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Sept. 3, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:32
September 3, 2015, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 Podcast.
Greetings, my friends.
Great to have you here, and the fastest week in media just continues to roll right on already.
Here we are at Thursday.
As we once again prepare for yet another excursion into broadcast excellence, the telephone number if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882.
Email address, L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Do you believe that it has become in certain quarters in this country?
Do you believe that it has become controversial?
And Donald Trump told Jeb Bush he ought to speak English, that that has now become an example of nativism.
You know, Jeb went out there and said addressing an audience, I think in Florida, and he was telling them in Espanol that uh uh El Hombre nois conservadore.
Meaning Trump's not a conservative, and Trump's, you know, you know, Jim, you need to lead here a little bit, bud.
You need to speak English.
We're in America.
And that's become controversial.
Over at CNN, you would not be the Washington Post is editorializing that this is horrible what Trump said.
Now I'm going to tell you, this is one of these things I've I I've it had to put this.
Every now and then we have evidence of a decline of so much about what has made this country great, and this is another one of these things.
They go in spurts.
I mean, every day we get little bits of evidence here and there in terms of pop culture.
Something like this comes up where everybody thinks that English is the language of this country, and then you find out that many in the Democrat Party and the drive-by media think that's nativist and braggadocious and unfair.
What the hell are you going to do in this country if you can't speak English?
So anyway, that's coming up on the program today.
Also, regarding Trump, uh big meeting between Trump and Ryan Spreebus.
Trump apparently going to sign the pledge that he will support the Republican nominee.
Big meeting at Trump Tower, after which Trump will have a media availability to explain what happened.
Uh Governor Christie signed his in public today on uh on Fox News.
He was uh guest hosting, no, no, guesting with Martha McCallum, and she demanded that somebody bring the pledge out, and somebody, some stage hand brought the pledge out, and yep, yep, sign it right here.
Dip, dip, dip, there you go.
Put the date on it, damn right I'm in there.
Um what is this?
Loyalty oaths?
How how about how about the Republican Party signing a loyalty oath to the voters?
If there needs to be a loyalty oath here, it seems to me that the Republican Party elected officials would finally get around to signing one.
They're gonna be loyal to their cause and loyal to their voters.
Now I'm not trying to stir things up here, but what is this?
They say this is an attempt to entrap Trump.
And uh get him to promise he won't go third party and uh and all that.
I don't know if these people think this looks good or they're running some kind of a scam or trick on Trump, but I as usual they are they're overthinking this because they're discombobulated.
Also, folks, I want to take you back this program uh on August 31st.
I just want to remind you of something that I sent a quick little 12 seconds goes by here pretty quickly.
If I had to wage a wild guess right now, I mean the Oprah 10 days away, New England hosting the Steelers.
And if I had to wager right now Brady's playing, seems to me he'll suit up.
Yes, my friends, I just wanted to remind you that I predicted that this would be the case.
And after watching all this, I wish that Brady's lawyers had done the negotiation with the Iranians.
We would have a much different outcome there.
So everybody is wondering what's happening.
See, here's this is a classic example, I think, of how people end up being misinformed to no fault of their own by simply watching what's in the media every day.
When you watch what's in the media every day, but a particular story, in the case that the the Brady story, uh, given the predisposition of many in the sports media, uh, given the predisposition of many in the drive-by media who don't understand sports but were forced to talk about it because it was a big issue.
Um, you would probably conclude that at the end of this, Brady was gonna serve some kind of suspension no matter what, reduced to a game, reduced to two games, or what have you.
Because the the media never did, I can't say never, because some of them did frame it properly, but most of the drive-by media and many in the sports media did not frame what this issue was about.
This judge did not decide on the merits of whether or not Brady deflated footballs and whether or not the NFL proved it or not.
I mean, there may have been some thinking along those lines, but this judge simply ruled, does the commissioner have the right to meet out discipline like this on players in the NFL?
And the reason that everybody thought it was a slam dunk win for the NFL is because the players signed the collective bargaining agreement that gave Goodell these specific powers.
But because a lot of people thought there was overreach, uh, and Brady did not want his reputation sullied in any way, he was going to take this all to the end, and what's really happened here is big in terms of management and labor relations going forward.
This federal judge basically essentially said that the collective bargaining agreement between the players and the NFL doesn't count for much.
This is big, folks, in that sense, federal judges in cases in disputes like this, labor management disputes, they almost always side with the arbitrator because they don't want the case in their courtroom anyway.
They don't want these kinds of disputes.
When there are already mechanisms in place, agreed to by both parties to solve these kinds of disputes, uh most judges, oh no, not all.
Judges are becoming increasingly activist and increasingly desirous of putting their own impramater fingerprints on these kinds of things.
Not saying that this judge did.
Uh, but it's always been standard operating procedure that judges uh side with arbitrators because they want to send the message, hey, you guys have got a system for dealing with this, and we're not going to trample on it, we're not going to walk on it.
And if your arbitrators ruled, I'm going to uphold the arbitrator.
That's what normally happens.
That didn't happen here.
And that's one of the earth-shattering things about it.
Now, here is, as best I can tell, the way this judge decided this case, the meat, if you will, as opposed to the gristle.
The meat of the decision is Roger Gooddale, the commissioner's use of the steroids cases, which often get four-game suspensions as an analogy to giving Brady a four-game suspension.
One has nothing to do with the other, the judge said.
You've got a guy here who may have deflated footballs, but you haven't really proven it here.
And he gets four games.
You got these other people over here taking PEDs and other uh street drugs, and they get four games.
He says there's an inconsistency here.
One has nothing to do with the other.
But here's the the other big thing that the judge said is that Brady was not on notice that he could get four games for his alleged conduct.
In other words, he was not warned.
You can think of this whatever you want, but the judge said that Brady wasn't given sufficient warning.
He wasn't put on notice that he could get four games for this kind of alleged conduct, and which conduct the judge said the commissioner exaggerated in upholding the original arbitrator's decision.
The arbitrator had only said Brady was generally aware.
Goodell suggested that he was conclusively Aware.
So there's inconsistency there.
And because Brady was not put on notice or warned how severe the punishment would be, he didn't have a chance to factor all of that into his decision whether to accept it or not, whether to fight it.
In other words, uh it would be tantamount.
You have a guy who's been accused of robbing a bank, and you don't tell him what the sentence is going to be.
You don't tell him what the range of sent or the penalty in just period.
You don't tell him what it is.
And then you go to trial, and uh it affects his decision of whether to fight you, whether to agree to a settlement or what have you.
Um there are all kinds of nuances in this thing.
It's a slam dunk win.
I mean, I it it looks like if the NFL can appeals this, the way this judge ruled, uh legal legal analysts are suggesting that there's no way the NFL could prevail on appeal.
That this judge just he went beyond what he was supposed to do.
He was just supposed to judge, does the commissioner have this kind of power?
That's really all this was.
It wasn't about did Brady deflate the balls, did Brady deflect destroy his phone, did he destroy text?
I mean, that that really was not something the judge should have been deciding on.
It was clearly simply is this agreement reasonable?
Does this commissioner really have this kind of power?
That's what this was, and the decision was not the way he used it, no.
This is a huge hit.
Another thing the judge said is that Brady should have been given access to the notes of the Ted Wells investigation and the NFL lawyer who worked on the investigation, and they shielded all of that.
In other words, Brady was not fully informed what the potential liabilities and penalties were, and he was not given access to the evidence that they had.
And the reason that's important is because he was therefore not fully informed, and thus not fully prepared to make a decision as to sue, as to settle, or whatever, because they withheld information they had and they knew that would have been vital to Brady and his team deciding what they wanted to do.
Goodell denied these things.
He denied Brady's access to Ted Wells' investigation notes and the uh notes made by the lawyer, the NFL lawyer worked on the investigation, Jeff Pash, I think is his name.
Goodell specifically denied these things to Brady in the appeal process.
And so you boiled it all down, is that Berman is saying Brady didn't get due process here.
But you're gonna have other people's way.
Well, due process, there's not due process here.
This is a collective bargaining agreement.
This is not something that has to stand up in court.
Due process, there is no due process.
The players agreed, the commissioner gets a determined player discipline.
The commissioner determined it, they don't like it.
Uh so it's I think it's it's it's hard for this judge in a case like this, any judge probably to keep his personal feelings out of this.
Uh there's so many holes in this investigation, so many holes in it, Ted Wells report that anybody looking at it is none of this doesn't add up, it doesn't make any sense.
And I don't want to go into all of those things.
We've done we've been there, we've done that.
Uh and the judge is never gonna say those were factors.
He's clearly written in his ruling what the factors were, and I've given you the uh the highlights of it.
But it's it's a uh it's it's a big deal within the universe of the National Football League, they have this kind of power already agreed to by the players given to the commissioner, now basically slam-dunked away by a uh federal judge.
I think one of the things the judge came out in the press is wait a minute, you're telling me that you had these footballs and they were deflated, and Brady deflated them and he wanted them under regs, because he likes them that way, and then they fixed that at halftime.
They properly inflated the balls at halftime.
Brady goes out in the second half when the balls are proper and does better than he did in the first half.
So what are you telling me here about deflated footballs?
Where's the evidence that deflating them help Brady?
He did better when the footballs were deflated to regulation.
We fixed them at halftime.
Common sense questions like that, the judge was reportedly have to have asked during the hearings.
So anyway, there's going to be all kinds of emotion on both sides of this.
You're going to have the envy squad is going to be huge out there today.
The jealousy squad is going to be huge out there today.
And you're going to have a lot of fans.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
He destroyed, he destroyed the phone.
You got rid of evidence.
What about that?
Judge was not moved.
There were things which overrode that.
But regardless, here it is ten days, now one week, seven days before the opener, one week from today, in New England, the Steelers.
Ratings through the roof.
Gonna be huge.
Carol Costello, one of our favorite anchors over at CNN, was dumbfounded at this ruling.
She could not believe it.
She was shocked.
She was stunned and amazed.
Here's what she said.
Wow.
I I didn't, I just didn't expect Tom Brady to win for some reason.
What about all that stuff about Tom Brady throwing his cell phone away and you know destroying text messages?
Didn't the judge take that into account?
No, no.
See, that's she's a product of she watches the media.
She is the media.
That's the only thing she knows is the way the media talks about it.
Those were interesting factoids.
But it had nothing to do with what the judge was deciding.
The judge wasn't deciding any of that.
The judge was deciding whether or not the commissioner has the power to do what he did.
And when the judge ruled that the commissioner doesn't have this kind of power, he listed some reasons why.
But the judge was not judging Brady's innocence or guilt.
But if all you did was watch the media, and the only thing you watched was people uninformed presenting it that way, then that's why you would be surprised at uh at this.
So anyway, that's that.
It's a done deal.
I just wanted it on record that back on August 31st, I L. Rushball predicted this very outcome to you.
Back after this.
Oh, yeah, the NFL has to appeal.
I'm thinking that they have to appeal if nothing more than to say face.
And then in the longer term, you know, reverse this and win it.
This is a huge, huge hit to the power of the uh commissioner.
Now, this judge, and I don't know that it means anything.
I'm just a purveyor of fact.
The judge is a Clinton appointee, which does nothing more than tell us what the ideological bent of the judge is.
I can see the NFL appealing this both ways.
I can see them forgetting it, get past it, forget it, and then I frankly have been surprised by how headstrong they've been throughout this whole process.
I have there are parts of this that have really been a mystery to me.
And one of the biggest mysteries has been why, and look, this is whether this is true or not, the perception is the NFL was trying to destroy the reputation of one of their star players.
The NFL was trying to sully in the minds of the public the reputation of one of the league's marquee players who's never been in any kind of trouble before.
He's never been accused of cheating before, other than that spygate thing, which was a team thing.
So I think that is one of those little lurking items in the past wherein all of these other questions can be answered, but we'll never know for sure.
But it has been stunning to me to watch the NFL apparently unaware of how damaging to the brand this could be.
Why that the the end nobody turns on the TV to watch the commissioner?
And nobody turns on TV or go to sports bars to watch Ted Wells do his investigations or the owner's meet or any of that.
They turn on the games to watch the players Play.
So I understand this integrity to game business and wanting to protect that, that makes sense.
But to go this far and to be this focused on destroying the reputation of your marquee player.
I don't care how I don't know how popular or unpopular he is within players around the league.
That's not a concern.
I'll tell you what's driving this in my humble opinion, informed by nothing but a wild guess, and that is that a bunch of people in the league think that the Patriots got away way too much with Spygate, were not punished nearly enough for it, and there's a lingering dislike and animosity for the organization throughout the league, and this was an opportunity to continue to punish them for things that they should have been punished for years ago.
Who knows?
It's a wild guess.
All right, the Player Association has issued their statement, and it's it's kind of.
I think the players association statement illustrates some of the folly that's happened here.
They admit in their statement that the collective bargaining agreement gave the commissioner the power to oversee and meet out player discipline, and he was given the power to arbitrate it.
It's there.
They say, but what this ruling says is that he doesn't have the right to abuse that power.
Really?
And we never agreed to give him the right to abuse the power.
So what's happened here is in the players' association view, the judge has decided that while Goodell and uh the commissioner, by virtue of the CBA agreement, does have the right to oversee these disputes and hand out punishment and be the arbitrator, he doesn't have the right to abuse those powers.
And of course, the definition of abusing those powers now rests in the hands of Richard Berman, the judge, and the question of whether the league will appeal.
The league is going to look at precedent.
The league's gonna find out have there been examples of something similar to this where we could prevail, where uh a ruling has been overturned, and they're gonna find one.
Snerdley, do you remember the Ohio State player Maurice Clarette, running back?
He wanted to come out, I think, as a sophomore or junior and enter the NFL draft.
And if I if I have this right, the original ruling was that he could not.
And in the appeal, it was overturned, and it was ruled that he could come out of college early and enter the NFL draft.
I think it it might be the other way around.
But if the NFL, if they want, they can find evidence where a federal judge has been overruled or overturned by an appellate court.
They're gonna see if there's enough precedent to give this uh possibility any likelihood.
Uh and of course, then there's the face-saving um aspect.
Now, Goodell's statement is we are grateful to Judge Berman for hearing this matter, but we respectfully disagree with today's decision.
We will appeal today's ruling in order to uphold the collectively bargained responsibility to protect the integrity of the game.
The commissioner's responsibility to secure the competitive fairness of our game is a paramount principle.
And the league and our 32 clubs will continue to pursue a path to that end.
While the legal phase of this process continues, we look forward to focusing on football and the opening of the regular season.
And remember, folks, as this goes forward, the players did grant the commissioner the right to deal with the responsibility of the integrity of the game, to meet out player discipline, to hand it out, and to be the arbitrator.
Totally within his purfew to do everything he did here.
And the judge has said he abused it.
Went too far, denied Brady some as though this were a trial, and it wasn't.
Anyway, that's that.
We have new polling data from CNN.
The world is Shocked yet again when it comes to Donald Trump.
Two sound bites, number one here from Ashley Banfield.
Breaking news for you.
It may not sound breaking, but Donald Trump's support is surging.
And that is officially breaking because just minutes ago a Monmouth University poll came out showing Trump with a commanding 30% support.
That is up.
Four points from before the first debate.
That's nearly one third of Republicans in this country supporting Donald Trump.
Ben Carson is now in second place with 18%, and that is very high for him.
Followed by Jeb Bush and Senator Ted Cruz tying for the third spot with 8%.
I'm playing the CNN soundbites because I don't have the text of this yet, and they just reported it.
Things are flying here.
And so the data is in these sound bites.
Here's one more from uh Ashley Badfield.
The poll suggests that the voters' opinions of Donald Trump have also ticked up in the past four weeks.
Now his favorability is at 59% compared to 29% unfavorability.
It seems like there's just nothing that this man can do to upset anyone, at least those people who are answering the phones for these polling questions.
And so at CNN they continue to pull their hair out.
The Republican establishment, they continue to pull their pair their hair out.
All across the political spectrum, people remain perplexed and confused and disbelieving.
In utter denial.
It can't be happening, they say.
It's violating everything we've ever believed.
It's violating every tenant we've ever known.
It's violating every principle that we have ever employed.
None of this is making any sense.
You mean to tell me his favorability is rising?
Now don't forget, in yet in a different poll, and this is this is what uh uh has shocked so many polling professionals.
Back in May, remember Trump's unfavorable was at 63%.
In May, his favorables were 29%.
In that 63% unfavorable poll, Trump is now at 61% favorable, almost a direct reversal, and 29% unfavorable.
I mean, it's just not a one-in.
And now in the Monmouth University poll, same thing.
A total reversal.
Trump has gone from something like 30% favorable to 53, 59% favorable, and 29% unfavorable.
And the polling professionals will tell you nobody changes their image that fast.
It's not possible.
It takes years of steady media coverage.
It takes years of fawning media.
It takes years of focused public relations in order to change your public image or public perception, even just a little.
But a complete reversal like this.
Now tell you what has these people gobsmacked.
This total reversal has come after Trump has violated everything they hold sacred.
Trump was supposed to be out of this race how many times now?
He was supposed to have been out of this race the day he announced, because of what he said about Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers and purse snatchers and muggers and stuff.
He was supposed to be a laughing stock.
And then the comment about McCain, where Trump said, you know what?
I don't have a lot of respect for people to get captured.
I want people that don't get captured.
Those are the people I have respect for.
Well, the establishment blew gasket number two, predicted that was the end for Trump.
There's no way.
You just don't see those guys.
John McCain celebrated war hero.
You can't talk like that as a Republican or anybody.
You just can't.
And then Trump doubled down on the Mexican comments.
Rather than apologizing, he doubled down.
And the establishment said, There's no way.
This isn't Chris Guy's dead now.
We just know it's going to happen.
It may not be here, may not be next week, but it's going to, he's going to step in it big time.
He's good.
We're going to put a bag of excrement out there.
He's going to step in it.
That's going to be the end of it.
Then came the now famous Fox News debate and the kerfuffle with Meghan Kelly.
When she posed that question to him about things that he had supposedly said to women, he comes out with the Rosie O'Donnell joke and then answers it with the fact that he's not politically correct.
They go to the focus group, the Frank once focus group after that debate, and people who originally had supported Trump, apparently in that focus group said, God, this guy's horrible.
He was embarrassing.
My God, what he said to Megan Kelly, what he said about women, I've lost all respect for Trump, except he jumped again.
And then he doubled down on Megan Kelly and started calling her a bimbo, and whatever else happened there.
And the point is that during all of this, when the establishment thinks that Trump is destroying himself, Trump's favorability is recovering.
You have over here the Republican Party, which is afraid of its shadow.
You have a Republican Party which thinks that in order to survive, it has to support the Democrat Party on Amnesty.
You have a Republican Party that's afraid for the government to get shutter.
You have a Republican Party afraid to tell anybody what they really think for fear.
The media is going to destroy them, they're going to be called racist or sexist or bigots or whatever.
And they think they're playing it right, and they think they're reaching out to moderates.
They think that they're gaining ground.
They're showing they're nice.
They're showing that they're bipartisan.
They're showing that they can cooperate.
They're showing that they can govern.
Meanwhile, Trump is doing everything they believe that will destroy them.
And he's winning.
Not only winning, his favorabilities are skyrocketing.
Then he starts hitting on Jeb.
Then he starts hitting on Anthony Wiener, calling him a perv and all of this, and starts hitting on Homa.
Then he starts telling that Hillary's going to go to jail, should be indicted, should be convicted, should be in jail.
All of these really impolitic.
Really rough-edged, coarse, politically incorrect things in every one of them.
The establishment in both parties, but we're focusing on the Republican side now.
Every one of them.
They've been rubbing their hands in.
That's it.
That's it for Trump.
He's done it now.
We knew if we were patient.
In the midst of all this, we've had a number of televised commentaries, a number of published columns, all trashing Trump.
Some of them even insulting Trump supporters.
And all of that was designed to humiliate and embarrass Trump supporters to the point that they would abandon him.
They're accusing or being accused of abandoning their conservative principles.
I mean the party has thrown everything that it knows how to throw.
The party has sat back and has assumed that everything Trump has said is a disqualifier.
And yet here he is now at 30%.
One-third of the vote in a 16-person field, his favorability numbers have gone from 29 to either 59 or 61, depending on the poll, unheard of, never been done before, this kind of image recovery, while doing things that the political professionals thought would destroy him.
I guarantee you, there is abject panic or what, but I guarantee you that in these rooms where people who think they're the smartest in the country are gathering, there's total confusion.
There is the book that they live by, the handbook, the manual, none of it matters.
It's all wrong.
It doesn't apply to Trump.
So what they're telling themselves is, well, it really isn't going to hurt us because everybody knows he's not a Republican.
When you get right down to it, everybody knows he's not a Republican.
Yeah, he's not a Republican.
It's not going to hurt us.
And he's not a conservative.
Everybody knows he's not a conservative.
It's not going to hurt us.
Yeah, yeah.
He's just a populist.
Trump's just a populist.
And he's going to be exposed when, and then on top of here, now Trump is going to sign a pledge today, saying not only is he a Republican, but that he will not go third party.
So, whatever comfort the Republican Party or whatever game they thought they were winning by getting Trump to sign this thing is also going to come back and bite him.
Because I guarantee you they have been seeking refuge in the idea that Trump's not really a Republican and therefore won't really tarnish them.
And make no mistake, but they think all this is tarnishing them.
They think all this is tarnishing the party.
The fact that they don't oppose Obama, no, they don't think that's tarnishing the party.
The fact that they will not make an effort to defund Planned Parenthood, no, no, that's not tarnishing the party.
The fact that they will not stop Obama and his Iran deal, the fact that they will not stop Obamacare, the fact that they will not stop all the spending.
No, that's not tarnishing the party at all in their view.
That's showing they can work together.
That's showing independence and moderates how they can govern and so forth.
There was ever a group of people 180 degrees out of phase with reality.
It has to be the modern-day Republican leadership.
Not easy to say either, folks, but I don't know how else to describe it.
No, no, no, no, no.
Let me clarify what I'm saying.
The fact that this judge said that the commissioner cannot meet out this kind of punishment on Brady because Brady was not told what this kind of cheating could be punished by.
I mean, that is that not Clintonian.
This guy's a Clinton appointee.
Well, hey, you know what?
I really didn't know that uh uh Having sex in turn could lead the impeachment debt.
If I if I'd have known that, I might have thought different about it.
Yeah, except that's not what led to your impeachment, sir.
You were impeached because you lied under oath.
But I mean, this is it's it's a strange way for this judge to overturn.
I I'll just tell you this, that for sports leagues like this to uh prosper and have the there has to be some kind of glue.
You can't let the inmates in any organization run the asylum.
You almost have to have in a in an arrangement like the NFL where it's one business but 32 franchises.
Um there has to be somebody that does have the authority to keep everything in line.
And that's why the players agreed to this in the CBA.
But it is what it is.
The question now is the NFL's gonna appeal, we'll see how long it takes.
This is not gonna happen fast enough to get Brady out of any games this season, folks.
Bottom line, if that's what you're thinking.
And by the jealousy and envy crowd, what I meant was that they're gonna be people that oppose Brady just because he got the girl.
Opposed Brady because he's tall and good looking and is a star quarterback and wanted him punished on that basis.
I told you from the get-go that a lot of the alignment against Brady was simply based on jealousy and envy.
And a lot of people hoping Brady got the four games just because it's justice.
Nobody should be this lucky to be that good looking, that tall, that good an athlete, that good looking at kids, get the beautiful nobody should have that kind of luck.
Those are people are all over the place.
You'll find them all over the place.
And those are the people gonna be upset here.
Um Hillary Clinton and the emails.
Holy smokes, every day.
He just at you know, now I'm not bored by it anymore.
Because now we've got the guy who set up her server, is gonna take the fifth before congressional committee.
Now, why do you take the Fifth Amendment?
There are two reasons.
A, you don't want to incriminate yourself, but there's another reason.
You don't want to commit perjury.
You don't want to put yourself in a position where you might either inadvertently accidentally commit perjury or whether you might have to.
So you don't want the questions.
And then the there's uh another guy who claims that he has hacked Hillary's server and has the 33,000 emails that she thought she deleted.
And the hacker is saying this probably a hoax, it's probably bogus, but the hacker is saying that Hillary and her team forgot To delete the sent mail folder, and that's what he was able to hack.
And he's put them up for sale for half a million dollars.
I thought about buying them and donating them to the FBI.
Your telephone calls are coming up.
Some people want to weigh in, and I'm look at, I'm just gonna have to discipline myself.
We're gonna go to the Jeb Bush speaking Spanish, criticizing Trump, Trump reacting to it, and the reaction that got stunning.
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