Hey, right, here we are back at it, Rush Limbaugh executing assigned host duties flawlessly, utilizing talent, which is on loan from God.
And we're here at 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program, the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
Okay, from the Washington Examiner, Donald Trump has soared into a statistical tie with longtime frontrunner Jeb Bush, according to a new Reuters poll.
The new national poll finds that Bush is at 27.8%, Trump at 23.1%.
And Marco Rubio in third place, 18.1%.
It's a poll of 1,300 Americans, actually 1,319 Americans, 551 Democrats, 453 Republicans, and 176 Independents over 18.
The margin of error among Republicans is about 5.2%.
So that's why they can say it's a statistical tie.
On the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton dominates Bernie Sanders, 43.9 to 21.3, but that is way, I mean, Bernie Sanders was at 8% not long ago, barely showing up.
And that's why the Hillary campaign's concerned and worried.
And don't forget, if Joe Biden enters the race, and by the way, just we pointed out in the first hour, it is set up.
It is set up for a dramatic entrance into the race.
Because it was revealed.
We were told.
It was revealed that Biden's son, Beau Biden, on his deathbed, near the end of his life after suffering horribly with brain cancer, urged his father to run for the presidency.
Well, that is a made-to-order entry opportunity for Biden.
And that's going to, if he does, it's going to put an entirely new flavor and cast over the Democrat race.
But let's start here with Jeb Bush.
Jeb Bush, let's just do this with the audio soundbites because rather than me just report the stories, let's go straight to the audio soundbites.
Last night, Fox News channel Brett Baer, interviewing Bush, said you had lunch with the Romneys recently.
Did you get any advice from them?
I got a lot of good advice from the last candidate who I wish was president right now, the last Republican candidate.
And he validated a belief that I have, which is that at some point, we have to start campaigning in a way that's beyond the base.
I think you have to be respectful of conservatives and you have to campaign hard, convince them that you're the right guy to unite the party.
But there also always ought to be an eye on the ball of the next group of people that actually decide who the president's going to be.
That is so, folks, you realize the brilliance of that.
That is so smart.
The Republicans have tried that the last three elections.
That's how smart it is.
But wait, it hasn't worked.
But it gets the approval.
It gets the approval of the Inside the Beltway Republican and media establishment.
Well, let's take a look at this.
What did he actually say here?
Well, I got a lot of good advice from the last candidate who I wish was president now.
And he validated a belief that I have, which means this isn't his idea.
I've always thought this.
At some point, we have to start campaigning in a way that's beyond the base.
Well, okay.
I mean, I've had Rand Paul tell me the same way in different words.
Rand Paul says, we cannot win elections with Republican votes alone.
That's what he said to me.
Jeb here is saying we need to find a way to start campaigning that's beyond the base.
And then he said, I think we have to be respectful of conservatives.
Well, that's cool.
They're going to throw us a bone, Snerdley.
I feel better on.
They're going to throw us a bone.
They're going to acknowledge they respect us.
And then they move out and try to get votes of people they really want.
Okay.
You have to be respectful of conservatives, he says.
I think you have to be respectful.
Damn it.
No, no, I shouldn't say that.
I shouldn't.
You have to be respectful of conservatives.
When is the last Democrat that you heard say, you know, we've got to be respectful of the George Soros crowd.
We've got to, but we can't win with just them.
We've got to be respectful of people at moveon.org, but we can't win with just them.
I mean, we've got to move beyond.
We're going to have to go out.
We're going to get some Republicans.
How long do you think that Democrat candidate would survive?
Okay, now this next one, this is Jeb has been in Twitter back and forth all day with a number of people over this one.
Manchester, New Hampshire yesterday, New Hampshire union leader, that's the newspaper there.
An editorial board meeting.
It's perfunctory.
Every Republican has to meet the editorial board.
It used to be you had to go meet Nackie Loeb, but now it's the editorial board.
And QA, and a member of the board, the editorial board at the newspaper said, you mentioned lowering taxes.
Did you have anything flat tax, anything specific about taxes?
My aspiration for the country, and I believe we can achieve it, is 4% growth as far as the eye can see, which means we have to be a lot more productive.
Workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows.
It means that people need to work longer hours and through their productivity gain more income for their families.
That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in.
All right.
So he was very clear what he was talking about, but his choice of words created an opportunity for his enemies.
He cited everything that he meant, trying to put this comment in context.
Labor force participation rate.
By the way, 4% economic growth, that's correct.
But what do you need for 4% economic growth?
What do you need?
Quick.
It's a simple answer.
You need people working.
If you're going to have, we're growing barely, folks, our economy, the country, barely growing at just under 2%.
And that's on a good reporting period.
The first quarter of this year, we had negative growth.
Now, one of the reasons economic growth is dwindling is because the labor force is shrinking.
We are now approaching 100 million Americans not working.
And that's been climbing ever since Bush, rather, Obama became president.
Started out, I think, at 91 million, 92 million Americans not working.
It's just barely now just under 94 million and rising.
And Investors Business Daily today, in a piece, actually used the number 100 million Americans not working.
Well, whatever the number is, it's way too high.
And as I always point out, they're all eating.
And all I mean by that is that there isn't immediate pressure to get a job in America when you lose one.
Now, for our economy to grow twice as fast as it is, we're going to have to start creating jobs.
And that's what Bush was talking about when he said we need people to work longer hours.
And he was talking about part-time versus full-time.
We all know that full-time jobs, many of them in this country, have been converted to part-time so that businesses can escape having to provide Obamacare benefits.
The cutoff is 30 hours a week.
So the 40-hour work week is pretty much way bye-bye in many places so that companies can escape.
And all this is by design, by the way.
It's not the stupidity of the Democrats creating this.
This is what they want to happen.
The long-term goal is single-payer with government being the single payer.
They want to, in the long term, get rid of insurance companies and all the middlemen.
And all Jeb was trying to say here was we need people working full-time jobs.
But he didn't say that.
He said we need people working longer hours.
Well, this has just caused a conniption fit out there with a bunch of people, including Bernie Sanders, who says Americans already work longer hours than employees in most other countries, and they shouldn't be forced to work even longer hours than they currently do.
Sanders was jumping on these comments that Jeb Bush made that Americans need to work longer hours.
Sanders said the sad truth is that because the middle class has declined over the last 40 years, while almost all new income and wealth has gone to the people on top, Americans already work the longest hours of any people in the Western industrialized world.
He said what we need now is an economy that provides decent wages and income for the middle class, not demands that people work even longer hours than they currently do.
And what Sanders is getting at, it's nothing wrong with the American work ethic.
The problem is income inequality.
But the fact of the matter is we do have people working fewer hours.
We have people working fewer hours just like they tried it in Greece and just like they've tried it in France.
We are trying the European model.
The 40-hour work week is taboo now for a whole host of reasons.
Do you think the American people working as hard as they ever have?
I mean, just off the top of your head, forget your own story, whatever it may be.
When you think of the country, you think of the economy, do you think people are working harder than ever or do you think they're not?
I mean, do you think they're working more hours than they ever have, like Bernie Sanders says, or are they working fewer hours?
I don't care what you end up thinking.
The bottom line is people are going to have to work more.
There's going to have to be more people working and there's going to need to be more work done if we're going to get back to what everybody expects this country to do, and that's grow at 4%.
And it's a chicken or egg thing.
What happens first, the growth or the jobs?
The two go hand in hand, but you can't have economic growth with this degree of labor force participation.
You cannot have economic growth with 95 million Americans not working.
You simply can't do it.
You can't have any kind of legitimate growth.
So you're going to have to have means putting people back to work.
And that means you're going to have to have jobs that feature actual productivity that can be measured.
And that's how wages increase, and that's how economic growth happens.
And that's all Jeb was trying to say.
And he got all that stuff in there, but the choice of words when he said that we people need to work longer hours.
I mean, even the Washington Post jumped in on this.
Jeb Bush raised eyebrows on Wednesday by suggesting people need to work longer hours to grow the economy.
But he later clarified the comment, moving quickly to quell a fresh assault by Democrats eager to characterize Bush as out of touch.
And what a coincidence.
NBC just happens to run a story promoting the 32-hour work week on the Today Show today.
32 hours a week sounds really good, but this is not just a pipe dream in places.
Portland-based Treehouse is a growing business with a shrinking work week.
The online computer education company has about 100 employees who all work just 32 hours a week.
Yet for them, every weekend's a three-day weekend.
Founder and CEO Ryan Carson says his employees get the same salary and benefits they'd get for working a 40-hour week.
Today, Americans work more hours than most developed nations, all without any guarantee of a paid vacation.
We need to rethink what the American dream really is.
And it may well be that it's not working 60 hours a week.
There are no coincidences, folks.
I don't care what you think.
The left is executing here a, and you can't blame them.
I mean, this is what they do.
This is a coordinated hit on Jeb Bush.
And it's tailor-made for the low-information crowd.
The idea that Americans are working longer hours and harder than other Western nations.
I'm sorry, just anecdotally, you know, this isn't true.
What's happening?
We're working less.
I mean, numbers don't lie.
100 million, 95 million Americans not in the workforce.
We're working less.
And they have a story in here about that.
We did this story, and this Ryan Carson guy, who's out on the left coast, who tried this revolutionary thing of no vacation.
You take vacation whenever you want to take it.
You want to take six months, take them.
You want to take a day, take it.
And what they found is that people take fewer vacations when it isn't scheduled because of guilt.
They think their peers will frown on them.
They think their bosses will notice it more.
They want scheduled vacations because when they're free to not work whenever they don't want to, they still show up.
I remember that story very well.
I've got to take a brief time out here, folks.
We will come back.
Trump is next.
And then more of your phone calls.
Sit tight.
Do not go away.
What is the real mistake Jeb Bush made in these comments that he made when he said Americans need to be working longer hours and we need to get economic growth back up to 4% and we need a bigger labor force participation rate?
What is the big mistake he made saying that?
It was on Fox News special report, Brett Baer, last night, Fox News Channel, 6 o'clock.
What did he leave out?
He's running for president, right?
Well, who gave us these circumstances?
Did the Democrat Party not give us these policies?
Why not mention that?
I mean, how did we arrive at 95, 91 million Americans not working?
Do we arrive at economic growth at 1.5%?
How did we arrive at a 32-hour or 39-hour, 29-hour work week?
How did this happen?
You've got to tell people, I would think.
You're running for president.
You're running against a Democrat Party.
They're going to have a nominee.
It's either going to be Hillary or Biden or whoever.
You know what I'm afraid of?
I'm afraid these consultants are telling these candidates do not even talk about Obama.
Don't mention the Democrats.
Just go out there and talk about what's not working and how you can make it better.
That's not going to cut it.
There has to be some education.
You can't just assume that everybody, in fact, we know that a lot of Americans do not associate the economic plight of the country with this administration.
In fact, most Americans, especially millennials, have just lost faith in the country.
Well, you've got to build the country back up.
Why have people, you need to tell people, you don't need to lose faith in America.
This is the greatest place on earth.
You live in the best place you could be.
You have a blessing.
You are an American.
Do not lose faith in this country.
This country is not what it is right now.
This country could be so much better.
And then tell them why.
This is what happens after seven years of Democrat Party domination.
This is what happens when Democrats implement their policies.
What's so hard about that?
To me, it's necessary.
To me, it's fundamentally required.
We're not running against just what is.
There are reasons these things are in messes.
There are reasons this country is in the mess it's in and why things are not working.
You think the Democrats don't define us every damn day?
Why do you think the Republican brand is what it is?
Why do you think the Republicans are defensive about being ripped?
It's because every day they're lied about.
The Democrats, the media, everybody else spends all day long talking about what a bunch of creeps the Republicans are.
So I guess what we're going to do, we're going to be better people.
We're going to stand above.
We're going to reach higher.
We're going to reach beyond the usual politics of division and criticism.
I'm sorry, it isn't going to cut it.
There's a reason there, Sanctuary City.
There's a reason illegal immigrants are here and able to commit crimes, including murder.
There is a reason you can't find a job.
There's a reason you have $200,000 student debt.
There is a reason why your health care costs cost more than you'll ever be able to pay.
There is a reason.
It's called the Democrat Party.
Why don't they say so?
Okay, Victor in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Welcome.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
I've been listening to the news about the illegal aliens, Donald Trump, and this poor woman that was murdered by an illegal alien out in San Francisco.
I remember, I think he was released from jail or something.
Well, this whole business reminds me of 1988 with Willie Horton.
Remember Dukakis releasing him on the weekends and he raped a woman in Massachusetts?
I feel the same thing is happening on a big scale now with the illegal aliens.
What is the Willie Horton component would not have happened had somebody on the Bush team made a commercial about it?
If that hadn't happened, there wouldn't have been a Willie Horton component.
Exactly.
Well, I'm going to make an issue out of this because I want people to remember this when it comes to illegal aliens committing crimes.
We got Willie Hortons all over the place.
Well, we do.
It's not just Willie Horton.
The Washington Post has a story from, I guess it's yesterday, the new Willie Horton is Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez, the new Willie Horton.
There's some people who would obviously like him to be.
It's important to understand that there's no consensus even on the right about how much attention to give to this case.
Most of the Republican candidates are treading carefully so far.
While they oppose the sanctuary city policies, that meant Lopez Sanchez wasn't turned over to immigration authorities.
They haven't yet tried to use the case as a bludgeon to attack Democrats.
And without that, there is no Willie Horton aspect.
If they don't do that, there isn't.
But there's a whole bunch.
We've had three different examples, instances of illegal alien crime and murder.
Yesterday, it was a hit and run that injured five or six.
There was some illegal bash somebody with a ball peen hammer.
The instances are way more frequent than they would have you believe.
And from the San Francisco Chronicle, September 11, 2009, Edwin Ramos will not face the death penalty.
Edwin Ramos, charged with the shooting deaths of a father and his two sons last year, which would have been 2008, shows in court, San Francisco Hall of Justice, where he was announced that the DA, same person, Kamala Harris, will seek a penalty of life in prison without parole on Thursday, September 10, 2009, San Francisco.
Harris has always said that she would not seek the death penalty.
And he was, in fact, sentenced to three consecutive life sentences for murdering Anthony Belonga and two sons.
So the point is that it's frequent in sanctuary cities.
I mentioned that there are 33 cities in this country, 33 states which have sanctuary cities, over 200 sanctuary cities.
And this kind of crime is rampant.
But here's the key, again, folks.
And right here it is in this Washington Post story.
They clearly are worried about, why would they even run the story?
The new Willie Horton, and it's my guy named Paul Waldman.
And he makes the point here, well, yeah, but the Republicans haven't yet tried to use this case as a bludgeon to attack Democrats.
Exactly.
Why not?
Is there a Republican in San Francisco that's got anything to do with this?
There is not.
There's not a Republican that believes in sanctuary cities.
There's not a Republican in the government anywhere in San Francisco.
There's not a Republican in executive leadership and law enforcement in San Francisco.
There is not a Republican within eyesight of this incident.
But notice again, the only Republican making hay out of this is Trump.
And look at how it's developing for Trump.
And I don't want to repeat yesterday's show, although it was one for the record books.
But the point is that for the first two weeks of this, when Trump talked about it, he was the focus.
He was unable to move this debate to the issue.
Trump starts talking about illegals and the people from Mexico and the crimes they commit.
And all anybody talked about was Trump.
What a reprobate, what a fool, what a meanie, whatever.
But then the word spread of the murder of Katie Steinley.
And all of a sudden, the issue shifted overnight to the issue and not Trump.
And all of a sudden, a bunch of Democrats rise up against sanctuary cities.
Not every one of them, but a lot of them, including Dianne Feinstein, senator from California.
So Trump hung in there long enough.
But not even Trump laid into Democrats on this.
He just laid, he let the obvious speak for itself.
San Francisco is a liberal city.
And he has tied, obviously, the open borders crowd leading the way as Democrats, but there are several Republicans that are right on board with the whole notion of amnesty.
But the point is, in your Willie Horton observation, let's go back to Jeb Bush.
Here he is.
He's out there on Fox last night, and he's talking about what needs to happen for the country to experience 4% economic growth.
And it's clear that we need jobs and we need more jobs and we need people working.
The only way to get the economy growing is to have a lot of work done.
The one thing he didn't say, he didn't mention Obama.
He didn't mention Obama's policies.
He didn't mention the Democrat Party.
He didn't mention Democrat Party policies as the reason why we are in this predicament.
And there hasn't been anybody yet try to tie the Democrats to the murder in San Francisco.
Now, it wasn't that long ago the Republican Party would be on this and they would be on it and they wouldn't let go of it.
But it's a new Republican Party, and the belief apparently is: do not attack Obama because of his race.
You'll never get away with it.
And therefore, do not attack the Democrat Party.
I'm sorry, I come from the old school.
I know the Republican consultant class believes that the only way they can win is by not criticizing Democrats and not criticizing Obama.
And I don't know how you do that in a presidential campaign because that's who your opponent is.
I don't, they're going to be talking about us all day long.
They're going to make fun of whoever our nominee is.
They're going to try to destroy like they did Romney.
And what are we going to do?
Going to stay above the fray.
We're not going to respond to any of the libelous, slanderous attacks.
We're just going to stay clean and pure as the wind-driven snow and appeal to the better instincts of people.
I just don't see it, hasn't been working.
But above and beyond that, just simple strategy alone.
I don't know how you do not mention your opponent.
I mean, for crying out loud, the country is in an absolute mess.
Nobody's happy.
You can't even find much contentment.
Everybody's on age for one reason or another, maybe multiple reasons.
Everybody's really worried about the future.
Whether they can verbalize it or not, people realize this is not the country they've always thought America is.
America is not the country where people run around thinking opportunity is over.
America is not the country people run around thinking the best days are behind us.
That's not the America people know.
This isn't the country they know.
They have to be told why.
They have to be taught.
A campaign is as much educational and informative as it is in advocacy.
It's not even my business, and I understand that.
So the apparent lack of desire, inability to tie this whole sanctuary city mentality to the Democrat Party, certainly to the left, and Jeb Bush's reluctance to try to explain to people why the economy is in such dire straits tells me that it may be a Republican strategy to not focus on the opponent,
to not talk about the Democrats, and certainly not to blame them.
I can hear some consultant, I can hear this, I can hear some consultant advising his candidate and saying something along the lines of, let's not berate, let's not criticize.
Anybody can do that.
Let's just talk about how we will do better.
Let's just talk about how we're smarter.
We'll do it smarter and we'll do it better.
And we'll do it more efficiently.
But let's not go out and just criticize.
Let's not be critical.
I can just see it now because I think it's been part of the operative strategy up to now.
You've got Bernie Sanders and Hillary.
They are trashing the Republicans every day.
For a while, the Republicans were trashing Hillary.
Remember, early on, on my advice, they were doing it.
And I had people say, no, no, no, don't attack Hillary.
Attack liberalism.
Don't talk about Hillary.
It's only going to build her up.
I said, no, no, she's it.
She's going to be the nominee.
Focus on her.
Get started on it now.
Then they dropped it.
And it's, it's not, now everybody's focusing on Trump.
All the Republicans are zeroing, which makes sense.
It's the primary era, and that's what happens.
But Trump is talking about Hillary.
And if he's asked about Republicans, he'll answer.
But when he talks, he says, I think Hillary would be a terrible president.
She was the worst Secretary of State in the history of our country.
Why would she be a good president?
I think she'd be terrible.
Hillary's weak on immigration.
I may be divisive on immigration, but she's weak, which is far worse.
Hillary would let everybody come in.
Killers, criminals, drug dealers, everybody.
If you listen to Hillary, everybody's going to be flowing through the nation.
They sort of now are anyway.
But if you listen to Hillary, she's so weak on immigration, we'll have a crime wave like you've never seen before.
So Trump is out there talking about Hillary.
We don't have anybody yet going back at her or any, or even Obama or current policies.
Now, here's Trump with Anderson Cooper last night on CNN.
Anderson Cooper said, what evidence do you have the Mexican government sends their criminals here?
This man or this animal that shot the wonderful, that beautiful woman in San Francisco, this guy was pushed out by Mexico.
We bring him back and they push him out.
Mexico pushes back people across the border that are criminals, that are drug dealers.
I got to look at a bunch of studies here that say there's actually no correlation between illegal immigration and crime.
And that, in fact, immigrants actually commit crimes at a lower number.
You're not a baby.
Okay, you're not a baby.
I'm not saying there's not a legal immigrants coming in are causing tremendous problems in terms of crime, in terms of murder, in terms of rape.
So what's the incredible thing about that is that Anderson Cooper tries to deny the obvious.
This guy was deported, what was it, seven times?
And Mexico did send him back, and he came back.
They let him come back.
That's all Trump's point is.
I've got information here, a bunch of studies.
There's no correlation.
That's what a crock.
It's an insult to our intelligence.
Jan Brewer, the former governor of Arizona, was on CNN with Don Lemon last night.
He said, Donald Trump's sticking to his guns on all this immigration stuff, and he's headed to your state this weekend.
How are his comments resonating in your state?
I believe that Mr. Trump is kind of telling it like it really truly is.
You know, being the governor of the gateway of illegal immigration for six years, we had to deal with a lot of things.
And I think that the people of Arizona realize that we pick up the tab for the majority of the violence that comes across our border in regards to the drug cartels, the smugglers, the drop houses.
It has been horrendous.
And of course, they come through Arizona and therefore end up in other states.
So you think he's right.
You think he's right.
And it is.
Well, no, I think everybody knows that he's right.
I think everybody knows that he's right.
What do you mean I think he's right?
I think everybody knows he's right.
It's just a question of whether everybody's got the guts to agree with him.
Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona.
Oh my gosh, I thought I had a minute left, and I don't.