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Aug. 26, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:49
August 26, 2015, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You know, when I first heard about the shooting in Virginia this morning, I thought it had to be a lover's thing when I heard that the I mean the original reports were that a reporter and the cameraman were engaged, and they are, but not to each other.
But the original reports had him engaged.
He says this shooting happens, and it has to be a lover's triangle.
Turns out that's not what it was.
It's a racist, should I say, racial incident, perhaps.
It's going to be a big, big conflict for the media here as this goes forward.
Greetings, my friends.
Rush Limbaugh back.
Happy to be here behind the Golden EIB microphone.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the programs, 800-282-2882, and the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
This may be a first.
And this is, boy, is this the underbelly.
The ugly side of social media.
What an episode.
Here you have a disgruntled employee.
His air name is Bryce Williams.
His actual name is Vester Flanagan.
And he, Vester Flanagan, Vestor J. Flanagan's his real name.
He went by Bryce Williams on the air.
And he was a reporter at the station.
And he's got this manifesto that he wrote.
But what he did, he actually videotaped himself committing this crime.
He had his cell phone camera in one hand, his gun in the other.
He videotaped it.
It was posted for a while before some people, I think it was Facebook, before it was pulled down.
I mean, this is, you want to talk about the ugly underbelly of social media.
This is taking it to a level that nobody has ever dreamed of.
And now you've got, you know, Hillary Clinton's already come out and politicized this.
Probably not the first, but she's the most prominent early on to start shouting gun control, gun control.
Well, let me suggest that maybe journalists might want to consider arming themselves as they go out now.
But it's interesting to follow the timeline of this, folks, when it first started.
You could tell, well, let me not put thoughts in your mind.
I could tell as I watch this, you can, if you're a student of this, as am I, you can spot without, you can read between the lines.
You know what the journalists reporting this are thinking before the facts are known.
And it is clear to me that all the journalists reporting this, before anybody knew anything other than two reporters, well, a reporter, a cameraman, are dead, that it was open season on the media.
And by that, open season on the media, then who did they think would have open season on the media?
You can see where they would be thinking this was going.
I guarantee you, there were probably reporters, investigative reporters, trying to tie this, if they could, to some political group with which they might not agree, such as the Tea Party or something.
You could just see it.
I mean, everything's become politicized.
I was out in California for the past five days, and I played golf with some friends.
And one of them asked me if I'd watched or listened to the podcast titled Serial, S-E-R-I-A-L on NPR.
No.
Why not?
I said, because it was on NPR.
Well, what's that?
Come on.
Yes, I am.
Everything that happens in this country is politicized.
Everything that happens is tied to a political agenda, predominantly the leftist political agenda.
And you could see it in this incident.
You could see what they originally thought.
They didn't, nobody came out and said it, but you could tell by the way they were talking to each other and the fears they were expressing that they thought it might have been open season on the media and they were ready to go blame Trump for it.
They were ready to go blame any rabble rouser they could.
And now the conflict, oh no, a reporter is the shooter.
And furthermore, a reporter of color is the shooter.
Now there's a conflict.
Now what do they do?
Hey, don't get mad at me for this, folks.
I'm just the one telling you how it is because everything has to be politicized.
This thing eventually will be.
And that's where the conflict is going to come in.
It's horrible.
It is an absolutely just despicable thing.
And the media has gone wall to wall with it, as you can imagine.
I mean, it's about them.
But the initiative if you take out the vocations of the people involved, if you have a couple of white people shot by a person of color, might not even hear about it.
And if you did hear about it, there would be maybe not excuses, but rationale.
And we would be advised that it would be worth our time to figure out why the rage was there.
But that can't work because the victims are in the media.
And that's just so it's going to be a very, very conflicted thing for people reporting on this, trying to convert it into some sort of political agenda.
They're going to have a tough time doing that.
And hopefully they won't.
I mean, the great thing would be as if they just didn't.
But they do.
TV station is WDBJ, and there was, it was at 6.45 a.m. today.
They were doing a story with a local woman who was also shot.
She's in surgery now or was local hospital.
And they were doing a bit on tourism.
They were doing a bit some part of town that was being touted as a great place to come, great place to visit.
And then you can see it.
I mean, the shooter walks up.
You don't see the shooter, but you hear the screams.
You see the shots, the impact of the shots and so forth.
And it's unlike anything you've ever seen.
Then you find out the shooter was actually videotaping it.
By the way, shooter shot himself.
He was fleeing an I-65.
They came up with him, came across him, found his car open.
He got out, I guess, shot himself after posting the killing on social media.
10-page or multi-page manifesto describing his complaints and some things that made him happy at various stops along his career.
But it's, I don't think we've ever seen anything like this.
It may be an all-time first, first of its kind.
Journalists' lives matter.
Well, they do.
Don't smirk at me like that, snerdly.
They do.
Well, they do.
All lives matter.
Prior to this happening, the lead story obviously was going to be what happened in Iowa last night.
And we'll get to it, of course, with Trump.
Somebody just said to me, it's amazing the thing wasn't blamed on Trump.
Don't think for a moment there wasn't going to be an effort to look.
Last night on CNN, I was blamed for Trump.
I was blamed for the creation of Fox News and Trump.
All the anger in the country was laid on me.
So don't for a minute think they weren't trying to find a way to lump this on Trump.
That's what I'm talking about.
You have to be able to read between the lines when you watch these people on TV report these events.
And you know when this thing first happened, and before anybody knew what had happened, the first fear they had was open season on journalists.
And if you look at polling data, not new here, journalism is among the least respected industries or professions in the country today.
I think it ranks even below where Congress is, and that's at the bottom.
And they all know it.
They're very much aware of it.
Doesn't matter, but they're very much aware of it.
So there was no doubt in my mind.
You can just see the look on their faces and the tone of their questions to each other.
Is it open season on the media?
Because maybe you need to say something here.
This whole Trump episode has everybody bamboozled.
It has the elites bamboozled.
It has the establishment bamboozled.
It has political professionals, all stripes bamboozled.
It's got the media bamboozled.
Nobody can figure it out.
I don't know how it's happening.
They don't know how Trump's surviving.
They don't.
And I'll tell you why they don't understand.
It's something.
I talked about it on Friday, in fact, about who knows their audience and who doesn't know their audience.
I watched this thing last night.
Trump's, I happened to get on the airplane to catch maybe the last 30 minutes of it on the way home.
And the last 10 minutes of what Trump did last night sealed the deal.
I mean, the sincerity, the appreciation for the audience that showed up, he gave every indication.
He left no doubt how much he loved those people that showed up, how much he respects them, how much their presence means to him.
All of Braggadocio aside, all of the showmanship and the flamboyance, all of that aside, Donald Trump let them know at the end of everything else he said how deeply touched and moved he is by their support, by their belief in him.
In fact, those last 10 minutes created, if they hadn't already, a bond and sealed that bond between Trump and the people who are supporting him.
Now, what that means is there isn't anybody that's going to be able to break that bond.
The media is not going to be able to break it.
There's nothing they can say about Trump, excuse me, that is going to cause people to lose respect for him or begin doubting him.
There's nothing they can do.
They don't know that.
They will continue trying to undermine Trump.
There's nothing any of these other candidates, Republican or Democrat, can do.
He has created that bond.
And by the way, that bond probably has been in the process of being created long before his campaign began, but it is intensified.
And as such, the only person that can damage Trump now is Trump.
The only person who can break that bond is Trump.
And the point of all this is, is that while all of these experts are flailing around trying to understand the Trump phenomenon and predicting its end, one of the great things about getting out of town, all my friends are gone.
I'm the only one that stays here in the summertime.
I am a lone wolf.
It's great because I have all kinds of privacy and nobody bugs me.
So I had a chance to actually talk to some people person to person that I know that I haven't seen in quite a while.
And I was treated to all kinds of conspiracy theories about Trump.
People believe, for example, a secret deal between Trump and Fox News and Ailes and Megan Kelly, that all of this is, and this is a wealthy hedge fund guy telling me this.
This is all designed to keep Trump in the news, to make a star out of Megan Kelly, and to keep Fox News number one.
People believe this.
I had other theories, too.
One of the questions I got was, well, Rush, you know, Trump doesn't really want to win this.
So what is he doing?
I said, what do you mean he really doesn't want to win it?
Well, I don't think he really wants to.
I don't think he halfway expected any of this to happen.
I think he's loving it, but I don't think he, I think there's something else he got into this for.
There's some other reason.
And I just don't, I can't see him doing the distance here.
He's going to get bored or what have you.
So he's not going to get bored if this kind of adulation continues.
But it was fascinating to find out what and how people are thinking.
And even now there are some who look at this and don't think it's legit.
That there's some secret reason, some unknown thing Trump has in mind here.
He's either running a stunt on the whole political system, running a scam on the whole.
And other people believe it's legit.
I mean, I'm telling you, I heard the whole gamut of possible explanations.
And the thing that people continue to, particularly the experts, the failure to understand, which is stunning to me, by the way, given the business they're in, the failure to understand the connection Trump is making with his own.
Now, some, by the way, let me let me, they're not all missing it.
They understand there's a bond and they understand there's a connection.
But even those in the establishment who claim to get that think that the bond is made up of negative characteristics, angry people seeking somebody to kick everything around because that's what they want to do and can't, and Trump is that guy.
None of it's positive to these analysts.
None of this that has drawn a crowd to Trump and created this bond.
None of it's positive.
It's all negative, even to the political professionals.
And this is what they just are in denial or they don't know or they really don't get it.
But if they really want to try to understand it, they need to watch the last 10 minutes.
Not saying the rest of it was irrelevant.
Don't misunderstand.
I mean, the first 30 minutes was just Trump stream of consciousness about himself.
Then the next 30 minutes was rat-tat-tat, issue, issue, issue, serious, serious, serious.
And he said something very, the biggest applause line of the night last night.
He thinks the teleprompter should be banned from all political campaigns.
Biggest applause line of the night.
Why do you think that is?
Why do you think that engendered such raucous support?
Because the people are not idiots.
Voters engaged this far out are not idiots.
They're not lame brains.
They're not mind-numb robots.
They're sophisticated enough to know.
If you take a teleprompter away from somebody, you're going to find out real quick what they really think.
You're going to find out real quick if they have any depth.
You're going to find out real quick if they have the ability to think on their feet.
You're going to find out real quick if they have the ability to captivate you with their own words.
Take the teleprompter away from Obama.
Take it away from practically everybody.
Do not let anybody, and it just place erupted with that.
So the Trump thing was 50 minutes and had every element in it.
It had the showbiz.
It had the serious discussion of issues.
And then it had the sincere.
And I mean, it was deeply sincere.
Thank you and wrap up at the end.
And do not doubt that his audience heard it, appreciated it, understood it.
And then, of course, there were the fireworks prior to that with Jorge Ramos and you know, I had no idea the guy was so short, Snerdley.
I had no idea that you'd, I mean, the guy's so short, if he played third base on a Major League Baseball team, he wouldn't be able to see first base over the pitcher's mound.
I didn't realize what a tiny guy he was.
We find out his daughter now works for Hillary's campaign.
Do you know that?
Yeah, he said he went public today.
He had full disclosure.
The guy's not a journalist.
He's an activist.
And the media knows full.
Trump handled that well last night and kicked butt, and everybody knows it, whether they want to admit it or not.
I got to take a break here.
I just noticed the clock.
You sit tight, my friends.
There's much more straight ahead right after this.
And let me expand on a theme here.
The idea that Trump's followers are not comprised of anger.
At least that's not the animating aspect of them.
And yet, all of these people in the establishments of both parties, the elites, the consultants, the so-called political science experts at universities, the punditry, they have these formulas to explain human behavior in the political sphere.
And anger is at the top of the list.
If you want to discredit a group of voters, if you want to impugn them, you just accuse them of being angry.
And if you really, really want to rip them, you call them angry and white.
I've been dealing with this angry white men BS since 1990.
And it just further illustration of just how dense and insulated and ignorant these experts are in understanding.
In this case, the supporters of Donald Trump.
These people are not angry.
Well, they're angry.
I mean, I think, in fact, folks, we're all entitled to our anger here.
If we aren't angry about it, are you angry about what's happening at Planned Parent?
You damn well should be.
Anger is a legitimate reaction to certain things, but it is not, in this case, the energy.
It's not the animating thing.
It's not the reason that Trump has supporters.
It's not because people looking for a way to express their anger and be done with it.
It's far more than that.
All right, now, as best as I can gather here, ladies and gentlemen, it's conflicting reports over whether or not the shooter, Bryce Williams, aka Vester Flanagan, is dead.
ABC News, I guess, was the original source for this, saying they got a fax.
Well, I mean, it's good enough for Center for Science and Public Interest.
They send out a fax, it becomes news.
So if the shooter sends out a fax, why shouldn't that become news?
And that's what they said happened.
But now there's some conflicting reports that the shooter may not be dead.
And he may not have shot himself.
They just don't know yet.
At least that is as of 30 seconds ago.
Doing our best to follow this while also executing today's excursion into broadcast.
By the way, thanks to Mark Stein for sitting in on Monday and Tuesday.
Now, back to this, the Trump supporter, well, story, for lack of a better word.
It's starting to happen again.
It's all being chalked up to anger.
Just like angry white men was a way to impugn Republican support back in the early 90s, and it's been used interchangeably with soccer moms and the war on women, and you name it, angry white men.
And my contention to you is that it's not, Trump supporters are not negative.
They're not angry.
I mean, that's not their state of mind.
They are legitimately angry.
And wouldn't you be, you had kids and grandkids, are you not angry over what's been done to their future?
Are you not angry over what's been done to this economy?
Stop and think of something here for a second, folks.
Stock market, $5 trillion was printed by the Federal Reserve.
It was called quantitative easing.
And it all was, it all ended up on Wall Street for the purchase of securities.
Interest rates were kept low.
So while Main Street and the rest of this economy was just plundering along at a no-growth, static rate, Wall Street is going crazy.
New wealth is being created, but not because of any reason other than the Federal Reserve pumping $5 trillion into it.
Okay, so now after this crash that has occurred over the past week, almost just a little over a third of that $5 trillion on paper is gone, just wiped out.
Now, can you imagine what would have happened if that had somehow, if they had decided to put $5 trillion that they printed on Main Street?
Can you imagine what might have happened if I guarantee you that there are a lot of smart middle-class people in this country who know full well what's going on.
They have every right to be mad about it.
They have gone to the polls and they have voted for people who they believed were going to help them stop this.
They have voted for people who told them that they were going to stop it.
They were going to do their best to repeal Obamacare, for example.
They were going to do their best to make sure that there wasn't any more damage done to the United States economy via Obama policy.
They were promised by people campaigning for office that they were going to go to Washington and do everything they could to save this country as founded.
And they haven't done it.
Wouldn't you be mad?
The anger is not illegitimate, but my point is it's not what's driving this.
What's driving this ultimately is love.
What's driving the support for Trump is love.
It is optimism and it is positive.
It is real hope that there might be a chance for real change, not just sloganeering.
These are people who believe in the greatness of America.
These are people who want it returned.
These are people who believe that it is possible to recapture some of the great traditions and institutions that made this country great.
They are shocked and stunned that so many elected officials don't seem to hear them, are not even interested in that themselves.
But here come the predictable cat calls.
Well, you know, it's just a bunch of anger.
It's being fed by Rush Limboard, Fox News.
It's just, it's angry populism.
These elites, I think they're smarter than everybody else, continue to misunderstand this because they're plugging everything in in their phony formulas or their incorrect formulas that they use to try to calm themselves or mollify themselves or explain all this to themselves because right now they can't explain.
They don't know what's going on.
You know what this is akin to?
This is, let's say that you are one of the most celebrated CEOs of one of the biggest companies in the country.
You can make one up or pick a name.
And some neophyte who has never worked there, some neophyte who has, at least on paper, no experience, comes in, has much better ideas, and is able to run that company or come up with ways to run that company far better than it's being run.
That's the equivalent of what's happening here.
The people in that business would be pulling their hair out.
It's not possible.
We never heard of this guy before, they would say.
What experience does he have?
He doesn't know our business.
That's what they would be saying.
So it's a natural protective circle the wagons kind of thing the establishment's doing.
In the process, what they always do when something happens like this, they don't understand, they blame all of it on stupidity and anger on the part of their own voters.
It ends up their own voters are stupid and mad, and they run around and they actually say so.
Now, why they think down the road sometime these voters are going to change their mind and leave Trump or whoever and come back to them after they've been insulted this way makes no sense to me.
It makes no common sense.
And no, don't misunderstand.
I'm not sitting here endorsing anything.
Hey, I've got my journalism 101 cap.
I'm America's anchorman here.
I'm just analyzing this as I see it objectively as I can from afar.
I watched it on TV last night, like you did.
I wasn't there.
It had nothing to do with what happened there.
Had no input in it whatsoever.
Not involved.
But I am watching it.
And I have countless years' experience guided by my intelligence to be able to understand why Trump is resonating and why he is growing.
And the polling data shows that Trump is just continuing to skyrocket in most places.
Hillary still beats Trump head to head in Wisconsin.
I think I saw that.
But they're not going to have it.
Hillary, man, oh man, oh man, they kept calls on the Democrat side among Democrats and media for her to just get out.
Last week, it was one supporter writing in the UK Telegraph, I think, that we quoted, who said, please, Hillary, I love you, but please get out before you embarrass yourself.
Please get off.
And many more people have now joined that refrain.
And now the popular speculation is that Hillary's not going to be in this race much longer.
Can't stay in it.
No energy, no support.
None of this.
So that's a real story people are missing too, is that the disintegration taking place in the Democrat Party.
You telling me, you tell me, seriously, telling me that a party that offers up its savior, Joe Biden, is a party of hip and cool and what's happening now and of the future.
Joe Biden, who's already demonstrated he knows how to lose Democrat presidential primaries.
He got kicked out of the first one because it was found he was plagiarizing a British politician by the name of Neil Kimmick.
I mean, plagiarizing even this guy's life story, even to the point of saying his dad worked in a coal mine when he didn't.
He should have been shamed out of politics for what he did, but he's now the savior of the Democrat Party in the event Mrs. Clinton can't go or doesn't make it.
So these are earth-shattering times.
These are the times where everything that everybody thought they knew is upside down and inexplicable to the experts.
To show you how the Republican establishment's flailing, there are a story today that two states, Republican state organizations, are trying to trip Trump up by establishing a new rule that the Republican primary winner in that state has to pledge not to run third party or he will not be allowed to win the delegates.
It is said that's happening in North Carolina, and I forget the other state where it's, I know the best intelligence I have is that it's totally untrue about the Republican apparatus in North Carolina.
It's not true at all.
But this other state, it might be true.
But that's just flailing away.
If that's the best they've got.
They're waiting for donors to peel away from others, hoping that they'll resign.
Speaking of donors and peeling away, Jeb Bush, his whole strategy was to get all the money.
Jeb Bush's entire strategy was to win this by soaking up all the donor money or the vast majority of it.
Now, last week we had the story of the hill.com.
Donors not worried dash yet, meaning Bush donors.
Well, then why run the story?
Donors are not panicking yet.
Really?
Okay, so it must be that they are to one degree or another.
Anyway, my friend, sit tight.
Got to take a brief time out.
El Rushbo back in the saddle behind the golden EIB microphone.
Back with more after this image.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Local media here in South Florida is ecstatic.
There's finally a hurricane coming.
They're so excited.
There's evidence of global warming on the way, and it's currently in this hurricane track.
And right now, this track takes that hurricane right over us.
Yes, sir, Rebuff actually splits the difference between us and Fort Lauderdale.
Monday morning at 2 a.m.
Snurdley, that's Snerdley's in New York.
He's shopping real estate for whatever.
Yeah, it's a tracking map.
It shows it goes right, split the difference between here and Fort Lauderdale.
Well, it's a tropical storm until it gets to the coast, and then it becomes a hurricane, you see.
I'm telling you, even this is politicized.
I'll tell you what, this track is going to be.
They're going to have this track.
It's going to hit urban South Florida, Southeast Coast, like Fort Lauderdale, Miami, a lot of people.
Then it's going to track, and magically it's going to shift.
They're going to show it hitting Tampa.
And it's going to turn northeast after that.
It's going to start the East Coast and start destroying North Carolina and all that.
The last hurricane fizzled out three days after they called it a tropical storm.
It just burned out.
Then we got news stories.
Why are there no hurricanes?
We thought there were going to be some hurricanes and global warming.
They're having hurricanes.
It's horrible.
Now they've got one and they're ecstatic.
They're really happy.
Okay, let me grab the phones quickly.
Get started with this.
Houston, Texas.
Umberto.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Yes, hello.
Hello, Richard.
How are you doing, Umberto?
Not bad, not bad.
It's a privilege to be able to be on your show.
Thank you, sir.
Okay, no problem.
Listen, this thing about this George Ramos from Univision, the guy was really out of line.
The guy had no, if I were Univision, I would fire him in a minute because this represents, I hope, what Univision stands for and as being a program for the benefit of people in the Latin community.
However, this guy, Ramos, he doesn't seem to be educated at all because, and you can't blame it on the culture because people are supposed to be educated.
And if you're talking to someone, you're supposed to wait until they finish speaking before you can respond.
And Trump was really in line when he told him to sit down because he was not addressed.
He only addressed the person who said that.
You know what?
Umberto, you know what the New York Times said this looked like?
It looked like Trump at the border telling an illegal immigrant, go, get in line.
It's not your turn.
You can't come in.
The New York Times reported this incident looked like exactly what Trump would do dealing with illegal immigration.
Here you had Jorge Ramos, who was violating the rules, which is commonplace for journalists, stands up.
He's not a journalist.
He's not asking questions.
He shows up as an activist.
His entire purpose is to try to embarrass Trump or to trick Trump into saying something dangerous or negative for Trump or bad.
And Trump's not falling for it.
Trump tells him to sit down, shut up.
It's not his turn.
Nobody called on him.
And he wouldn't sit down and shut up.
He would not behave in good manners.
So Donald gave his security guy a little nod.
Security guy comes over and walks little Jorge out.
And Jorge's, don't touch me.
Don't touch me.
And then Trump invites him back in later when it's his turn and then spends five minutes with the guy, more than he spent with any other journalist.
And in the process, illustrated, there's nothing journalistic about Jorge Ramos.
His entire purpose.
You know, there was a part of me that wanted Trump to ask him, hey, Jorge, what are you really doing?
What is your job?
How do you see your job, Jorge?
What are you doing?
I'm glad he didn't because just from a power positioning, but something I'd like to ask because I'd like to put the guy on the spike because this guy has got this credit as the Walter Cronkite of Latino media.
By the way, what is this Latino media?
Look at this.
We have black media.
We have Latino media, we have, why is the media now bifurcated, or trifurcated, or what have you?
Latino media in the so we've got media only for Latinos.
Yeah.
Uttered in Spanish.
Yeah.
Jeb Bush goes there, talks in Spanish to him.
What is that?
Well, it's clear what it is.
But Jorge was allowed back in when it's his turn, and Trump engaged with him and answered his questions, chatted back, and made it obvious that Jorge Ramos has one interest, and that is, well, he's not somebody standing on the corner watching all this happening and then telling people about it.
Jorge Ramos is an activist for illegal immigration.
Jorge Ramos is a supporter of illegal immigration, supporter of illegal immigrants and everything that's attached to them.
And he's disguised as a Walter Cronkite-type journalist on Univision.
And that's how he gets away with his activism.
And he is, I think Jorge Ramos is a microcosm of a whole lot of other journalists who are activists themselves and pushing an agenda.
Thanks for the call, Umberto.
I'm really glad to have you in the audience.
I'll be back after this, folks.
Don't go away.
Okay, the authorities are calling the murder of the WDBJ reporter and cameraman today workplace violence.
The shooter was also a disgruntled employee there by the name of Vester Flanagan, aka Bryce Williams.
And apparently he has shot himself, is life-threatening injuries as a result of shooting himself, I guess, in the hospital or on the way.
But they're calling it workplace violence as of now.
Be back.
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