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April 23, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:18
April 23, 2015, Thursday, Hour #3
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Yeah, welcome back once again, ladies and gentlemen, L. Rushbow.
Half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair.
Executing assigned host duties flawlessly right here on the EIB network, 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program.
Let me give you another uh explanation of what Whitewater was.
And it's actually a better one than the one I gave you.
It comes from interestingly enough, Peter Schweitzer.
And his book, uh, what was the title of his book was uh Do As I Say Not As I Do.
And this page 108 and 109.
Uh, the the Schweitzer book, Do As I Say, Not As I Do was not a hit piece on the Clintons per se.
It was uh a book that chronicled the hypocrisy of a whole bunch of liberal politicians and public figures.
It it contained data, information on the Clintons, but if you remember, it hit a lot of people.
And here's what Schweitzer wrote about uh about Whitewater.
When customers wanted to buy a lot, they signed a simple purchase agreement, but this was no ordinary real estate contract.
The small print at the bottom read, in the event the default continues for 30 days.
Payments made by the purchaser shall be considered as rent for the use of the premises.
So in other words, the buyers did not actually take ownership of their property until the final payment was made.
If a buyer missed just one monthly payment, all of their previous payments would be classified as rent, and they would lose their equity.
That's what Whitewater was.
Miss one payment.
Doesn't matter how much you've paid prior, you lose your equity.
You're automatically reclassified as a renter.
And guess where the equity went it ended up being transferred to.
Well, the people at Whitewater that ran it.
It would be the McDougalls and the Clintons.
So you ended up losing all your equity.
You became a renter if you missed just one payment.
The fine print lacks just read to you.
And in some cases, they could uh foreclose.
They could repossess if you missed a couple, and then they just sell it and flip it again.
That's what Whitewater was.
It was it was a screw job.
Anyway, uh there's a couple of things on this, and I'm gonna try to focus on some phone calls because I've got a lot of people who have been patiently waiting.
Uh back to the Washington Post story for just a second.
Because it's not just the New York Times getting in on this, and it's not, it's not just judicial watch, and it's not just the cable networks.
For Clinton's speech income shows how their wealth is intertwined with charity.
Uh Bill Clinton was paid at least $26 million in speaking fees by companies and organizations that are also major donors to the foundation he created after leaving the White House.
This according to the Washington Post, they did their own analysis of public records and foundation data.
Now the amount, about one quarter of Clinton's overall speaking income between 2001-2013.
Clinton made over 100 million dollars making speeches.
Now who does that?
100 million, now, granted it was over 12 years, but who makes a hundred million dollars doing speeches?
Hell Henry Kissinger, do you you you didn't even get he didn't give that much per speech.
Nobody got me?
Oh, come on.
I've never charged for a speech in my life, and I never would.
That's you know, that's another thing about this.
I just I know that there's a lot of people, there are a lot of people who they're part of a speaker's agency and they charge 40 or 50.
I don't know it's it's unseemly to me.
I don't know why.
I have I have never charged for now.
The rush to Excess Tour is not a speech.
I mean, that's a uh it's a well, it's a it's a performance, but the the the revenue always goes to charity or to the affiliate radio station.
You know, I sometimes took a in the early days, I might think I took $15,000 or whatever.
Um but there were ticket prices.
It wasn't some organization just paying me to come in and do it.
I've had that offered.
Uh No, no, they wouldn't.
No, they wouldn't.
No, no, no, Snerdley.
People would offer me a million.
No, no, no, no, no.
Anyway, that's always seem unseen, but a hundred million dollars doing speeches.
You know, I just I think it's I know, I know Bush and Reagan, I think they they did uh what is it, Reagan or Bush got a million dollars from the yeah, the left had a cow Ray got a million dollars in a speech in Japan or something.
Yeah.
Um but as a one-time thing.
Here's Clinton.
Anyway, so a hundred million dollars.
The Washington Post says that 26 million dollars of that demonstrates how closely intertwined Bill and Hillary Clinton's charitable work has become with their growing personal wealth.
And see, that's that's that's why people are now starting to call this a crime family operation.
Now that she has formally entered the presidential race, the family may face political pressure and some legal requirements to provide further details of their personal finances and those of the foundation, giving voters a clearer view of the global network of patrons that have supported the Clintons and their work over the past 15 years.
What work?
What were this is clearly influence buying, and it's buying it on the cum.
Everybody's known that Hillary's gonna run in 2016, particularly the Democrats, particularly the Clintons.
So Bill's out there giving speeches, she's Secretary of State.
They are raising money from foreign entities.
And the New York Times has blown the whistle on a big one about helping the uh the Russians and Vladimir Putin become power players in the global uranium market.
That is not a good deal.
Anyway, the the Washington Post continues to discuss in this story the very curious way that Bill Clinton got personally wealthy from donations to a charity.
Remember, we revealed earlier in the program, thanks to the Federalist.com, they have examined there's a 15% pass-through rate of the Clinton Foundation.
Meaning you donate a dollar and 15 cents goes to some charity.
85 cents of every dollar to the Clinton Foundation went to salaries, expenses, travel, and the big category, 60% other expenses, undefined.
Ben Shapiro at Breitbart, Hillary Clinton 2.0 the money machine launches.
Hillary Clinton's manufactured little people campaigns about take a back seat to raising as much cash from as many wealthy donors as possible, according to the Huffing and Puffington Post.
Hillary is already pumping her fundraisers, telling them that they ought to become part of the so-called Hill Starters campaign, in which they raise $2,700 from 10 people, and in exchange they get an audience with Hillary herself.
And then Reuters, ladies and gentlemen, has a story talking about how the Clinton Family Foundation is having to go back and re-file years and years worth of tax returns because of the information that has been made public this week.
It's significant.
The amount of tax returns they're having to refile.
Um they are altering, they are changing, they're recategorizing income into certain uh different categories.
I mean, it's a clear admission that they tried to get away with something.
So the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, the Federalist, PJ Media.com, which comes right out and says that all of this is essentially a crime family operation.
And then Ron Fournier, who is uh at the National Journal, he says, I don't know what's in Peter Schweitzer's book, but I know what the Clintons are capable of.
And here's how he starts this thing.
Jennifer Flowers, Cattle Futures, the White House Travel Office, the Rose Law Firm, the Lincoln Bedroom, Monica Lewinsky, and now the Clinton Foundation.
What ties these stories together is the predictable paint by numbers response from the Bill and Hillary Clinton political operation.
Number one, you deny.
Salient questions are dodged, the evidence goes missing, the stone wall is built.
Number two, you deflect.
Blame is shifted, usually to Republicans in the media.
Number three, demean.
People who question or criticize.
The Clintons get tarred as right wing extremists, hacks, nuts, or sluts.
The Bill and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation is both an admirable charity and a shadow political operation, a wash in conflicts of interest.
The CD side of the foundation is a legitimate campaign issue.
While the Clintons deserve credit for making Foundation donations largely transparent, but Ron, fifteen percent of every dollar donated gets donated and gets redonated.
Fifteen percent?
There isn't any good works going on here.
He then goes on to ask, what did donors expect from the Clintons?
Did they receive favors in return?
Why did the Clintons do business with countries that finance terrorism and suppress the rights of women?
Did family and friends benefit from their ties to the Foundation?
And in a much broader sense, what are the operations of the Foundation say about Hillary Clinton's management ability and ethical grounding?
Ethical grounding.
What, do we want to pretend there still is some?
These questions are reportedly explored by the author Peter Schweitzer in a pseudo-published book, Clinton Cash, the untold story of how and why foreign governments and businesses helped make Bill and Hillary rich.
I say reportedly because I haven't read the book yet.
This is Fournier writing.
I have no idea whether Schweitzer reveals any wrongdoing or relevant information.
Scheduled for publication on May 5th, its contents are unknown, but that hasn't stopped the Clintons from denying, deflecting, and demeaning.
So it is a veritable storm that has been launched on the Clintons with details.
Does it appear that much is being held back?
And it's devastating.
It's unlike anything we've ever seen that drive my media do and report about prominent Democrats, particularly the Clintons.
I hear the Reuters details.
Hillary Clinton's family charities are refiling at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments and said they may audit other Clinton Foundation returns in case of other errors.
Foundation, its list of donors have been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks.
Republican critics say the Foundation makes Clinton vulnerable to undue influence.
Her campaign team calls these claims absurd conspiracy theories.
The charity's errors generally take the form of underreporting or over-reporting by millions of dollars, donations from foreign governments, or in other instances, omitting to break out government donations entirely when reporting revenue.
The errors which have not been previously reported appear on the Form 990S, that all nonprofit organizations must file annually with the IRS to maintain their tax exempt status.
And a charity has to show copies of the forms to anyone who wants to see them to understand how the charity raises and spends its money.
That's how it has been discovered that they have a pass-through rate of 15%.
They can't hide that.
And as Michael Walsh asks here in reporting the Reuters story, what difference it make who the head of the crime syndicate is.
For three years in a row, beginning in 2010, the Clinton Foundation reported to the IRS that it received zero.
Oh, now this is big.
For three years in a row, beginning in 2010, let me 10, 11, and 12, the Clinton Foundation reported to the IRS that it received absolutely no money from foreign and U.S. governments, a dramatic fall-off from the tens of millions of dollars in foreign government donations that they reported in previous years.
It turns out those entries were errors, according to the foundation.
Yes, it turns out that it wasn't no money that was donated.
We goofed up.
It turned out it was millions and millions.
So they're having to refile now.
They're refiling because they got caught.
They're not refiling because they caught themselves.
Quick timeout.
Back with much more after this, my friends.
Do not go away.
And back to the phones we go.
People patiently waiting, and this is John in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
John, great to have you.
Thank you so much for holding on.
Well, thank you so much.
Uh Rush, this is an important question for me.
I think it would be interesting for your your uh listeners.
A great mind like yours or a great athlete, when they're gifted and they train, as you know better than I, they become the best, the best, they mean in the Hall of Fame or there.
And so I was wondering in your case, you must have been gifted, but how did you begin?
Did you spend all nighters?
Did you memorize certain books?
Did did you drink eight cups of coffee a day and sleep four hours?
I mean, did you and then did you finally find a groove of how to study?
In other words, uh a particular portion of politics helped you get the overall scheme, and then when you studied or you memorized, I guess you get my gist of it.
I don't want to take twenty minutes just uh going over this this question because of your other callers, but I would, and I'm sure other people would like to know how you began, what was your sojourn uh as far as your studying and your accumulation of all these facts and knowledge and writing ability?
Wow.
Um I don't know how to I mean I know you're asking this question seriously.
I know it's a serious question, and there's no there's no there's no double entendre.
Like I'm trying to figure out well, why are you so this and that?
No, no, I know I I I I know you're taking you serious, and I'm I'm I don't want to be flippant with you.
I mean, I don't want to appear to uh not take your question seriously.
But I'm not I don't see myself that way, number one.
Um let me tell you a little story that that I I want I had the occasion one evening to have dinner with Henry Kissinger.
And I decided that I was just gonna throw everything to the wind and just ask him.
I didn't care if the question seemed stupid.
There were things I'd been wanting to ask him ever since I first heard of him.
And one of the questions I asked him, we're in it was in William Buckley's house, and it was uh in the drawing room, it was after dinner.
And Buckley and I are smoking cigars, and the room is just thick with smoke.
And Kissinger didn't smoke, but he didn't care.
He was a trooper sitting in there, and his wife Nancy was there.
And I said, Doc Dr. Kisser, can I ask you a personal question?
And he he sat there as the brilliant superior person that he is.
Yes, of course.
You may what is the question?
I said, I am dying to know how in the world you decided to deal with the North Vietnamese when it was time for that peace process in Paris.
I said, I you are undoubtedly the most brilliant man in any government In the world.
How did you deal with the North Vietnamese?
Was there anybody that you were dealing with that was on your level?
Did you have to did you have to make a concerted effort to get down to their level?
Or was there somebody that was nearly your intellectual equal?
And he sat there and nodded his head and he was seriously considering the question.
And he did not refute my premise.
He accepted the premise that he was by far the intellectual giant of all the people that it was and not an offensive way.
It wasn't it wasn't offensive at all.
I've got a break I have to take here, but John, don't hang up.
Because I will complete the story when we get back.
And we're back with John in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
So John, I'm asking Dr. Kissinger in this smoke-filled room, and anybody else would have reacted to the smoke.
I mean, it was that much that the room didn't have any ventilation.
But he didn't say a word.
He was just, it was what it was, and he was as uh his presence was overwhelming.
And I'm asking him how in the world he managed to deal to relate with the North Vietnamese negotiators.
Either small country, not a lot of people there, communists, brutal people, uh in in our way of thinking, uncivilized compared to us.
And how then how in the world did you form a bond with them?
Did did did uh were were they able to get up to your level?
Did you have to get down to their level?
And I don't remember exactly what he said, but he did not refute my premise, John.
He did not, he did not disagree that he was the smartest guy in the world.
He did not disagree the smartest guy in the room.
He accepted my my premise and answered it as such.
He said you must remember that Ho Chi Minh was educated in America.
So on many levels.
I was dealing with people who already knew the way that things are done in this country.
And I had to realize this going in that I did not have a cultural advantage at all whatsoever.
They were brutal.
You're exactly right.
That's what separated the two.
They were just brutal.
That's how they got things done.
And he ended up explaining the you know what it was like to the first three weeks of the peace talks were an argument over the layout of the table for crying out loud.
But the the only reason I tell you this story is because uh you're you're asking me, you know, what uh uh how how I train uh with my I I I don't know, I can't I'm I'm not sure I don't think of myself the way you do, but I appreciate that you do.
Don't don't misunderstand.
Here's what I do.
Uh let me just say what I do.
I have been really lucky in my life.
I have been able to do, I have been able to focus on my passions.
I have been able to focus on the things that I love.
And so none of it has appeared, none of it seemed like work to me.
Uh now there were problematic days when I was a DJ, and I, you know, it took me a while to get to this point where I had the time to do what I wanted to do and devote it to the way I wanted to do it.
But I would say the specific answer to your question is, let me answer it this way.
I can't say the number of media people who have said, you know what, we would love to follow you around for a day to see how you prepare.
We would love to show our viewers what it's like to get ready for the program.
I said, No, you don't want to do that.
Why not?
I said, because you better be prepared to see me sitting for hours and reading.
That's all I do.
I don't collaborate with anybody, I don't call anybody, I don't send anybody notes, I don't ask people what they think about this.
I just absorb.
That is all I do.
I have years and years of accumulated knowledge and accumulated opinion, and it all gets added to the base, and I either confirm what I believe or change my mind about things here or there.
But there isn't there's nothing to see.
Um you're gonna see Me sitting somewhere.
You're gonna see me sitting on a couch, you're gonna see me sitting in a desk and a sitting in a chair and smoking cigars.
That's what you're gonna see.
There's nothing to see because it all takes place where nobody can see what's going on, and that's in my brain.
I mean, I don't know how exciting that would be, but that's what I do.
Reading, when you're reading your books, do you write in the margins?
Do you color code?
Do you have a certain uh schemata that you go with that you can see at a glance after you're done with your meeting work?
If there's something that I want to remember, I reread it ten times.
Wow.
And if there's something I really, really want to never forget, I write it down myself.
I verbatim.
What I've just read, I read.
When it when I when I did apply myself in college, which was like one or two courses, or when I went to the radio school, the way I would study, I would take as detailed notes as I could, and then the first thing I did when I got home is start rewriting them.
Uh almost as verbatim as I could remember.
No shortcuts, no shorthand, no leaving out adjectives.
I rewrote everything by hand at the time.
I didn't even have a typewriter.
And I found by doing that I never forgot it.
I love that.
I love that, Rush.
I love it.
But re rereading it, sometimes now you know, on an iPad, you can make a note.
You can highlight a passage and make a note and always have it as a reference point.
The problem I have with that is remembering what I've made notes about in order to find the notes.
So I've developed a system for that.
But I don't do that very much.
I just I uh I I'm not a speed reader, I take my time.
I've uh I verbalize what I read.
This is the biggest the biggest uh objective, uh the biggest obstacle to speed reading is silently speaking what you read.
And every speed read teacher tries to get the student to stop pronouncing the word verbally to stop pronouncing this top don't pronounce the punctuation, don't pronounce this the any just just you're just absorb the words.
Don't read it to you.
Well, I don't do that.
I make sure that as I'm reading, I actually can hear myself saying it.
Wow.
So I read kind of slow compared to I mean, I don't scan.
I if I'm really interested in it, I absorb it.
Another thing though, I have also learned that you don't have to read everything to get the gist.
I know, for example, in a news story where the news is and where it isn't.
So in a in a 750-word column, I'll probably read 300 to 400 words.
When you're reading these books, Rush, and you and and you're using your your your capacity, do you take anything for energy?
I mean, do you eat I know this sounds stupid, but do you eat something, a specific thing while you're reading to drink a cup of coffee or something to keep your uh your your uh cinematic folks you're gonna think this is crazy, I can relate to this guy's question because you know, when I watch a football game, I wonder what the players had for pregame, especially guys having a great day.
Okay, what was the pre-day meal?
Uh I do not eat while I'm if if I'm reading a novel, I may munch on something.
If I am reading for work, I don't eat.
I'd have a cigar, maybe a diet cook there, uh, but I don't have any noise.
I the TV's off literally no noise in the room.
It has to be how about coffee?
Uh only in the morning.
Uh uh.
That that's that's the coffee's unrelated to the study.
Uh coffee's just just what I need to get going in the morning.
Could probably hot water would suffice.
It's just something hot.
Uh but no, there's there's no nutritional component, if you're asking me that.
Well, I just I meant for energy, not not not nutritional in the in the in the you know nutritional sense.
Oh something to something to get those synapses going.
Like you're right, you're reading 700 things, you're not reading out loud, you're absorbing.
Oh, well, now there are days that I'm I'm I'm um uh I'm unable to focus like I'd like to.
There are days I just don't want to do it, or moments in a day where I don't want to do it.
If that happens, I just stop.
I don't fight it.
I put it down and uh you know, pick up a novel, watch a television show, or uh I don't do something and then come back to it later.
But there there's no there's no external uh stimuli that I use to get going if I'm flat.
I just wait till it happens.
Oh, it's good.
But I don't think I'm I'm I'm flattered that you're asking me all this.
I I don't even think about this until you're asking me about it.
I've never even I just do it.
That's that's the amazing thing.
That's the amazing thing because I know well, I I don't know a lot of scholars, but I know a few who see I'm not a scholar.
I'm I'm I'm rejected by scholars.
I I'm considered unserious by people with formal education.
I'm Well, that's ridiculous.
Well, no, it's it's class oriented.
It's just it's it's uh it's it's the way it is.
Plus being on a radio to a lot of people is is the lowest rung of the showbiz ladder TV's words.
I hate television.
I the older I get, the more I hate it.
Because it's collaborative and it's phony, and it's all you got to do all this stuff before you even get to the by the time you're ready to do the TV show, I've forgotten half of what I wanted to say, because I've got to talk to the makeup artist and I've got a producer collaborate here and there, and this is it's just a giant distraction.
Yes.
I mean a two and a half hours of meetings to do a 20-minute TV show, and I haven't done one meeting ever for this radio show.
So anyway, uh I I appreciate the uh the question, but uh I just I've always just uh chalked all this up to being blessed with a half decent memory, which I really chalk up to.
I'm just fortunate I'm able to combine the things I really am interested in and fascinated by with my job.
In fact, that is my job.
So that's what I care about.
I think anybody doing what you really care about, you're gonna know more of it, remember more of it.
You're you're going to uh be able to keep track of it and and uh have immediate recall on things that you need if you're if you're devoted to it, if you've adapted uh to the circumstances necessary to learn, so forth.
I've just I just view myself actually as having been uh for fact I rem I got into an argument.
This may help you.
When I was refusing to go to college, and my dad was just beside himself, considering himself a failure as a parent, because he couldn't convince me to go to college.
And if I didn't go to college in his world, I was never going to amount to anything, because he came out of Great Depression where if you didn't have a degree, you weren't going to get a job.
And I told him that I wanted to be like William F. Buckley one day.
He said, Well, what do you mean by that?
I just I want to be able to sit around and just learn.
I want to even sit here and read.
I want to be able to sit here and write.
I don't have to go to some class and he gave me the biggest lecture.
Well, how do you think Buckley got to where he is?
You think he'd just been sitting around his whole life and so forth and uh we had a big knockdown drag out about it.
Um he said, you can't look at people who are at the time I'm 19 years old now.
You can't look at people or 45 and 50 and think they started there.
You're looking at where they are.
You think you want to be there tomorrow, but that's not how they got there.
Uh he was he was constantly trying to uh pummel common sense into me.
And he did uh more often than he knew.
But John, I gotta go.
I appreciate the question very much.
Um and I I hope the answer's satisfactory.
We've got a quick timeout, but backward more after this.
Uh ladies and gentlemen, let me go back to this Washington Post story.
Uh one more detail.
I did not make it clear enough.
Um because the well, the post makes it somewhat confusing.
They talk about 26 million dollars that Clinton made from speeches, but then they get to the hundred million dollar figure over uh twelve years.
But the point is, it's a crucial distinction to make here.
The hundreds of millions of dollars that both Bill and Hillary get for their speeches went right to their pockets.
None of it went to the Clinton Foundation.
There was zero pass-through on that money.
I mean, that money did suffice as their income.
So it's not that the money went to the foundation and they siphoned some of it back.
It never went to the foundation.
Now, I don't know if they were pledging that it would go to the foundation as a cover for these donors.
But regardless, the donors, the payees, were nevertheless expecting something for it.
And that's the real point of the Washington Post article.
It's not really about the donations to the Foundation.
It's about the millions that Bill got for his speeches and the donors that Bill and Hillary hid, including foreign and domestic fat cats who definitely had business before the State Department.
While they were slipping Bill Clinton 500 grand to pop for his speech, some of these groups gave Bill several million.
There was also some side money that went to the foundation.
It's slimy.
And it seems like the entire drive-by media is in.
Now CNN dropped this.
They dropped it as quickly as they could.
As soon as the story hit that an American had been killed in the counter-terrorism drone strike back in January that Obama just announced today.
CNN dropped this Hillary and Bill Clinton stuff like a hot potato.
I don't think they've picked it back up.
But the others have not let it go.
You remember the lesbian basketball coach that threatened to burn down the Memories pizza shop?
Well, they fired her.
Northern Indiana School does she She actually got fired.
I can't believe it.
I'll have details tomorrow.
Open line Friday, then, so we'll see you.
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