
Hey, Madison, I'm glad that you got through today.
How are you?
Good.
How are you, Mr. Limbaugh?
Well, I am just dandy now that you've called.
You've put me in a good mood here, Madison.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
So what can I do for you?
What's shaking?
Well, I wanted to call and give my feedback on the Rush Review series.
I think it's a great book.
With me being in seventh grade, it helps me with my history when I have to remember stuff from a test or something.
That's awesome.
That is awesome.
Actually, helping you in class.
Well, there's a reason for that, Madison.
It's because the books are loyal to the truth.
Yeah.
We've got, my parents have got on my guy's iPad.
They have got the first few books and pre-ordered the third one.
Oh, really?
You're reading them on an iPad?
Yeah.
And you've already pre-ordered the third one.
Well, that's, this is just, that's just wonderful.
I, um, let's see, you are 12 years old, so you're right there in the target age group.
And this is exactly people like you, Madison, are exactly why we're doing these books.
But I bet your parents, your family pretty much, you have a lot of respect for America already, right?
You love the country.
Yes.
We read the book, and my mom always goes on the internet to on the website to get Liberty's answers and quizzes me about the book and see if I was paying attention.
And you always are, right?
Right.
You are.
Well, the new book is going to be out October 28th.
You'll get it.
If it runs for you the way it does for me, it'd be like 11:30 or close to midnight on October 27th that you'll get an alert from the iTunes bookstore saying that the book is available for download.
And Madison, let me tell you something.
This one, I'm not ashamed to say, we're so excited about this one.
I mean, it's really good.
They're all good.
But you try to make each one better.
And as you get more experience doing them, you hope they do get better.
But this, we've combined things.
We've combined actual history with a modern day story relevant to the U.S. military, to whom the book is dictated.
And we can't wait for people to see it.
We can't wait for people to read it because we have high hopes that it's going to provide a lot of comfort to military families.
Rush Revere and the American Revolution.
Madison, thanks.
Hang on, Mr. Snerdley needs to get an address from you if you don't mind.
It's another one of those days.
I don't know where the time's going.
It is zipping by here.
But that's okay because we still have one exciting, busy broadcast hour on the dock.
It's coming up.
Be right back and get to it.
Sit tight, my friends.
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