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June 1, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:50
June 1, 2015, Monday, Hour #2
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Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
I am Rush Limboy, your highly trained broadcast specialist, shaped by countless years of busy broadcast experience and professionalism.
Making it look so easy, everybody thinks they can do this until they try.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
Email address, LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
And Matthew and Denton, Texas, held on, so we're going to get back to him in just a minute.
But I have to share, we had a drive-by caller, a guy called Snerdley.
Didn't have time to stay in line and go on the air.
He was African-American from Atlanta.
Is that right?
His name was Jeff.
And he wanted to know if I had heard about Lloyd Blankfein's comment about Jeb and Hillary.
What a silly question.
Of course I have.
I'm the host here.
This is my point when talking about Bob Schieffer.
Bob Schieffer's a guy you need to ask.
Hey, Bob, did you hear what Lloyd Blankfein said?
Because if there's anybody that might not know, it'd be Bob Schieffer.
And not anybody in the driveway.
It could be Brian Williams.
If he doesn't know, he'll make it up.
Brian Williams, by the way, Andy Lack is asking NBC staffers to get creative and think of ways they could keep Brian, but not in the anchor chair.
Andy Lack, the new president of NBC or consultant or whatever, desperately wants to keep Brian Williams, but it's apparently obvious he can't go back to the anchor chair.
Plus, Wester Holt's doing well or well enough.
So they're thinking of creative ways.
You know, I think make him the ombudsman.
You know, make Brian Williams the guy that tells us what's true and what's false every day on NBC.
Great job.
Anyway, the guy from Atlanta was pointing out the fact it was, it actually derives from Martin O'Malley appearing.
Get this.
And Nick or Matthew and Denton, hang on, you're coming up.
But we've got to set the table with some things here before we get back to you.
Martin O'Malley went up and appeared with Stephanopoulos.
Now, Stephanopoulos is in a tank for Hillary.
We know this.
I mean, I don't think anybody's even denying it, even at the ABC executive level.
Nevertheless, O'Malley goes there with Stephanopoulos.
And an interview aired yesterday on the program called This Week.
And O'Malley referenced what Lloyd Blankfein said, the Goldman Sachs CEO.
You know, I met Lloyd Blankfein once.
I'm sorry to keep interrupting myself here, but it's not rude when you interrupt yourself.
I met Blankfein at the, let's see, it was the Giants Patriots Super Bowl in Indianapolis.
And it was during the, well, I don't know what it was.
It was where all the owners were in a building next to Lucas Oil Stadium.
And I guess it was one of the tailgate parties is what it was.
Yes, one of those.
And it was in a cordon off very well.
I was with some of the owners.
And Lloyd Blankfein came up to me.
He said, you don't know who I am, but I sure know who you are.
And I said, I do know who you are.
I know where you live.
You live in Bob Costas' building.
He said, no, Bob Costas lives in my building.
Well, I can't still, Central Park West.
I know where you live.
You do?
I do.
I said, I know some people, Goldman Sachs.
I said, I know Jack the Rat Atkinson used to work there with what's the previous guy that got in trouble, Corzine.
Of course, Jack the Rat's a great guy, but Rat has a nickname, golf course nickname.
Anyway, imagine Blank Fine, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, thinking I wouldn't know who he is.
Anyway, it's not the point.
Blank Fine said, and O'Malley commented on it, that as far as he's concerned, Blank Fine, it wouldn't matter, Hillary or Jeb.
Either Bush or Hillary, fine with him, no difference.
The rich would be just as well off with either one.
Now, who first suggested this?
Hannah called Blank Fine.
I said, you know, you're stealing from me, Lloyd.
I'm the guy who said, based on the way, if you look at their policies and if you look at the way the Washington establishment's reacting, I said the ideal ticket for 2016 would be Jeb and Hillary, and it'd be up to them, those two, to figure out who's on top, the ticket.
That's my idea.
That was my, I put that one out there as a marker.
And a lot of people have referenced it, of course, not mentioning me.
And I don't know that Blank Fine actually had me in mind, although he says he knows who I am.
But even better if he didn't, because this is blatantly on it, oh, yeah.
You know, if I'm Jeb Bush, this has to worry me that the CEO of Goldman Sachs thinks either me or Hillary is a wash as far as they're concerned.
What is that saying?
That's why I suggested it'd be a perfect thing.
I mean, you look at the issues, immigration.
I mean, Hillary wants to.
Hillary will be, if she's elected, the richest person to be president.
Probably richer than if, well, that may be a, you know, JFK, but it wasn't his money.
It was his dad's.
So I don't know.
But Hillary, is it her money or is it Bill's?
Or is it money that actually belongs to their governments that they're paying bribes with?
Okay, so there's that.
Now let's get back to Matthew in Denton, Texas.
Now, Matthew, the reason I interrupted you is because, as you've noted, I'm the professional and we had a time crunch and I had to get to that break, which didn't float.
But I want to give you some time now.
But I do want to recognize, you are still there, right?
I am still there.
Okay, right.
The Tesla loan that you were talking about, just want to acknowledge that Matthew's right here.
Those loans that Tesla originally got were from Bush.
President Bush, they had nothing to do with Obama's energy or green energy ideas.
That was a bailout of the auto company, is what it was.
Tesla got some of that money, and they did pay it back.
But besides that money, Tesla or Musk and all of his other related business have been subsidized nearly $5 billion by the government, and neither or none of his businesses have yet shown a prop.
Now, that in and of itself does not kill a deal.
And I want to remind you, Matthew, I have no animus for Elon Musk here.
To me, this is a teachable moment and instructional moment about far more than just Tesla.
And really intriguing to me is your statement.
And I'm not saying you're wrong.
You are a learning experience for me, just so you know.
As long as he's doing what you think is good with it, then you don't care where he gets the money or something like that, or you think the subsidies are okay.
Right.
But anyway, since I had to stop you because of time, what is the point that you originally called about, wanted to make about this?
Well, ultimately, I feel like SpaceX and Tesla are good investments.
You know, government has been so terrible at investing in itself, but it grows and grows and grows, but it doesn't really have anything to show for it.
I feel like that, you know, as a government contractor, SpaceX has, you know, more potential to show a profit than anything else that's really come along as far as government's concerned.
It's innovative, it's exciting, it's just awesome.
You know, you mentioned that Obama and his global warming agenda.
I believe we should be good stewards of the Earth.
I see pictures of Beijing covered in haze and it irritates me.
But my thing with Texas on SpaceX is more technology oriented, like you with Apple.
It's more 80% technology, maybe 20% environmental.
But my ultimate point is that I believe that they are good investments for, it's better than NASA.
NASA has been a they do good things with the budget that they have, but they could do more.
And I believe SpaceX is doing more by integrating testing with their commercial satellite deals.
I believe that's really innovative.
And that's really just the larger point that I wanted to make is that they're better investments than other things that the government could be spending money on.
Will the taxpayers share in the eventual, if there are any profits of Tesla or SpaceX?
Would the taxpayers, what now?
Will the taxpayers share in the, in other words, look, this is tough for me.
I'm not trying to destroy your admiration for Musk or anything.
So don't interpret my comments that way.
I just, you know, I'm a it's hard to explain this in a relatively short period of time without giving you the impression I'm being critical, and I'm not.
You're okay, Rush.
You're okay.
Well, it's just, I was stunned, Matthew.
I mean, I've always wondered where Musk got the money to do this.
Yeah.
And like everybody, I'm naive.
Okay, I assume I'm reading stories about Elon Musk and he's building Tesla and he's having all these challenges because he doesn't have dealerships and states are not letting him sell in very, like Texas is the latest and SpaceX and all these things.
Where is he getting all this money?
I mean, it doesn't make sense.
He's not showing a profit.
Where does he get all this money to invest?
And when I found out that it was $5 billion in government subsidies, then I started thinking Solyndra.
And I started thinking all these other crony corporate socialist deals that have happened.
They're really unique to this administration.
They happened prior and previous administrative, but this administration lives and dies on these things.
And businesses are getting in business with government as a means of stifling their competition rather than actually competing with them.
For example, if Musk had to build his electric car without a dime of government money, then he might have other competitors.
But if the government's going to give Musk, Tesla's not a good example because those were loans that he has paid back, as you pointed out.
But when the government, which we don't have the money anyway, Matthew, the government has to print $5 billion to give to Musk.
We're running an $18 trillion deficit.
Now, I will admit to you giving it to Musk or lending it to Musk is probably a better investment than never-ending welfare payments and this kind of thing.
But it just kind of took me aback.
As I say, I'm naive.
I assume that Tesla and Musk had his own money or had borrowed it.
When I found out it was government subsidy, some air went out of my sails here on this a little bit.
I was a little bit disappointed because I know that his competitors don't have this kind of thing.
And I look at Solyndra and all these other solar energy firms that have gone under because it's a lousy investment.
And even Tesla, the electric car, yeah, it's clean, but look at the power plants that need to work overtime to charge those damn batteries.
I mean, it's.
Yeah.
But then you also have Musk getting into the solar industry, too, with his Giga Factory.
He released a, you know, and he's kind of, he's kind of, you know, every, he's kind of, you know, a Renaissance man into everything.
But I do understand.
I remember, you know, I remember the whole Solinger thing.
It boils down to sustainability.
If a company cannot self-sustain, if it's not self-sufficient without the government being involved in it, then something about that rubs me wrong because it's not every company is going to have this kind of government underwriting.
And at some point, these companies have to become self-sustaining or it's all awash.
It's hard to tell when you have new technologies involved.
And it's a risk.
It really is.
It's a risk and a gamble.
It just really, it does, for me, it boils down to what are they doing?
What's the mission?
What do they believe in?
And things like that.
Well, but I kind of view SpaceX as a potential replacement for NASA if it's not a helper.
Okay, I gather you're big on SpaceX.
I am.
I'm a fanboy.
I'm defending it like you would defend Apple, I'm sure.
But that's, you know, maybe I'm sure.
No, I'm big on space exploration.
I hope this pulls off.
I'd rather Elon Musk eventually put our astronauts in space than the Soviets or the Russians.
But one of the things I do when I find out something like this, Matthew, okay, I just found out that Musk's growing empire is basically underwritten by $5 billion in government subsidies.
So the first thing I did was went and checked his political donations.
He was bailed out during the Bush administration.
Well, as part of the automobile bailout, he was given money to start his company by a Republican president.
The guy donates, vast majority of his political contributions go to Democrats.
In fact, the only Republican, and I'm not kidding you, Matthew, the only Republican that I can find so far that Elon Musk has donated to is Denny Hastert.
I kid you not.
A lot of Musk's money has gone to the Democrat Senate candidate, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is responsible for electing as many Democrats to the Senate.
Republicans have one too.
And those people do really vicious, mean-spirited work.
And I have been targeted in that email campaign fundraising efforts by both the House and Senate Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee, Senate Campaign Committee.
I'm fundraising example number one in there.
So these things all get thrown in the hopper for me.
But anyway, I'm glad you called, and I appreciate your spending so much time here.
Got to take a break.
I'm up against it on time.
We'll be back after this, my friends.
Don't go away.
You know, there was a I don't remember where it was, and I don't want to find out because it was just a cockeyed story.
And it was not the first time this has happened.
But this program, folks, never got a dime of funding anywhere.
This program was started as a risk, like all small businesses are.
There wasn't any underwriting.
There were no investors other than the principal and me.
That was it.
There was not even any thought of going to the government for a subsidy.
Not even our way of thinking.
But it didn't take long.
Within five years of this program's success, the left started saying that this program was created by a secret cabal of Republicans who picked me from obscurity and funded and underwrote and whatever, all for the purposes of combating the left-wing tilt in the media.
And none of it was not true.
I mean, not a shred of it was true.
And there was a concert story recently repeating the same thing, except it went further.
It said that a bunch of rich Republicans handpicked me to essentially extend the Reagan presidency 25 years, which would allow the Republican Party to focus on the rich.
I mean, it was insanely stupid.
And it was, whoever wrote it was dead serious about it.
The people on the, remember Air America, they thought funding, donations, is what they needed.
The concept of actually succeeding in the business world was foreign to them.
They didn't understand it, and they never did succeed.
They never did get it.
Were it not for the commercial success of this program, we wouldn't have blasted funding and this whole notion.
That's why when I get up and I read that Elon Musk, $5 billion in funding, $5 billion in underwriting, I know it baffles me because such stuff is not available to me or anybody like me or anybody else.
And we had to make it in the standard old-fashioned way, put it out there and see if it floats.
Oh, yeah, I don't want to mention that.
I don't even want to mention it because it's just, it's cockeyed.
But I mean, this idea that I am the result of a conspiracy cabal of secretly powerful Republicans who scoured the nation in 1988 and of all people picked me.
And then they planned on me lasting 25 years while they could, while I was occupying everybody's attention, corrupt the country in favor of the rich.
I never got a phone call from a race.
In fact, two years after this program started, there wasn't a Republican who even knew who I was before the program started.
And they weren't sure who I was even after it started.
First two years, everybody's suspicious as hell because I had not networked.
Nobody knew who I was.
I had lived in obscurity professionally, and I still do practically in terms of that stuff.
And just the comfort level people have with even talking about getting subsidies and underwriting and funding.
I mean, anybody can succeed doing that.
If you don't have to show a profit to stay in business, and all you have to do is play the political game to keep the funding rolling in, then it doesn't matter what you're doing.
And as we learned with Obama and Solyndra and all the other solar, it wasn't even about that.
It was a screwy way of Obama's donors being paid back a little bit and Obama getting greased as well at the same time.
Oh, yeah, exactly.
I understand what all that stuff is.
That's why I don't want to publicize it, snurdily.
There are people, look, look at Tom Brady.
There are people that want Tom Brady to be suspended and found guilty simply because they just don't want to believe anybody's that good, that lucky, that beautiful, that attractive, that successful.
Now, I'm not.
The point is, these are deniers.
These guys that want to talk about the conspiracy theory, anything to deny this program's legitimate success.
The talent, the overall business success, the performance, success, the greatness, whatever they want to deny.
So they come up and say, it's all the result of a scandal.
It's a conspiracy.
Limbo is just a placeholder.
Rich Republican extremists who plucked Limbo from obscurity to occupy everybody's attention while they went about their real mission and nobody was looking because Limbaugh was so good at distracting him.
There's a guy actually postulating this.
And it's all rooted in the fact that these clowns just cannot admit to themselves the success that I have made of this program without feeling small themselves and irrelevant themselves and insignificant, which is what they are.
So they're typical, classic examples of how do you build yourself up.
Well, you tear everybody else that's above you, in your view, down or try to.
But it creates some of the most cockeyed theories that you have ever seen.
I found one other Elon Musk donation.
The FEC website's a little screwy today.
He did give money to Bush re-election effort 2004.
But also this, in 2013, Elon Musk was the highest paid CEO in the world, according to Time magazine.
Well, look, highest paid CEO when your combined businesses are underwritten to the tune of $4.9 billion by the government kind of cancels out the highest paid CEO business.
I mean, look, I have no interest in running people down.
You know what me, folks?
I'm just, I'm a big self-reliance guy, is all this is.
I mean, anybody, if you give anybody $5 billion, most people are going to do something with it.
I would like to think that if somebody gave me $5 billion, that I could at least show a profit at it, whatever I chose to do, which I have demonstrated that we do here.
First two years were not, but ever since then, every year has been profit.
Well, no, I think, I would, in Snerdly's yelling at me, well, how did Musk get this money?
I mean, what do you have to do to get it?
I don't know.
I didn't pay any attention back then.
It was all part of the auto bailout.
And they say that there was no green component to it, but I find it hard to believe.
I mean, guys out there promoting the electric car, and the electric cars being promoted is what?
An environmental saving device.
But it's not.
You have to use coal.
I mean, electric cars are powered by coal.
If it weren't for coal-powered fired power plants, there wouldn't be electric cars on the road.
And solar is an absolute junkyard.
Nobody talks about what you do with solar panels that are used or defective.
The only reason solar is becoming, the THICOMs are getting into business, they're undercutting everybody.
And that's why solar is getting cheap.
But you ought to see a solar panel junkyard.
You want to talk about an environmental disaster waiting to happen?
But nobody talks about that because everybody's into this, the marvel of clean energy.
Solar and wind are cleaner than big bad oil.
And I would maintain that when you throw everything in the mix, that that's not true.
Particularly, you charge a battery that you're going to put in your house to run your house for three or four days or whatever it is, or a car.
You need to plug those batteries into your local power plant for quite a while.
I mean, you're using more than your fair share of electricity, but yet you're getting credit for not using it by saving the planet.
It's screwy to me.
Common sense and intelligence are going by the wayside as all this stuff gets promoted.
That's my problem with it.
Anyway, let me get back to the phones here because people have been waiting patiently.
This is Barrington, Illinois.
John, glad you waited.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
I would have sounded a lot smarter on Friday when the Hastert news first broke, but my initial reaction when the story first came on the air in Chicago Thursday night was, do we just, when did we stop viewing people of extortion as the perpetrator rather than the victim?
And it seemed to me that the way they described the story breaking or being discovered by the FBI, it seems like the Justice Department looked at it like, Let's see if we can get this one by everybody and see if we can paint Hastert as the perpetrator here.
And it's just another example of...
Well, but wait a minute now.
I know where you're going with this, and I agree with it to a point, but Denny's not innocent here.
He may not be.
You're right.
I mean, he lied to the FBI about what he was doing with the money and why.
And that's what sent Martha Stewart to jail.
Now, I agree with you that whoever is blackmailing him, whoever's doing that has not made a formal complaint.
Whoever's blackmailing Haster for whatever it is is the actual bad guy here.
And Hastert may be, and I think this is your point, Hastert, when all of a sudden done may be the victim here in terms of the isolated example of this extortion.
Okay, so he's withdrawing money in an attempt to evade reporting.
And when it's discovered, he tells the FBI investigative agents that, no, no, no, he just doesn't trust banks.
The money is for himself.
But it isn't.
He was paying somebody.
Well, he just wasn't smart enough to structure it in a real estate deal like who transferred things to Blagojevich and maybe Obama.
Right.
Set up a shell corporation, pass the money through that, and then give your extortionist, your blackmailer, access to money that's in your pass-through.
And then the media could marvel at how brilliant you are in business.
The interesting thing, though, is the person who is party A, according to the FBI, apparently supported Hastert enough to not bring this up while he was rising through the ranks and only brought it up afterwards, maybe deciding, well, he got his, and, you know, he's rich and retired now.
Maybe I should go now.
That's what it looks like.
This all happened 35 years ago.
So Hastert goes to the speakership in the House, doesn't pay enough to extort somebody big money.
But after he leaves speakership, lobbying central, advise and consent central, analyst consultant central, big money reported to be now with Denny Hastert.
So now the blackmailer decides to move into action, and Hastert was paying.
And apparently what it is, was so, in his mind, so bad.
You know, I wonder how this would be different if he would have just told, and I understand that you don't lie when these FBI investigators come.
You just don't lie to them.
That's the worst thing you can do because you're not going to get away with it.
But he didn't even want to admit to them what this was.
And I can understand him being concerned that they would leak it because the DOJ now is Obama and he's Denny Hastert, former Speaker and a lobbyist and all that.
But still, whatever it was, obviously it was so embarrassing.
He wouldn't even admit to the bank why he was taking the money out, nor the FBI.
So, but I think you're right.
I think in this case, just in that small defining way, you're looking at it, he is the victim of an extortion plot.
Now, others might say, well, Rush, he's not the victim.
What would he do to be blackmailed in the first place?
Well, that's in the broader context.
But blackmail's illegal, too.
Extortion is illegal, too.
It's not, you know, no matter what somebody does, that doesn't make extortion or blackmail okay.
And as this is all being reported, you have to understand this.
I mean, the drive-bys, this was a godsend.
This takes Hillary off the front page.
This takes the Clinton Crime Family Foundation off the front page.
Hell, this even broomed FIFA.
The FIFA guys are going to be the happiest people in the world.
The FIFA story was shaping up to be at least a week or two.
And now it's gone because every media outlet is on Denny Hester now.
Every darn one of them is.
Here's Tom in Orlando.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
I'm glad you waited.
You're up next.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Hey.
Great.
I'm elated to talk to you.
I can cross you off my bucket list now.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you very much.
Listen, I walk dogs for a living.
I'm out walking dogs, and you might hear them pulling me or yanking me, but I'm cleaning up after him to him.
I call them little piles of liberals.
I clean them up every day, piles and piles of them.
Anyway, what I was going to talk about was Bob Schieffer.
I was shocked and not really surprised, but really shocked that he came out and said that.
I mean, that's the truest form of censorship.
Right.
Now, wait a minute.
You weren't surprised at what he said, right?
You know that he was big.
You were just surprised he admitted it.
Oh, yeah.
Believe me, I'm surprised that he said it so eloquently that we are the total censors of what you are going to receive out there in Main Street, you know, in the main street.
Yeah, he admitted it's up to us to determine what you should know.
Yeah, like, you know, Bush doing all this nice stuff.
Like I was telling Snurf, all this nice stuff for the soldiers.
I mean, going there whenever he could.
Nobody knew about this.
He'd get up in the middle of the night and go out and visit the soldiers who were wounded or, you know, or hurt and their families.
Nobody knew about that.
But he didn't feel like telling them.
Or, you know, Benghazi, maybe to them, it wasn't important.
This was not important.
We're not going to talk about it.
You know, things of that nature.
It's a censorship.
It's unreal.
Well, you know, frankly, when I saw that you had called up there and I saw the subject line, I will be honest, there was a little bit of me that was depressed because I've been telling you what Bob Schieffer does for 25 years.
And yet, just looking at the call board, it looked to me like you, for the first time, figured out what Bob Schieffer does because Bob Schieffer told you.
Now, I understand the power of a practitioner admitting something.
It may be more powerful than me telling you.
But use this as a lesson.
From now on, when I tell you something about these people, trust it.
Don't doubt me.
And then when you hear them admit it, your reaction should be, damn, damn, I knew this.
Rush told me this years ago, rather than, man, I can't believe what Bob Schieffer said.
Believe it.
Okay, we're back.
It's great to have you with us, Rush Lindbor, kicking off a brand new week of broadcast excellence.
Now, I mentioned earlier, I want to get started with this.
I'm not going to be able to wrap this up before the end of the hour.
Maybe I will.
But I have, let's see, basically, yeah, two stories here.
And the first one is Society's Lottery Winners.
It's a Forbes story.
And the second one is American Socialism's Day in the Sun.
And this is about what I referenced at the show open about why so many people are seemingly so excited and showing up at Bernie Sanders campaign events in Iowa.
And the story here, FinancialTimes.com has the story, American Socialism's Day in the Sun.
Popularity of the more radical Democrat Sanders dragging Clinton to the left in the presidential race.
I think it's a little premature to say that Bernie Sanders is dragging Hillary anywhere.
And by the way, the idea that Hillary is going to get dragged to the left, that's misinformation anyway.
Hillary didn't have to be dragged anywhere to the left.
Hillary is the left.
Hillary is Obama in a pantsuit.
In fact, it's Obama that wears the mom jeans and Hillary that wears the pantsuits.
But Hillary's not a moderate.
She's not a centrist.
And anything that she says or does to make it look like she is is fraudulent.
Just like this.
Have you seen this Vanity Fair cover?
My name is Caitlin.
Is that what it says?
It's Bruce Jenner following the.
Call me Caitlin.
Yeah, call me Caitlin.
Let me put that off to the side.
I don't want to distract myself with that.
Now, the American Socialism's Day in the Sun, this is the story dealing with this way back turn of the 19th century, 20th century, actually, this guy, some German economist, perplexed why America, back in the early 1900s, has not gone socialist yet.
And the answer to that is all rooted in the fact that everybody in America considered themselves in the middle class.
You see, in socialist countries, people are so poor that what they aspire to is not the 1%, not the 10%.
What people in socialist or communist country aspire to is what we call lower middle class, in some cases middle class.
America was already compared to the rest of the world.
And in world history, America was so far advanced economically, our people, our population.
We already had a vibrant middle class that was just beginning in the turn of the 20th century to dominate the world.
So there was no need for socialism.
Socialism is viewed as a step up by people who want it and support it.
But now we step forward, we jump forward to 2015, and we find that many Democrats and people on the left are eagerly anticipating a socialist America, full-fledged, admitted, no bones about it, socialist America.
And you know why?
It's because of downward mobility now in the American economy, not upward.
Even the Washington Post addresses this today in a story that's not really related to this.
Their story is, man, we got a great economy going on here.
Why do people not think so?
I'm not kidding.
That is a lead story in the Washington Post.
So I want to look at here society's lottery winners and this idea that America somehow has a majority of people now seeking socialism.
And here are the numbers to chew on until we get back and get into detail.
As recently as 2008, 63% of Americans identified as upper middle or middle class.
Seven years later, now, 2015, that number has fallen to 51%.
51% now identify as upper-middle or middle class.
Meanwhile, the share of Americans who self-identify as working and lower class has jumped from 35 to 48%.
And that is why people like Bernie Sanders, avowed socialists, are drawing big crowds of leftists and Democrats because to them it's a step up.
It's sad commentary on what has been done to this country.
Back with more.
On the Republican side, Scott Walker in Iowa.
Des Moines Register says he is real.
Seven-point lead, and it is steady and holding.
It's getting to be that time where people in the business think that matters.
We'll be back.
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