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Feb. 9, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:32
February 9, 2015, Monday, Hour #1
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Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Did it again?
Dead it again, everybody.
Blamed me.
Blames me and Fox News.
Obama does, blames me and Fox News for the balkanization of media.
Thing about it, he's right.
In a certain way.
They're just these guys just missing their old monopoly days.
They're just missing the day when they controlled every narrative, when they control every story.
They don't control it.
They haven't controlled it since 1988.
It's when their monopoly went south, and they haven't been able to deal with it.
And so Obama's out there again, this time talking to the uh there's this new publication that started up by Ezra Klein, the former Wonder Kid at the uh at the Washington Post.
And I guess the post was just too small to contain this uh young man's brilliance.
He was the guy that started the journal list thing, if you recall, which was a um list serve, which means you couldn't get on it, of journalists, uh big, small, thousands of them every day, and uh including inside the beltway core, and what they did was discuss the narrative every day.
It was what everybody's always thought, journalists getting together and deciding with a consensus how the news was going to be covered each and every day.
And they shared their problems, and they wrung their hands and they worried with each other about their futures, both personally and professionally.
And then it was discovered, and then the whole thing blew up.
Uh nothing happened to them, they just went back to their respective news organizations, and they might have set something up new since then.
But the point is, Ezra's the guy that set that up, and he's got this piece called Vox out there.
His new website uh kind of like Nate Silver left the New York Times, went over to uh ESPN with his 538 blog.
At any rate, they they scored an interview with Obama.
By the way, greetings, folks, great to have you here, Rush Limbaud, never, never beating a dead horse in this program.
Do you realize how important that is?
Do you even snurdly, do you think you know what I mean when I tell the audience we never beat a dead horse here?
Okay, tell me, what do you think it means?
I want to see.
I want to make sure that people understand what I mean here, and if you don't, then nobody else will.
That's pretty much the we don't get on one or two things and stick with them for the rest of time.
We're adaptive.
Everything's current.
Whatever's happening in the news is what whatever's happening in the narrative is what we react to and discuss.
We don't beat things, I don't know topics.
In other words, you're not gonna get bored here, folks.
And despite what you may think, it isn't predictable, and that's why we continue to grow by leaps and bounds.
Anyway, great to have you.
Here's the phone number.
It's 800 282-2882 and the email address L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
So in this wide-ranging interview with Vox, VOX as in Vox Populi.
President Barack Hussein O discussed how the changing face of media has polarized politics.
Yeah, it's not politics that's polarized politics.
No, no, no, my friends.
It's the way certain people are talking about politics that has polarized it.
It's the way certain people are reporting it, analyzing it, opining on it, pontificating about it.
That is polarized politics.
It kind it's not the people in politics you understand.
It's not an elected official here or there or all of them combined that are corrupting or polarizing.
It's me in Fox News, basically.
That that's that's what he said.
In a wide-ranging interview with Vox, President Obama discussed how the changing face of media has polarized politics, although much of the information is simply giving audiences what they want.
This is a news story, by the way, from CBS in Washington.
So CBS disagrees with Obama.
Much of the information on the polarized networks like me and Fox News.
That's just me giving you what you want.
That's not me telling you what I really think, and that's not me really having an interest in all this.
That's me figuring out what you want to hear me say every day and then saying it.
Now I've been doing this, I I I I get confused.
I don't know if we're into our 26th year or into our 27th, whatever.
For these people to still not know what happens on this program after a quarter of a century.
And for these people to have no interest in finding out what goes on in this program, if they had any interest, they might be able to grow their own audiences instead of seeing them dwindle.
Twenty-six, twenty seven years, and they still do not understand how I do what I do, nor do they understand why you are here.
It still boils down to your mind-numbed robots, and I'm the pin, the the the Pied Piper Sven Ghali, and you're out there brain-dead each and every day till I tell you not only what's going on, but what to think about it.
And all of that's encapsulated here in the first sentence of this story.
Read it to you again.
In a wide-ranging interview with Vox, President Barack Obama discussed how the changing face of media has polarized politics.
Not him.
Not Hillary, not Bill Clinton, not Bahner, not any no, no, no.
No, no.
And then CBS adds, although much of the information, meaning that you hear here, is simply giving audiences what they want.
As opposed to the news, which of course tells you the truth.
Yes.
The drive-by's, they don't care what you want.
And that's pretty true, by the way.
They don't think you're smart enough to understand what they do.
In other words, Brian Williams, great example.
You just not capable of the nuance.
That's what they, by the way, that's what they're now saying about Obama and the Crusades comment.
He's so far ahead of us that we just can't keep up.
We just don't appreciate the nuance of what he was trying to say.
He's so light years ahead of us intellectually.
And we are proving the almost elementary state that we are in by getting all agitated by he didn't even, he couldn't get down to our level if he tried, and we can't get up to his level if we want to.
Vox also noted that Obama was first interviewed by the New York Times 25 years ago for a February 1990 article entitled First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review.
Obama said data showing that he is the most polarizing president is misleading, but one major factor is the media.
Americans just don't have a common place where we can go to get common facts anymore.
And a common worldview the way we did 20, 25, 26, 27 years ago.
And that just keeps accelerating, you know, and I'm not the first to observe this, but you've got the Fox News, Rush Limbaugh folks, and then you've got the MSNBC folks, but the point is that the technology which brings the world to us allows us to narrow our point of view, and that's contributed to it.
So all of the countless new sources of information you have narrowed your worldview, folks.
Your worldview has not been opened, it has not been expanded, and now that there's not a monopoly in the news that controls the narrative every day, the left doesn't quite know how to deal with it, other than to try to control it.
Hello, net neutrality as one example.
Other attempts to regulate cable broadcast, which is not to regulate cable the same way they regulate over-the-air broadcasts, but they just can't find a way.
And they can't leave a lingering part out there into 10-2.
If there is one element that disagrees with the conventional wisdom of the day is defined by the left, it's got to be destroyed or it has to be incorporated, changed, and brought into the fold.
And if it can't be incorporated or changed and brought into the fold, then it's got to be marginalized, isolated, and destroyed, i.e., a Linsky rules for radicals.
And that's what Obama is really doing here.
So I don't know how many times this makes it now.
From 1992, Bill Clinton, 93, when he was inaugurated 1992 campaign 93 all the way to 2015.
I don't know how many times it is now that I have been held up as the primary and some cases singular reason why America is polarized.
One guy.
Now let me let me offer you evidence that they don't really believe that, that this is just an attempt, as they all are, to discredit me and discredit Fox and anybody that's not on their train.
If I have this kind of power, if I and I alone, Fox didn't come along till 1997, so I had it all to myself for nine or ten years.
If it if it if I am that powerful, if I I mean, up until 1988, there was a singular news worldview.
What Obama called it commonplace, common facts, common worldview.
One guy came along, i.e.
me, and blew that up.
That's pretty powerful, right?
Okay, if they really believe that, then why do none of them attempt to harness me and my power in their benefit?
Why don't they?
And I don't mean try to convert me to become a liberal.
I don't think they even think that would be possible because the truth is they know that what I am not doing here is just giving you what you want to hear.
They know that I am who I am in my heart and in my mind.
That's what constitutes the big threat.
But nevertheless, why not try to harness that in some way?
They're not disposed in that regard.
Uh their predisposition is to destroy or to discredit people like me or Fox News.
But if there's that kind of power, why not try some way, shape, manner, or form to incorporate it to at least build their audience in their chosen network or at their chosen place, and there's none of that.
So all of this is bogus.
They may be afraid of the power, and they may really consider it, but uh what all I'm saying is they know that this is not where the polarization in this country is taking place.
This program is not the source of the polarization.
This program in Fox News represent the last best hope of providing a counter to the common narrative of the day that the left used to be able to choose and to determine.
We got the audio sound bites on this, so we've got two of them here.
This is uh posted this morning on the Vox.com website, editor-in-chief in Wonderkind, Ezra Klein interviewing Obama, and Ezra Klein said, Look, according to the polls, you're the most polarizing president really since we began polling.
But before you, the record was set by George W. Bush.
See, he's even more polarizing than W. And that's not supposed to have happened, folks.
You remember Obama was going to unify and make everybody love one another.
None of this was supposed to be happening right now.
So Ezra says, polling data, you're the most polarizing president since we began polling.
Uh, and before Bush, the record was set by Bill Clinton.
It seems that there's something structural happening there in terms of party polarization, the way it affects approval ratings and cooperation with presidents.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that a, the balkanization of the media means that we just don't have a common place where we get common facts and a common worldview the way we did 20, 30 years ago.
And that just keeps on accelerating.
I'm not the first to observe this, but yeah, you've got the Fox News Rush Limbaugh folks, and then you've got the MSNBC folks.
Technology, which brings the world to us, also allows us to narrow our point of view.
That's contributed to it.
I guess this is just stunning to me.
These guys know this isn't the case, or do they?
They may not know.
They may actually be so invested in this lie that it's become like a Brian Williams lie that they actually believe it.
But did you did you don't notice this question here?
He says, it seems that there's something structural happening there in terms of party polarization and the way it affects approval ratings and cooperation with presidents.
Meaning all of the gridlock in Congress, as though this is the first time this has ever happened, but stop and really dwell on what Obama's saying here.
There used to be a common world view.
There used to be a common source of facts and a common set of facts that everybody believed.
We have documented on this program that so much of what they say is untrue.
One of the biggest is the hoax of global warming, which the UK telegraph is another story yesterday exposes it.
Maybe the most, maybe the biggest hoax in all of science ever, the global warming hysteria.
Here's the next Obama bite.
He continued on saying this.
I would love to see some constitutional process that uh would allow us to actually regulate campaign spending uh the way we used to, and maybe even improve it.
Uh I'd love to see changes at the state level that uh reduced political gerrymandering.
So there are all kinds of structural things I'd like to see that I think would improve uh this.
But you know, there have been periods uh in the past where we've been pretty polarized, I think.
There just wasn't polling around.
As I recall, there was a whole civil war.
That was pretty uh a good example of a polarization that took place.
Holy cow, ladies and gentlemen, he's comparing the times today to the polarization in the civil war.
Now, how many of you think we're about to break out into another civil war in this country because of this polarization?
I'll tell you what, they are stunned.
The blowing up of the liberal media monopoly is one of the biggest shocks that's ever hit them.
And it's it's obvious that they still have not come to grips with it.
They still haven't figured out what to do about it.
In the midst, here's the first amendment.
He's a constitutional lawyer, freedom of the press and combined with freedom of speech, and here he is asking to see some constitutional process and protections that would allow them to regulate, he says campaign spending the way we used to.
That means get rid of citizens united.
Uh believe me, they know what happened in these last two elections, the last two midterms.
They uh they do.
Let me tell you one other one of the thing Obama means here.
You uh you gotta go back in time.
Do you remember the name Bob Michael?
Bob Michael used to be the Republican leader in the House when they had 120, 130 members.
And Bob Michael's objective every day was to find a Democrat to play golf with.
The Republicans had no power to stop anything, and it was like that for 30, 40 years, and everybody was cool with it.
And there was nobody back then, and this is another one thing that Obama means.
There was nobody back then to get on the Republicans for caving with Democrats.
There was nobody to rip Bob Michael, but there was nobody in the media because the common point in the media was what it is now.
Democrat Party narrative each and every day.
So Bob Michael and any Republican uh ranking member on a committee, hell, halftime weren't even allowed in a committee hearing room by the Democrats.
They were just totally frozen out.
There was nothing anybody could do, and Bob Michael and Republicans, they were they were hunky-dory with it.
And the difference now is that there's me and there's Fox News and who knows who else that didn't when if the Republicans ever get into Bob Michael mode, they hear about it now.
And it's just it's not as easy for the Republicans to cave to the media and to the Democrats.
Not that they don't, but it's not as easy as it used to be.
It used to be easy if hell to cave and get your tea time on time.
A little bit harder now.
At any rate, uh that's that's just to set the table.
It's just amazing how often Obama goes back to this.
Trying to blame others.
I thought these people all love diversity.
And they preach diversity all the time.
You watch the did you watch a Grammys last night?
You didn't.
Snerdley, you know, you you you you used to be a musician.
You still are musician.
Uh what is Shug Knight ruined it for you or something?
Well, I don't care.
It was fascinating to watch this show.
It was, it was uh, because they they didn't, we've got it, they did the requisite anti-rape abuse thing.
Once again, they're preaching to the wrong audience.
They need to be preaching to themselves, not us.
That's the requisite they had a requisite Obama video uh on that.
And then and then somebody, some somebody introduced somebody else who had a big hit.
Uh, and the reason for the big hit was that the the message from the big hit artist was love and diversity and getting along with everybody, and then he brought somebody out singing in Spanish.
I don't know who I know half these artists because of my hearing.
I I can't, I can't translate new music.
It's just noise to me.
So, but I watched it for the cultural ass.
I didn't watch the whole thing, but I watched some of it.
And so the the great contributor to diversity and getting along and loving each other, and the reason why the guy had this big hit was because he knows that everybody is love and love is everybody, and we gotta love each other and get along and be diversified and all that.
And he came out and started singing Spanish about.
Anyway, they don't want any diversity in the news.
They don't want any diversity and these Hillary and Obama, they think Al Jazeera is great.
They got a problem with the EIB network.
And with uh and with Fox News.
Anyway, do you remember folks?
It wasn't that long ago.
And quite frankly, I'll be honest with you.
I've I've I'm even now a little surprised that more dust was not raised after I said this.
But I was looking at the various policy positions that we know are held by Hillary Clinton, and I went through the same thing as we know it about Jeb Bush.
And there were on the top three issues, the two people agree across the board, what to do about illegal immigration and amnesty, slam dunk agreement, common core, uh public education curriculum, slam dunk, and fully implementing Obamacare.
Slam dunk, those top three issues.
You can't tell the difference in Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.
And I suggested that maybe that would be the ideal ticket for the establishment types inside the bellway, the ideal ticket so that no matter who wins, they win.
Would be Hillary or Jeb.
Hillary and Jeb, they can figure out who's on top of the ticket themselves.
And then lo and behold, there's a story here about it's in it's by Charles Gasparino, it's in the New York Post today.
And it's about Wall Street.
And they've got the same exact view.
Wall Street's all excited about Hillary or Jeb and or because they look at it, that they win no matter who wins.
That both candidates are right what they want on Wall Street.
So add that as a fourth issue, if you will, about which you can't find any difference between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.
And by the way, speaking of Wall Street, that makes total sense.
I I um you know how many people today still think that big business and money people are conservatives?
Because they think big business and money people want government off their back and government out of their lives and government out of their businesses and government out of their taxes and so forth.
Wrong oh, folks.
That's that that's may have been true someday, but it's not true anymore.
Now a crony capitalism or crony socialism, however you want to look at it, the Wall Street guys, I mean, they're they're best friends of the Federal Reserve.
The Feds printed three and a half trillion dollars since the financial crisis, and most of it's gone straight to the stock market.
So the people in the stock market are making out like banshees, and there's the reason why you have a wealth gap.
If the government, the Fed is gonna print three and a half trillion dollars and give it to one group of people, what do you think is gonna happen?
Well, it has happened.
And so now the Wall Street guys are saying doesn't matter to us, Hillary or Jeb.
They don't care about the country.
They're not, they don't care about culture, they don't care about, there's no ideology in this.
They look at Jeb or Hillary and they win either way.
So you're gonna have equal amounts of dollars, I predict donations from Wall Street types, almost gonna be 50-50, Jeb and Hillary.
One of them may be maybe collect a little bit more than the other, but that story did not surprise me at all.
That was the way that Wall Street would look at.
This is relatively, I say relatively new.
In fact, it may be as as deeply woven as it is now in our political landscape.
It may be as recent as Obama that the myth has become a myth, or this truism has become a myth, that that is Wall Street big business people are Republican or that they are conservative.
They're now whoever is in the White House, they want to sidle up to.
And they're looking at the can't Ted Cruz, not their ball of wax.
Ben Carson, not interested.
Scott Walker, they're not sure, but they don't think so.
Chris Christie, they were thinking so, but Christie has bombed out.
And there's another investigation that started into Christy Christie.
Christie is not looking good to the Wall Street gang.
So they're looking at Hillary and Jeb Bush.
And they figure they win regardless.
And that's some big money donors that we're talking about, which takes us to David Axlrod on the Today Show today, the co-host Savannah Guthrie interviewing Axlrod, and she says, let's talk politics.
Factor your 40 years, as the book mentions.
Did you did you think a Bush versus Clinton race in 2016's good for the country?
This is Jeb versus Hillary.
You think that would be good for the country?
And I know you're probably going to vote for the Democrat, but in terms of the same two families again, is this good for the country, David?
I like both of them, actually.
It is easy to say that, but let's see what the quality of the race is.
Bush is already out there speaking about income inequality, which I think is a great sign and the problems of the middle class.
Hillary, I think, will come out with some strong ideas on the same subject.
Whoa, do you hear what I hear?
Did you hear what I just hear?
Do you hear it the same way?
Here's David Axelrod, who got Obama elected, also saying that, hey, Jeb Hillary, they're pretty much aligned here.
Uh I don't see that big a difference between them.
I like both of them, actually.
So now I know why there wasn't a whole lot of dust up when I suggested this, is because I'm not the first to start thinking about it.
Now it's not going to happen.
Don't misunderstand.
There isn't going to be a Jeb Hillary ticket, but and I was trying to put it that way to illustrate how similar they are.
And here comes Axlrod a few weeks after I do that, pretty much confirms that that's the way they are seen.
So either one, fine with us.
Axelrod would prefer the Democrat, obviously, but if it's if it's Jeb, we could a lot to work with there.
Guthrie then said the question of whether racism animated some of the president's critics was a question you deflected through your time in government, but you take it on in your book.
And you say that some people refuse to accept the legitimacy of the first black president and are seriously discomforted by the growing diversity of our country.
Does the president share that view?
Has any other president experience someone shouting you lie in the U.S. Congress or persistent questions about his citizenship?
No, and I think that reflects some attitudes that are deeply ingrained in some people in this country.
Okay, now this takes us to the final bite here in this room.
Remember, Axlrod's book was released.
And one of the one of the pull quotes that they they released to hype the book and hype sales was Axelrod claiming that Romney called Obama in his concession call in 2012 and insulted him.
Basically, Romney called, according to Axelrod, Romney called up and praised Obama for really doing well in places where there are a lot of black voters.
And he mentioned Cleveland and Milwaukee and a couple of other cities.
And Axelrod said that Obama was profoundly insulted.
He was just mad as he could be.
He thought Romney was digging him.
He thought Romney was telling him, yeah, you won, but only because you got black people voting for you blindly.
I like the way you did in Cleveland.
I like the way you did in all these other urban cities.
Well, Romney has denied it.
And an aide to Romney, who was there when Romney made the phone call, the concession phone call has denied it.
This didn't happen.
So we have another potential Bryant Williams situation here.
So we got Axel Rod and Obama claiming that Romney insulted him, threw down the race card in his concession call, but Romney and one of his agents saying it didn't happen.
Savannah Guthrie said there was a bit of controversy last week.
You write in the book that when Romney called Obama to concede an election night 2012, the president hung up and reported to you, ah, he said, yeah, we turned out the vote in Milwaukee and Cleveland.
And he said, in other words, black people.
That's what he thinks it's all about.
Now Romney's body man has said that he was sitting next to Romney, and he said that Romney never said any such thing, Axelrod.
What about it?
There were five people standing around the president when he got off the phone.
All of them have the same recollection.
Several of them have gone public since this started.
I don't think the president made that up.
I don't think Romney was trying to be ungracious either.
But you know, we had just come through a long battle.
They saw this through different lenses.
Well, if you didn't think Romney was trying to be ungracious, then why why offer that as a pool quote to hype the sale of a book?
Why make a beat?
Why make a deal of it?
If it ain't no thing.
Yes, if it ain't no thing, why are you making a big deal of it?
I think Romney, I don't think they got what they wanted out of it.
And uh it was another message to Romney.
This is just a little bit of what's waiting for you if you do decide to run again.
Ha.
How are you?
On the cutting edge, Rush Limbaugh executing his sign host duties flawlessly, zero mistakes.
How many of you have seen the movie Broadcast News?
Snerdley is raising his hand.
All right, Mr. Snurdley, do you remember anything about that movie other than Holly Hunter?
Do you rem do you remember?
Do you remember who starred in that movie?
It was Albert Brooks.
If I've got the right movie.
It was a fantastic James Brooks movie.
It's from 1987.
Broadcast news.
You might, by the way, if you haven't seen it, you might want to uh you might want to Netflix it or rent it or whatever download it.
Here's what happens.
A handsome young TV sports anchor, ambitious but not all that bright, pretty typical of people in the news, gets a promotion.
He's hired to be a national news reporter, who on one of his first assignments commits what in the past has been an unforgivable ethical breach.
Now keep in mind this is 1987.
And I'm going to give you a spoiler alert here.
Still watch it, even though I'm going to give something away here.
This enterprising young local TV sports anchor, ambitious but not all that bright, hired to be a national news reporter, first assignment commits what used to be an unforgivable ethical breach.
He interviews a young woman about her heart-wrenching experience with date rape.
Now don't get the wrong idea.
This date rape was not considered real news when this movie was made.
So it's not about that, but I'm just giving you the details here.
In the segment, this is the news.
In the segment where this enterprising young reporter with his first big national news assignment.
In this segment, he commits a journalistic no-no.
The reporter is shown crying, tearing up as the woman tells her story.
Now what that does is insert him in the story.
I'm mentioning this because Brian Williams has said he had to take himself off the news because he has become the news.
And I'm here to tell you that that's a bogus reason to get off the that's silly anymore.
These people have been making a news about them ever since this movie.
But in 1987, it was an ethical breach to make yourself part of the story.
It was an ethical breach to have any emotional reaction at all to what you were seeing or to what somebody was telling you.
The reporter is shown tearing up.
That inserts him in the story, but the ethical breach was not just that.
The ethical breach is discovered after the footage airs.
Because the reporter in the real interview had not cried.
The enterprising new reporter had not teared up.
He told the cameraman to roll separate footage to capture him in the act of making himself cry.
And they edit that footage in with the footage of the original interview.
So he not only inserted himself in the story, he faked his initial reaction to dramatize the moment.
Remember this ambitious guy.
He's trying to stand out.
He's trying to get ahead fast.
He's really ambitious.
It's his first big assignment.
He's got this story, woman telling a story about date rape.
All during the original interview.
He didn't crack a smile, he didn't crack a frown, he didn't cry, but afterwards he cried for the camera in private, and they inserted that in the story.
And it made for great TV news for the viewers in this movie.
In the movie, the viewers ate it.
Oh my God, the reporter was touched.
He was crying.
It was all fact made up.
It was BS.
He cried after the fact.
But in the movie, you love the anchor.
He sold his narrative.
May have been a true story, but the facts were not allowed to speak for themselves.
That's the point.
The facts were not allowed.
They had to be embellished.
The woman telling her tale of date rape had to be embellished by a reporter inserting himself in the story crying.
But he really hadn't.
That was inserted later.
And what the hell?
Who cares if it was true anyway?
It was good TV.
It was compelling television.
And the rating, and this guy became a huge star right off the bat.
More assignments, big ratings bring in much needed revenue.
The movie, broadcast news, made it clear.
This ethical breach was a journalistic nuclear bomb.
Yet at the end of the movie, the reporter who faked the tears was made anchor of the national level.
In other words, folks, the movie broadcast news in 1987 is the story of Brian Williams.
In one fictitious episode, a date rape victim describing her details, the reporter, ambitious young sports anchor getting his first big gig as a national news reporter.
Nods his head, does all the requisite things, but doesn't cry.
Fakes the tears later, inserts them, much like they altered the 911 call of Trayvon Martin case.
The movie is prescient.
It is a must see to fully appreciate what James Brooks foresaw happening to Network News all the way back in the 1980s.
Yeah, I think I think the movie broadcast news is to journalism, what wag the dog is to politics.
It's fascinating how prescient James Brooks was back in 1987.
Okay, that's a brief time out here at the top of the hour.
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