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May 8, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:15
May 8, 2015, Friday, Hour #2
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Just one more thing about this millennial business and the fact that Whole Foods has all of a sudden realized the millennials don't have the money to shop there.
Why did they ever think they would?
Or did have they not seen the student debt load?
Have they not seen the unemployment numbers involving millennials?
I mean, this is a major American corporation.
Where did they get the idea that these millennials have the same amount of money as their parents and can afford these kind of you know what's not that?
I'll tell you what it is.
It's very quickly.
It's a little bit of.
Oh, I don't know what the word for it is, but they just assume that these millennials are part of the new age, health conscious, go out and spend whatever it takes to be able to afford all these politically correct kinds of food.
And they found out that, hey, even though they might want the correct kinds of food, the biggest free range, this and the healthiest that, they don't have the money to pay for it.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
And fascinated.
I'm fascinated by how corporate entities market, how they learn what they're doing wrong, and how they misjudge this one off the bat.
I'm telling you, it's because they're all good liberals.
Well, well, I know Whole Foods has competition they didn't used to have and so forth.
But anyway, moving on.
Open line Friday, Rush Limbaugh back at it, 800-282-288-2, the email address, L Rushbo at EIB net.com.
So I was perusing the Drudge Report last night, and I came across a fascinating link on the Drudge Report from the Hill.com.
Is Matt Drudge the second most influential man in America?
Obviously the president implied as the most influential man.
And it is by Brent Budowski, who's a columnist at The Hill, Hill.com, and concludes that Drudge is the second most influential man in America and is unhappy about it.
Doesn't like it, doesn't like the influence that Drudge has on shaping the news.
While as a liberal, I do not suggest the following with a great deal of pleasure.
Matt Drudge is by far the single most influential person in the American media, and it's fair to ask, is he the second most influential man in America?
For more than any individual in the media, Drudge dominates his competitors to the degree that he has no competitors.
Drudge determines what you watch on TV, what you read in newspapers, what you hear on radio, and even what you read on the internet about politics more than any single person in American history.
MSNBC may claim that it is liberal and Fox News may be the house organ for conservatives, but if you turn on either in the morning, you will often see the guiding hand of Drudge.
The New York Times may consider itself the finest newspaper in the world.
But while one of the Times political reporters is reduced to writing ditties complaining that Hillary doesn't answer her questions, one entry on the Drudge Report can trigger 100 questions to any politician in America.
Network anchors come and go, but Drudge remains the omnipresent force, who has required reading for political editors, television producers, and campaign managers from all parties.
Somewhere in the hereafter, the likes of William Randolph Hurster looking toward Drudge on Earth with envy and asking, why didn't I ever get that big?
And if anybody believes that there is somebody more powerful than Drudge in the media, be my guest and name your choice.
One of the great mysteries of modern life, again, if you're just joining me reading here from the hill.com.
One of the great mysteries of modern life is that the highest Democrats in the land complain about Drudge, read Drudge like Talmudic scholars pouring over biblical text, as Republicans do, but have never even tried to compete with Drudge in the marketplace of media and ideas.
Oh, contraire, that's why I wanted to share this with you.
I think this is fascinating.
The liberal media complaining about Drudge and then whining that he has no competitors.
There's another profound lesson here, folks.
I'll get to it in a second.
Is Drudge the second most influential man in America behind the president?
It is a debatable proposition that might well be true.
More than any single person in American politics besides the president, Drudge determines the content of debate in our national discourse on an hourly basis.
In many ways, I deplore the influence of Matt Drudge.
But in the meantime, would someone send this piece to him and maybe he'll post it wink, wink.
Now the guy who wrote this, Brent Badowski, a former aide to Lord Benson, Democrat Texas, and Bill Alexander, Democrat Arkansas, who was then chief deputy majority whip of the House.
He holds an LLM degree in international financial law from the London Scrual of Economics.
And has his email address here.
Now, forgetting whether Drudge is the most influential, second most influential, let's acknowledge something.
The media is frustrated as all get out with Drudge.
It's a two-sided coin.
They love when Drudge links to their stuff, but they hate that Drudge has this power.
That's what this story is about.
And they lament that Drudge has no competitors.
What does Drudge do?
Why does Drudge have all this power?
Why does Drudge get all these clicks?
Why do so many people go to the Drudge Report routinely, regularly, multiple times a day?
Why do they click on all these links that Drudge finds?
Take a guess, Snurtley.
What's the answer to the question?
Why do people do this?
Okay, exactly right.
Matt Drudge has a knack.
Matt Drudge happens to find whatever there is anywhere.
And if he thinks, if he's interested in it, he links to it.
And he benefits from the fact that whatever he's interested in, a majority of Americans are too.
He has a knack.
He has a he has a touch for this.
The idea that he has no competitors.
Here you have a failing mainstream media.
You have a mainstream media losing, I mean, they are hemorrhaging ad dollars.
They are hemorrhaging audience, both broadcast and print.
CNN doesn't have an audience.
MSNBC doesn't have an audience and hasn't had in a long time.
Time magazine is and and uh the New York Times are hemorrhaging advertisers.
The number of pages in both publications is declining.
What does it say that millions of Americans only have one place to go to find things they really want to know?
If if you if you're at CNN, or if you are at the New York Times, or if you are anywhere, LA Times, and you're sitting out there wringing your hands over Drudge, have you ever thought about maybe emulating Drudge?
Have you thought maybe the stuff you're doing is not interesting to people?
Have you ever thought maybe the news you're giving people they don't care about and they don't trust?
Drudge doesn't put his opinions up with anything.
Now you might say, well, he doesn't have to.
We're finding out what Drudge cares about by what he links to, and Drudge is obviously a right winger.
Ah, I can't, I can't condone that.
He's an equal opportunity winger.
Matt Drudge is a businessman.
He loves clicks.
He loves hits, he loves multiple hits, just like the media used to love big audiences.
But they are more concerned about staying true to their ideology, which is the agenda of the Democrat Party.
The fact that Drudge has no competitors is what stands out to me.
This guy admits it.
There are no competitors.
The New York Times ought to be the drudge page.
The newspaper of record, the greatest newspaper in the world, if it were being run by true news people, the New York Times would be what the Drudge page is.
If you want to know what's happening wherever, and things that matter and are important, that's the reputation all these news organizations want, isn't it?
But they don't have it.
Matt Drudge has it.
And he links to some things in the New York Times, but not everything.
Some things in the Washington Post, days go by and there won't be something from any there, either publication.
Other days, the page is overloaded with links to those papers.
It just depends.
But the idea that Drudge doesn't have any competition, admitted to by this guy at the Hill.com, they don't know how.
They're admitting they don't know how to appeal to a mass population.
And yet, how do they view themselves?
Only they are qualified to tell you what the news is.
Only they are qualified to determine what isn't news.
Only they are qualified to commentate on the news.
Don't want to make too big a deal about this, but I just I find it, I find it fascinating here that they wring their hands.
It's right in front of them.
Everything they're afraid of, everything that Drudge does that makes them mad.
They just can't, they could never bring themselves to do it.
Drudge does, and they get ticked off.
And they get mad at the power and influence that he has, or they get worried about it.
It's just, I don't I don't know.
I I find the all of this, the arrogance and the conceit from people in the in the mainstream media and the drive-by media wonder why their audiences are shrinking, wonder why there's an alternative media, wonder why Fox News is popular.
Look at what they say about Fox News.
Fox News runs rings around all other broadcast news organizations, and rather than learn from it and try to emulate it, at least the parts they can and grow their own businesses.
They sit there and shrink and shrink and shrink and impugn the honor and integrity of the competitors that are cleaning their clocks.
I mean, it's patently obvious that if you scour the internet and you want the latest and the greatest and the most poignant, the most timely, but the latest on anything happening.
You don't go to the New York Times page.
You don't go to the LA Times page.
You don't go to USA Today.
You don't go to the CNN page.
You don't go to the MSNBC.
You go to the Drudge page.
That's what everybody knows.
And I don't think it would be that hard to emulate for them, except they structurally, they systematically cannot.
Because they could not divorce themselves from their agenda long enough to even get close to accomplishing what Drudge does.
Anyway, got to take a break.
We'll be back after this.
Now, just one thing about this piece of the Hill.com may not be coincidental.
Because our old buddy from the FCC, Ajit Pai, said over the weekend that he foresees a future in which the federal election committee, federal regulators, may go after Drudge as part of net neutrality, which by the way, we have previously referenced on this program as part of net neutrality that never gets talked about.
And that was the uh the story by Mr. Pai specifically mentioned that federal regulators will want to go get Drudge because of content, because Drudge's content is viewed to be political donations in kind.
And net neutrality, make no mistake, I don't care what you think you know about it.
I don't care if you've bought into this mirage that net neutrality is making sure that everybody's got equal access to websites at the same speeds and bandwidth And all that.
Let me tell you what it really is.
Net neutrality ultimately is empowering the federal government to go after websites based on content.
And if, for example, Drudge would be judged to be a conservative site, and by admission, they're nobody even close.
He has no competitors, then on that basis alone.
The FEC could limit Drudge's accessibility.
Could limit how many people could could log into Drudge or just eliminate Drudge altogether because liberal comparable websites aren't getting near the traffic, and that isn't equal, and that isn't fear.
And make no mistake.
That is the dream of people who believe and start touting net neutrality.
And all these tech people are clueless.
They think it's all about making sure they can get to Netflix whenever they want to, without having to pay an arm and a leg, or Roku, or hook who or Hulu, or whatever it is.
Apple TV, you name it.
They think it's all about accessible speeds, equally and fairly distributed with no bandwidth bottlenecks.
And that's a smoke screen.
It is ultimately a net neutrality is aimed at determining fair and equal political content with some master arbitrator behind the curtain that is linked to a federal agency somewhere.
And will always be a leftist, make no mistake.
So this piece at the Hill.com ringing in hand and worried about it's unfair, all this advantage that Drudge has he's the second most influential could not maybe isn't a coincidence.
Maybe it's timed to be perceived as appearing right on the heels of that story about the FEC limiting Drudge because of content and fairness and all this.
Do not do not forget this and do not discount it.
Now to the phones we go, Rick, sorry, Chris in uh in Port Mansfield, Texas.
It's great to have you.
Hi.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet, sir.
Uh I just was watching Fox News, and I usually watch the O'Reilly report, and I noticed the other night they're all talking about that Geller woman that had the uh draw Mohammed thing going on.
Right.
And uh Bill O'Reilly was saying that she he defends her right to say it, but she shouldn't have done it because I guess she was rude.
And even Juan Williams went almost to the point of saying that it was uh bordering on hate speech, and the only reason she was doing it was to uh promote herself.
And I just wanted to say that you know it's been said by others, of course, only the only freedoms you have are the ones you can defend.
And the think piece that goes with that is if you don't exercise your freedom, do you really have it?
So I think this geller woman is not, I mean, this woman is wonderful.
Uh she should be heralded, not not chastised, or by saying she's rude or whatever.
Just wanted to give you something to think about there.
Well, I I uh appreciate your call, and I I understand what you uh what you're thinking.
There's a there's a a school of thought that people assume is conservative thought uh that condemns Pam Geller and the way it goes is we admire what she's trying to do, but why, why oh why, would you take steps to offend the vast majority of peaceful Muslims?
How in the world is this helping outreach to peaceful Muslims?
How in the world is this helping when you do nothing but offend them?
It's an overreach, and this is done.
That line of thought is taken by conservatives who want to show liberals that they're reasonable, and that they're not part of the right wing wacko kook Fringe, which many of the so-called conservative media types consider mainstream conservatism to be.
It's an opportunity for people in the New York Boston corridor, conservatives, to tell their liberal buddies, hey, I'm not like, I'm not like that, Wacko.
You can you can you can invite me to your party.
I mean, you can think of me as a reasonable.
I'm not like them.
That's what that's why this stuff is being said about Pam Geller.
Because to state misstate what she's doing and what her purpose is like that, I mean, I uh it it it's that's done purposefully.
It's not hard to understand what Pam Geller is doing.
If I look, I I'm gonna in fact, since you mentioned Fox, last night something happened on Fox that I got a bunch of notes about.
There's a liberal female named Julie Roginski that appears on Fox now and then, and she had to admit last night, pained though she was, she had to admit that I had a really good point when I observed that if we are going to condemn ourselves for drawing cartoons of the Prophet because that offends Islam,
then why do we continue to offend them by flaunting and flouting gay marriage and gay rights?
At what point do we draw the line and say, well, we'll go ahead and irritate them on gay marriage, screw them on that, but we'll honor their result, their desire not to see pictures of the of the prophet.
Yeah, I have the soundbite.
Yeah, I'll play, I'll play the soundbite.
I'll play the soundbite.
In fact, I've got a lot.
We should get started on the sound bites uh when we get back from this break here.
But yeah, I've got that.
I got all kinds of emails of people when it happened last night, and I didn't know because I don't have the TV on.
So here's the soundbite.
This was let me first play what I said on this program uh Wednesday, this and they replayed this on the on the five on Fox yesterday is when this happened.
The same militant Islamists who do not permit the drawing of pictures of the Prophet Muhammad also do not permit homosexuality.
If you turn on MSNBC, you're gonna see a total devotion to the concept of gay marriage.
Isn't that insulting to the Muslims who would be watching?
That's a brilliant question, folks, and I've posed that question all week long.
I mean, we go out of our way to act like we shouldn't draw these pictures of Muhammad, we shouldn't have these contests because Muslims say they're offended.
You ever seen what they do to gay people?
You ever seen what happens, you know about gay marriage in these countries?
It doesn't exist.
And yet, well, we just we put that in their faces every day in this country.
Why don't we worry about that?
So they discussed it on the five.
Julie Roginski, which is I she's a former Clinton operative, and uh it was Melissa Francis, Kimberly Gilfoyle, and Greg Guttfeld.
I agree with Pamela Geller.
She's got a disgusting message, but I agree that she has the right to say that.
And you agree with Rush Limbaugh.
I mean, this fight has been pretty interesting.
The most depressing part about this is that I agreed with Rush Limbaugh today.
But that's so depressing.
Evolving.
They're all talking at the same time.
Are you able to hear all of that snerdling?
This is one of the most depressing things that ever happened to Julie Braginsky.
She had to agree with me.
I'm kind of shocked.
I didn't think anybody would agree with that.
You agree with that.
That that pretty much I mean, if if you're gonna get called to action over these cartoons, and if you're gonna throw everything you can to stop these cartoons from being drawn and published, and then if you agree that bragging about and touting and promoting gay marriage does the same thing, well, then what are you called on to do?
Shut up about it, which I frankly don't see as happening.
Okay, back to the Tom Brady situation now.
Let off with it yesterday, so I thought we'd get some other stuff under our belt for the first uh half of the program today.
His agent Don Yi was on CNN last night, and Rachel Nichols said, Yeah, what was most frustrating to you guys that oh, before before I play that, grab grab just just so you people know how on the cutting edge you are if you listen to this program.
Listen to what I said January 23rd, 2015.
I have spies, ladies and gentlemen.
I have learned that the NFL always intended to talk to Brady last.
Talk to everybody else first.
Talk to the assistant coaches, talk to the equipment manager, talk to the ball boy, talk to the head coach, whatever.
And then after you have all that, then you go to Brady.
Because this is about Brady.
The only person that possibly is affected by the balls being inflated or deflated, Brady.
He is the focal point of this.
If the NFL is serious about the investigation, they might be getting ready to do a Martha Stewart type thing.
You get testimony from everybody else, and then you talk to Brady and find out who's lying.
Talking to Brady first, not the best way to do this.
Last night CNN, Rachel Nichols to Brady's agent Don Ye.
What was most frustrating to you guys that Tom was telling them that they weren't believing?
I will say, you know, the impression I had was because uh from a schedule standpoint, Tom's interview, I believe may have been the final interview in the entire investigative process.
And my own personal impression was that opinions may have already been solidified at that point.
And so that was a particular frustration to me.
Yeah, yeah, exactly right.
So he's admitting that they talked to Brady last, exactly as I suspect would be the case way back in January.
And there's a reason for doing you get everybody else on the record.
And whatever they say, you make a note of it, you know what who is who's said, and here comes Brady, and he's then up against everybody else.
And the agent admitted, yeah, we didn't like that.
Not a bit.
Don Lemon then said to the agent, well, you had uh you'd previously spoken about this report.
You blame the league for what happened.
The other team tipped him off, the Colts.
So why are you blaming the other team in the league?
They brought in a lot of talented personnel.
Most of that personnel now is former investment bankers and politicos from Capitol Hill, and there it really is a earth of experienced football people helping the commissioner make decisions and judgments.
The Colts obviously contacted League Office well before the AFC championship game.
And league officials then huddled all amongst themselves about what to do if they had an experienced person in the office steeped in football culture.
Probably would have recommended that before the game starts, you probably should alert the Patriots as to what the issue is so that whatever competition we put forth will be fair.
Now see, that that goes, I'm sorry to mention this again, but that goes to what's the biggest deal about this to me.
And that is the NFL purposely allowed a championship game to be played with footballs they either knew or suspected were not inflated properly and to regulation.
Which means they were setting a trap, call it a sting or what have you.
And what the agent is saying here, yeah, they brought in a lot of talented people, investment bankers, politics.
They didn't bring in any football people.
They don't really know the football culture here.
And he doesn't believe in how political it everything is political in our culture today.
Everything is political.
I mean, whether there's an anti-Brady agenda or not, whatever was going on here was placed above the integrity of that game.
Stop and think of that, folks.
They could have seen to it that that game was played with properly inflated footballs.
They could have stopped everything.
They still had the problem.
I mean, they wouldn't have had to announce that they had found some underinflated footballs they're going to investigate, but the game would have been played.
I know the outcome was 45-7 Patriots.
It was a it was a you know a blowout and that kind of thing.
But still, in the after fact here, everybody knows that the league Let a game be played with less than properly inflated footballs to regulation level.
So they were obviously trying to get somebody for something here.
They they wanted and hoped to catch people in the act.
They were treating it extremely seriously.
And the agent is saying that happened because they brought in political people.
They didn't bring in football.
Football people would have dealt with this in an entirely different way.
They bring in these political people.
Yeah, that's right.
Politics is what?
Politics is gotcha.
Politics is discrediting your opponent.
Politics is impugning your opponent and getting rid of your opponent, getting your opponent off the field, not debating, not fairness, not sportsmanship, none of that.
That's not what politics is today.
So the agent's instincts here are right on the money.
He knew exactly what was going on here.
Which leads me to believe I and I have no idea where this is right now, but somebody, somewhere, really wanted to get the Patriots.
Now, we could speculate why that might be.
There are as many reasons for that as there are people in the league office.
And I don't have any inside information on any of that.
But it is clear that somebody somewhere really wanted the Patriots to be got and gotten good here.
I don't know that that's happened.
Hello.
Brief timeout.
We'll continue with much more after this.
Don't go away.
Tom Brady went to Salem College, Salem University, Salem State, whatever it is, last night for a long ago agreed to appearance.
It's a sit-down QA for the benefit of whoever goes, the audience, students, and what have you.
Jim Gray was the reporter chosen, and he asked Brady questions about this, and Brady said, No, no, I haven't read it, I haven't digested it, I haven't spent a lot of time on it yet.
I'll get back to you when I do.
Here's how that went.
Gray said, What's your reaction, Tom, to the Ted Wells report?
I don't have really any reaction, Tim.
I uh our owner commented on it yesterday, and it's only been 30 hours, so I haven't had much time to digest it fully, but when I do, I'll be sure to let you know how I feel about it.
Jim Gray, who didn't believe that answer, said, Tom, are you a slow reader?
Well, my athletic career has been better than my academic career.
So uh usually I'm used to reading X's and O's.
Um this was a little bit longer.
There's still uh a process that's going forth right now, and um, you know, I'm involved in that process.
So whenever it happens, uh it happens.
Life so much is about uh the ups and downs, and certainly I accept my role and responsibility as a public figure, and I think a lot of it you take the good with the bad, and dealing with different adities in life, you just try to do the best you can do.
Basically, I'm not worried here.
I don't care.
I'm a Super Bowl champion four-time winning quarterback, and you're not.
And I'm not worried about this.
And I don't I I actually don't think he is.
Now, I know that everybody uh pr, especially I mean, athletes have ambitions that go beyond their careers.
I don't know what Brady's is.
People have said that they've heard he wants to run for the Senate uh from Massachusetts.
Um but depending on the person, everybody's different person to person.
I mean, everybody wants a great reputation.
Everybody loved to have great reputation be thought of as possessing uh impeccable integrity, but you know there's only so much you can do uh to control that, and especially among people that you don't know, and it really makes no sense to lose sleep over what people you don't know think about this, and what people who don't know anything about it think about it.
It would be senseless to worry, because you can't change their minds if they're predisposed to hate you anyway.
And he seems to have a pretty relaxed attitude about this, and I also think he's very confident in his representation here.
And I know that uh he knows that the Patriots ownership and management has his back.
So he's uh he's content to let this play out.
So let's go to Charlie Rose.
Nope, nope, sorry, Charlie Rose in a minute.
NBC Nightly News first.
Lester Holt talked with uh gun control authority and expert Bob Costus about the uh about the Ted Wells report.
And Lester said, okay, look, a lot of conversations uh today about the question of whether it was cheating or not.
And it come down to what would you tell a child, a 10-year-old playing pop Warner?
Cheating, or is this some kind of like a wink wink, Bob?
This is just part of the game.
The sort of thing which some view as gamesmanship has been going on for a long time, but it is a rule.
How important is that rule?
Is it as egregious as other forms of cheating?
Did it have the kind of impact on performance that steroid use or other forms of cheating would have?
I don't think so.
In light of the year that the NFL has had, and all the attacks on its integrity, and the attacks on the commissioner Roger Goodell for being in some cases too soft.
I think if they go soft on the glamour boy of the league, Tom Brady, and on the Super Bowl champions, they'll be hell to pay.
There are you had now there that is a popularly held view within the sports media that because of how hard they were on Ray Rice, there's a racial component here too that nobody's talking about.
Do not doubt that.
Seventy some odd percent of the players in this league are African American, and a disproportionate percentage of them are the ones that get punished.
And if the the sports drive-bys, you heard it here from Costas, if there is even the slightest appearance that Brady is getting a slap on the wrist compared to what some of these other guys got, that's what he says there will be hell to pay.
Now, I don't have time to get into it right now, but there's an aspect of that sound bite that I must comment on.
In addition, but I won't do it in the next hour.
I gotta get to the next bite because it's Charlie Rose, and talking to Peter King, Monday morning quarterback Sports Illustrated about the Ted Wells report.
And this is how that little exchange went.
You know, it reminds me of my friend Brian Williams.
Whenever you see a tabloid story about him, it's Lion Bryan.
And this will become cheating Tom.
As somebody who watches NBC Nightly News, and I've watched Brian Williams for, I don't know, six or eight years at most nights.
I thought he was absolutely tremendous.
And I really feel for him.
But you're right, it's the exact same thing about Tom Brady.
The rest of his life, people are going to be looking at him and saying, hey, there's the guy who the NFL uh brought the hammer down for cheating.
You know, let me tell you something about this.
That's what they were saying just a year ago about A Rod.
That he had been shamed forever.
All this stuff had finally come out, and he was forever gonna be stigmatized as a cheater.
You can't find a more popular guy in Yankee Stadium today than Alex Rodriguez.
And I don't think the fans of the New England Patriots are gonna abandon Tom Brady, Hookliners thinker, no matter how many times they try to compare him to Brian Williams.
That may be the best thing that's ever happened to Brady to have that comparison made.
No, no, the only thing I was gonna say is implied here in Bob Costus's answer is that everybody hates the commissioner, and everybody's angry at the NFL, and everybody thinks the NFL is all screwed up.
And I don't know that that's the case.
It is with the media.
The media thinks everybody's mad at Ed Goodell.
And I know he gets booed where he goes and what how much of that's legit and how much of it's been manufactured?
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