All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 7, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:53
August 7, 2015, Friday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Here we go, folks, right back at it.
You are where you need to be.
24 million people.
Tuning into the Fox News debate last night, 9 o'clock.
You know, you know that's a record-setting audience, and it means there are a ton of people who are thirsting for something different.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
And I will tell you what else I think it means.
I think it means this next election is going to be huge.
Now, any number of things can happen between now and then that would change the picture.
And it's probably premature to say, but we could be looking at a huge, huge turnout election, even not counting the illegal immigrants that end up voting.
Open line Friday.
Great to have you back.
Rush Lynn Baugh and the EIB network.
Our telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
We have this one remaining hour, and we're going to spend as much time as I can on the phones.
Give you a chance to weigh in on this with your feedback.
I do want to play a couple of soundbites here before we get back to the phones.
There's other news out there today, but it's nothing that can't wait till Monday.
Obama and this Iran deal and how it's already being broken and nobody cares.
Let's see, the labor force participation.
This is just, we're almost at 94 million Americans not working now.
94, and I have to sit here, we have to sit here and listen to a roaring economy or economy that's zoomed back to normal now or what have you.
I actually heard somebody the other day say, you know what, the only thing holding back the jobs, there'd be a jobs boom right now, except the Fed's keeping interest rates at zero.
And I said, what does it take to become an economics reporter today?
It can't be much if that's your analysis of the job situation.
That 0% interest rates are holding back a job boom?
How in the world do you make that go when you and you leave Obamacare out of it?
And by the way, a third Obamacare thing has blown up, which states this one in.
Let me find it very quickly here.
It's amazing.
It's the third one that's bombed out.
Oh, Department of Homeland Security admits new surge of illegal immigrant families.
They can't stop it.
It's just happening.
Here it is.
Obamacare's huge Iowa co-op failure may be just the first.
It's actually the third exchange that's blowing up and going bankrupt and closing.
And yet Obamacare keeps rolling.
We see this all the time.
Covered California is one.
There's a couple of others that are in big trouble, in big debt, maybe shutting down.
It doesn't matter.
They close.
Obamacare just keeps rolling.
How does that happen?
Failure after failure, and yet Obamacare is functioning.
And you have these guys writing about the job market, and they don't even include that and what that's done to hiring practices.
94 million Americans not working.
Russia has hacked Pentagon computers.
Nobody seems to care.
Anyway, audio soundbites.
Frank Luntz focus group.
Frank Luntz, if you didn't stay up or awake after the debate, Frank Luntz believes that Trump destroyed his candidacy last night.
Frank Luntz believes that Trump imploded.
Luntz had a focus group of people, as he always does on Fox after the debate.
And he had a lot of people who claimed that before the debate, they were rabid Trump supporters.
And then after the debate, the vast majority of them wanted nothing more to do with Trump.
Did you stay up to see that, Mr. Snerdley?
You did?
I didn't think you liked that stuff anymore.
Well, here's how it went.
This is the Lunch focus group savaging Trump after the debate.
He skirted around questions better than a lifelong politician ever had.
I was really expecting him to do a lot better, but he just crashed and burned.
He was mean.
He was angry.
He had no specifics.
He was bombastic.
He just let me down.
I just expected him to rise to the occasion and look presidential.
He didn't.
If he runs as an independent, he's going to be basically handing the election to Hillary Clinton.
I think he needs to stand behind whoever is the nominee.
That bothered me.
I was repulsed by it.
This was all set up by Luntz telling, I guess it was Megan Kelly, whoever the hosts were after the debate, that we're going to make news here.
We got big, big news.
I can't wait to show you what's happened here during this debate.
Of course, everybody tunes in to see what the big news is.
The big news is that with the Luntz focus group, it was a Trump crash and burn.
By the way, if you missed the first hour, let me briefly recap right now on CNN.
They just concluded a little feature on how Kasich was the big winner.
And there were three Kasich soundbites or two Kasich soundbites from last night that the drive-by media, CNN, MSNBC, the rest of them think was the best answer of the night about expanding Medicaid and gay marriage.
And they said that the reason they thought it was among the greatest things said all night, because John Kasich finally, somebody, Kasich, came along and made it look like the Republicans actually do care about people.
Okay, here's Luntz.
Now, he was on CBS this morning today, and Nora O'Donnell said, okay, Trump was quick to respond to you last night on Twitter, Frank.
He called you a joke.
He said, your focus group is a joke.
And he said, don't come to his office.
You don't come to his office looking for business anymore, Frank.
He said, because you're a clown.
I've been called a lot of things in my life, but I've never been called a clown.
And those focus groups are accurate.
What do you say when you won't guarantee to support the Republican nominee?
When you call women some pretty horrific names, when you insult the moderator of the debate, when you don't answer questions specifically, when you can't even explain why you went bankrupt.
I have to tell you, this was an amazing debate performance.
Not amazing because it was effective.
Amazing because I saw the destruction of a presidential campaign over those two hours.
It really was remarkable.
Frank Luntz thinking Trump imploded last night based on the reaction to his focus group.
And as you heard, Luntz's review of Trump's performance.
And then last night in the Kelly file, Megan Kelly went from moderating back to the host chair of her eponymous show and had Dr. Krauthammer on.
And she said, Charles, what is your reaction to the debate?
The real story is the collapse of Trump in this debate.
The fact is, he was out of place.
And when you think about it, when he's free form, when he's uninterrupted, when he can do the flight of ideas, when he can go on on his own and ramble, he's entertaining, he's sharp, and he's actually amusing.
But here, when he was controlled and in a tight setting, he was lost for most of the debate.
And I think it showed that he was in a group of professional politicians whom he mocks, and yet they as a group and individually were able to handle it and to be sharp and persuasive most of the time, but they left him out in the cold.
Message, you outsiders who think you can come and join our club, don't even think about it.
Politics is its own business, and you just don't come in here and crash our business as a brash outsider making fun of us and mocking us and telling us what's wrong with us.
You're going to end up eating an excrement sandwich.
That's the message there.
David Rodham Gergen on CNN last night, Anderson Cooper 219.
Cooper said, so David Rodham Gergen, you have been defining Washington conventional wisdom since the term was invented.
And you have served every president of every party there's ever been since Lincoln.
What did you think about who did well tonight?
In traditional terms, by normal standards, Donald Trump would have been hurt tonight.
You know, that answer to Megan Kelly had a boarish quality about it.
That's the way it came across.
His first answer, and a lot of his answers seemed very narcissistic.
It's all about him.
But, you know, we're in uncharted territory, and it's a little hard to sit here and pontificate when you're not quite sure in this political environment whether, in fact, Trump continued to score tonight.
Yeah, Bill Clinton's sitting there and he's watching.
He loves him having everybody talk about Trump being a narcissist and how nobody calls him one.
He just gets away with it.
I mean, there's a guy, Bill Clinton looks at himself more in the mirror than most women do.
And nobody ever says this kind of stuff about him.
He just loves it.
He loves it.
Yeah.
See, the reservation here, David Rodham Gergen, not as certain as Luntz and Dr. Krauthammer are, because Gergen has seen Trump step in it before when everybody thought it was curtains.
But he's holding back here because he's admitting.
And I'll tell you what, these guys know, folks, they know, no matter what.
I mean, they may tell you that Obama's got 48% disapproval and we're on the verge of a great economic recovery.
They all know the depths of despair across this country.
They all are aware of the unsettledness and the fear and the knowledge that things aren't right here.
And they are very much aware that a big number of people in this country do not approve of much of anything that's happening here.
And that is why the people who are quick, are not quick to dump on Trump, are not doing so, because they understand who Trump's supporters are.
And they understand that Trump's supporters, it's probably equally distributed between people who really do admire and like Trump and just people who anything other than this rotten bunch of people that's delivered this country to the position it's in now, i.e. an outsider.
So I think that's why David Rodam-Gergen would not join the club in hammering the final nail in the coffin of Trump.
What?
You have a question?
There's nobody, nobody, no, I have not seen anybody that thought Jeb Bush won the debate last night.
In fact, that's the first time his name's been mentioned today.
Somebody did say to me that they didn't see Karl Rove anywhere in the spin room after the debate.
I guess giving Jeff a rub down, you know, on the training table.
Just kidding?
I'm just a little lightheartedness interjected here, folks.
No, but look, maybe Jeb's name didn't get mentioned here much in the post-discussion, but he's still going to end up being the leading fundraiser.
Performance notwithstanding, it's going to matter.
It's just the way it goes.
I mean, Jeb and Hillary are getting a lion's share of the money right now, no matter what.
So that's a reality in politics you cannot wash away.
Yeah, there were some people praising Cruz.
Most of the comments about Cruz were there was at least a 40-minute period where he wasn't heard from.
They didn't ask him anything.
Same thing with Dr. Carson.
Now, the names I've saw that are being, I don't know, not accolades, but being praised are Rubio, Kasich, Huckabee.
Kid you not, Huckabee is getting a lot of praise out there.
Carly Fiorina for the first debate.
There are some who think that Trump stayed in character and did well.
Others like Lunce and Dr. Kraunhammer think it was over and that all's left is to pour the dirt on the coffin.
Walker, not particularly negative, but not particularly positive.
He was there.
He was okay, but nothing noteworthy.
Christy.
Unfortunately, the contreton between him and Rand Paul just overwhelmed and clouded everything else they did.
I'll tell you the guy, if anybody's really being kind of ripped for having a bad night, it'd be Rand Paul.
But no, Jeb hasn't gotten a lot of ink.
The Trump line on Rand Paul.
I'll tell you the, how about Huckabee?
Did you say Huckabee setting up what everybody thought was going to just be a knockout insult of Trump?
And he said, and of course I'm speaking of Hillary Clinton.
And people in the room said that Trump was starting to glare at him and was getting ready to call him a loser and a clown outside the rules if it had been his name mentioned.
We didn't see that.
The camera wasn't on Trump as Huckabee was going through his insult.
Maybe we have that.
I've got a roster.
My audio soundbite roster here is as thick as a debate briefing book.
So during the break here, I'll see if we got the Huckabee thing.
Let me move on.
I got two more.
Just move on to number 11, because not only Fox moderated debate last night, guess what else?
They invited that lunatic that runs a Democrat National Committee to come on for 15 minutes and bash the Republican candidate.
Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz was a featured guest in the post-debate coverage.
And we have her on Anderson Cooper.
Yeah.
So screw that.
I'm going to take, I thought she was, it doesn't matter.
We don't need to hear Debbie blabber mouseholds.
Let me take a break here and see what else I've got here.
I'll pick the best because Time's dwelling, and I've got to get some more of your phone calls into, folks.
So just sit tight, hang tough.
Be right back.
Here is what Huckabee said.
This is a Hillary joke.
He says, it seems like this election has been a whole lot about a person who's very high in the polls but doesn't have a clue about how to govern, a person who's been filled with scandals, who could not lead.
And of course, I'm talking about Hillary Clinton.
And all that time, the Trumpster was glaring at the huckster.
And he was when he said Hillary, there was a big sigh of relief.
You could hear it in the crowd, and there was some laughter and applause.
Jack in Sanford, Florida.
Welcome, sir.
Great to welcome you to the EIB network.
Hello.
Yeah, hello.
Thank you for taking my call.
I've been a longtime listener since about 1989.
Thank you, sir.
I had an interesting conversation with two female millennials yesterday.
I had made a comment about Donald Trump, and they asked me if I liked Donald Trump.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, where did this happen?
What kind of place?
Where were you?
I was in a retail store purchasing an item.
All right.
And it was an item that had wording on it.
And I was trying to compose my wording the way I wanted it.
And I said, because it was for something for me.
And I said, this may sound or look a little Trumpish.
And they said, do you like Donald Trump or what do you think of Donald Trump?
I said, where I says, he's a little over the top sometimes, but I pretty much agree with everything he says.
And they said, well, what do you think about Hillary?
And at that point, I wanted to jump on top of the cash register area.
Thank God you said a cash register.
But I decided that I'd make it a teachable moment for them.
And I asked them, both of them, I said, give me one thing that Hillary has ever done.
And they said, nothing.
They said, we're not for Hillary.
And at that point, I was kind of surprised because these were two millennials.
And I congratulated them for being intelligent and knowledgeable.
And they did then say they would like to see a woman president someday.
I said, well, that's fine.
I said, I'm for anybody that's going to lead the country in the right direction.
And they agreed.
And that's where we.
Well, it's interesting anecdotal.
People do make the mistake of assuming that people, no matter how you group them, like the millennials or women or African Americans, are monolithic in the way they think.
And they're not.
And so these women were actually the conversation starters, it sounds like.
They're the ones.
Well, they started the conversation based on my comment.
Yeah.
On the item I was wording.
So they're not particularly crazy about Trump, but they don't like Hillary.
Did you get to the point where you learned that they like somebody?
They seemed to pretty much agree with what I stated after that.
I said, well, you know, if you're interested in having a possible woman president, maybe you should listen to one of the debates tonight where there's Carly Farina and Dr. Ben Carson speaking, which I think you'd be impressed with both of those people.
And they nodded in agreement.
Well, that's interesting to hear.
I like hearing stuff like that.
A couple of sound bites here.
First up, the little bite from Marco Rubio.
This might have been his best answer, but that's subjective, obviously.
It was a question from Chris Wallace.
Senator Rubio, when Jeb Bush announced his candidacy for presidency, he said this.
There's no passing off responsibility when you're a governor, no blending into the legislative crowd.
Could you please address Governor Bush across the stage here and explain to him why you, someone who's never held executive office, are better prepared to be president than he is, a man who you say did a great job running your state of Florida for eight years.
Eight years.
This election better be about the future, not the past.
It better be about the issues our nation and the world is facing today, not simply the issues we once faced.
This country is facing an economy that has been radically transformed.
The jobs that once sustained our middle class, they either don't pay enough or they are gone.
And we need someone that understands that as our nominee.
If I'm our nominee, how is Hillary Clinton going to lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck?
I was raised paycheck to paycheck.
How is she going to lecture me?
How is she going to lecture me about student loans?
I owed over $100,000 just four years ago.
If I'm our nominee, we will be the party of the future.
Marco Rubio.
Up next, Ben Carson.
Ben Carson, opening part of the debate, had some time.
Then there was a long interval where he wasn't heard from.
They finally went to him with a question, and he said, gee, I wondered if I was going to get back in here.
Ben Carson, look, I don't want to overdo.
Oh, you know something, folks?
I just saw something on Fox.
It's a point that I've been meaning to make, and I forgot to do it.
Have you all heard of subliminal advertising?
Do you remember there was a, it wasn't long ago.
Oh, man, I wish I could remember this.
It might have been a feature on a television news show or some kind of show that I watched on, oh, it was something related to madmen.
And it was how in advertising, subliminal and how stores post things and create subliminal effects on customers over a long period of time to get them to go certain places in the store to buy certain things.
And it's even been used, subliminal, and this is not like subliminal messages in music.
It's not a joke type thing.
It's even con artists have been known to successfully set up a mark by knowing what their favorite number is.
And wherever they go, that number, they see it, but they don't see it, but they do.
It registers.
It makes them feel comfortable or gives them a good vibe.
It makes them drop their guard, their favorite number.
They see it.
They don't see it, but it registers.
It was something about this.
And it made a lot of sense to me in how this is used in advertising, not just commercials on TV, but within stores and so forth.
And I have to tell you, I don't know how long it took.
It might have been an hour.
But I finally, I think it was when Dr. Carson was speaking and I saw that Facebook logo, which I'd been seeing all night, that F.
I saw that F every time I saw a candidate speaking as in a subliminal grade of flunking.
And I'm thinking, okay, Facebook, Zuckerberg, big-time illegal immigration advocate and so forth.
And there are people who are very much into this type of thing.
There it is.
No matter where you look last night, especially if it was a close-up shot, a Zoom shot from a camera far away, in the background, that F Facebook logo would be on one side of the candidate, Fox logo on the other.
And after an hour or some period of time passed, I finally noticed it and started, you know, I had a negative reaction to it.
There's only one thing when you see an F that's constantly attached to something or somebody.
So I know it's probably oddball and kooky.
And I'm not leveling any accusations here.
That's not the point.
It's just something I observed.
And knowing full well that there are people who attempt to meld minds, shape minds, bend minds using tactics like that.
Are you saying that they're grave?
No, no.
What I'm saying, the way this would work is that you don't even notice it.
I mean, you saw it, but you didn't see anything in the Facebook logo.
You know, but it's an F.
And you watch and watch and watch, and it could create within the minds of some people that these guys are a bunch of screw-ups.
Now, at least what I was going to say here about Ben Carson, because it was when he was speaking that I noticed it, and it was offensive to me.
One of the worst things about politics is how it can literally destroy somebody's reputation.
You look at Ben Carson.
His reputation hasn't been destroyed.
Don't misunderstand.
He's a genius.
He's the epitome of human quality, human character, pediatric neurosurgery.
His life story is inspirational.
He is the kind of man that everybody would love for their kids to meet and emulate.
And politics can turn him into a buffoon.
Politics can make somebody like that look like a buffoon.
He's a thoughtful, plodding, considerate.
He doesn't shoot from the hip type of person.
And as such, a format like that where you've got a maximum of a minute and then a maximum of 30 seconds doesn't exactly fit his personality stuff.
But no matter, he threw his hat in the ring and he got the polling support to get on stage.
Again, I'm not making excuses for him.
I'm just making observations here.
I just cringe when I think about what can happen to good people because of this particular business.
They made him look like a boo when he's not.
Anyway, he did not get rave reviews last night until his closing statement.
Closing statement is where he had most of the praise.
And I want you to hear it in case you didn't, or if you did, just to remind you.
Well, I haven't said anything about me being the only one to do anything, so let me try that.
I'm the only one to separate Siamese twins.
The only one to operate on babies while they were still in the mother's womb.
The only one to take out half of a brain, although you would think if you go to Washington that someone had beaten me to it.
But I'm very hopeful that I'm not the only one who's willing to pick up the baton of freedom because freedom is not free and we must fight for it every day.
Every one of us must fight for it because we're fighting for our children and the next generation.
Dr. Carson, and Ted Cruz, in terms of debate technique and sharpness of mind, incomparable.
He was, you know, Alan Dershowitz at Harvard said he's the best student he ever had.
He's on the debate teams at Princeton and Harvard and just cleaned everybody else's clocks.
So there's no question that he went 40 minutes with no questions.
He went a long, long period of time.
Bobby Jindal.
I mean, there was a lot of talent on that stage last night.
Rick Perry in the early debate.
Carly Fiorina.
So any one of these people, instantly preferable to either Hillary or Obama.
Bay City, Michigan.
Jacob, welcome, sir, to the EIB network.
It's great to have you with us.
Hello.
Hey, how's it going?
Good.
Thank you very much.
A long time listener.
My dad got me hooked on you a few years ago.
And like I said, Ned, I've been listening ever since.
Well, welcome.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Anyway, my thing is, I'm 23, so I guess what you consider your millennials.
What I want to see out of this is I want to see a Carson Fillerina ticket or a Filerina Carson ticket.
And the reason I say that is because Filerina is not one of these, it's not like a career politician type, and neither is Carl Carson.
And Carson, he's a guy you can trust.
I mean, think about it.
Who would you go to if your kid needed a surgery?
Like, I would go to him to have, you know, operation done.
He seems like a trustworthy guy.
I mean, when you go to a doctor, you don't want to go to someone who's just like, oh, hey, you know, I'm just going to go dabble into this and I'm going to take out this and, you know, I'll help you with this.
You know, you want a guy who's going to sit down with you, and he's going to talk it out, and he's going to make sure that he actually makes sure he gets across his.
Okay, let me ask you this, then.
Who would you rather negotiate a treaty on nuclear weapons in Iran?
Would you rather have somebody appointed by Ben Carson do it or John Kerry?
I'd rather someone appointed by Ben Carson do it.
Ben Carson is, he's a doctor, and he knows, and the reason why he, and I don't think a debate format's a good setting for him because he's trained and he's gone his whole life trying, he has to take time to explain to people what he's trying to talk about.
Because if you go to a family and you're trying to explain neural surgery to them, they're not going to have a clue what you're saying.
So he's got to simplify it.
Well, not only that, not only that, there's no time limit on surgery.
You take whatever time is necessary to get it right, unless there's an emergency.
There are exceptions to everything.
But I get your point, and I appreciate the call.
I really do.
Jacob, I'm flattered you're out there.
I hope that you continue to be a member in proud, good standing in the audience.
We'll be back, folks.
Don't go away.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, look at these two headlines.
Recent stories published today, not last night, but today.
First is Bloomberg News, Joshua Green, headline.
Fox News could not kill Trump's momentum and may have only made it stronger.
Wait just a minute.
This, forgive me, you may have seen it.
This is the first media reference I've seen that Fox was out to kill Trump's momentum.
Salon had a piece.
Well, no wonder I missed it.
That's a trash rag.
A bunch of losers there.
Why would I bother reading Salon?
The only thing they've got good in there is Camille Paga.
But you don't even have to read Salon to find her.
This is Bloomberg.
Fox News could not kill Trump's momentum.
Well, there's a clear implication there that they were trying to.
And the Politico, they're the ones that had the story that Jeb had called Trump names that Jeb denied.
And Trump said, God, I love you, man, last night after the debate.
This is by Roger Simon.
Donald Trump terrifies Republican Field.
They're afraid of him.
They are really afraid of him.
The other Republican candidates for president are afraid of Donald Trump.
That's the first three sentences of the story.
So our guys are being portrayed as a bunch of cowards.
They're afraid of him.
They are really afraid of him.
The other Republican candidates for president are afraid of Donald Trump.
The smart ones are, anyway.
Trump didn't just steal much of the show Thursday night.
He didn't just command the stage.
He's an experienced TV performer, after all, but he showed his contempt for the very debate he was taking part in, and the audience ate it up.
Wait a minute.
Dr. Krauthammer says that Trump blew his candidacy last night.
And Frank Lunt says the same thing.
What are we to make of this, folks?
Time will tell.
But it's clear these media people have learned a lesson.
They thought the McCain comment and the illegal immigrant comment would doom Trump.
And when it didn't, when it actually made him more popular, they're now hedging their bets.
I'm just going to tell you this.
If Trump maintains his support or if it grows, you are going to see a mainstream establishment that will not have any idea how to explain it.
They will not believe it, and it might drive them nuts.
▲
Export Selection