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Sept. 18, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:57
September 18, 2015, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, I hope the Sullivan Group is listening today because the accuracy audit, my opinions ought to be skyrocketing here, folks.
It's Friday, so let's in it.
Live from the Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Yes, sir, we open line Friday.
Always look forward to open line Friday to see if it's going to be any different.
And Monday through Thursday, that's where you get a golden opportunity to talk about whatever you want.
You can be as informed or uninformed.
You can be a kook.
You can be a conspiracy nut.
You go wherever you want to go.
You can ask me questions, make comments.
It's a it's a much wider berth given to callers on Friday than is extended Monday through Thursday.
Telephone number is 800 282-2882 at the email address Ilrushball at EIB net.com.
Okay, so the campaign stack is overflowing.
We have a Washington Post story here.
New data shows Trump has peaked.
Yes, indeed.
Coincides with, and it's just an interesting how that happens.
It coincides with Carly Fiorina's debate performance on uh Wednesday night.
The establishment of the Republican Party, obviously, we got soundbite backup on this.
Uh they've now turned to Carly to take Trump out.
Theory being she can do it, she's woman.
And if you look uh the select place, if you know where to look in the media, not just the drive-by's, but if you know to look where in the conservative media, you will also find out.
Um who has signed on to the establishment desire here, Miss Via Arena.
But I'm just gonna tell you something.
I'm gonna tell you this right now, and I'll get into it in detail here in just a minute, because I got to see I told you, so I'm gonna do first, but I'm just letting you know I got this stuff ready here.
All of this Fiorina stuff, I think, and I say this with a smile, I kind of amuses me, is going to redound positively to Trump.
Because he's the only guy who pointed something out on stage Wednesday night that if he wants to make ads out of it, he can.
Okay.
In addition to that, Trump, of course, being beaten over the calls here because some guy stands up in his crowd and says Obama's a Muslim and Trump didn't correct him.
And the media is literally having a cow.
A couple Republican candidates are having a cow.
The Trump campaign said we didn't hear what the guy said.
Everybody's saying, well, you need to correct the guy.
Obama's not a Muslim.
You can't let that kind of stuff stand.
Um I think Trump is just uh, you know, he's got a new uh uh behavior mode here of respect for women.
He knows that Hillary Clinton is the first person to question whether or not Obama was Muslim.
And he doesn't want to disrespect her.
Kind of like the way I did never disrespect uh the uh Reverend Zach for pronouncing Governor Cuomo's name Kumo.
And I always deference the Reverend Jackson pronounced it kumo, because that's how he pronounced it.
Well, yeah.
Hillary Hillary Clinton.
This is uh February 21st this year.
Hillary slam for saying Obama, not a Muslim as far as I know.
Trump obviously knows this.
And he's uh acting in deference, but I mean David Rodham Gurgen, I mean they're all coming out of the woodwork.
Trump's gotta do this.
Trump's gotta do that.
He's gotta go pointing out that McCain stood up for Obama's honor back in 2008.
So there's uh there's that.
What else is happening out there in the political side of things?
The free arena business.
And there's there's trouble in paradise, even on that side of things.
Uh, we're just you know, Biden, a Biden draft Biden officials as I'm 100% Joe's in.
What is he gonna say?
I mean, this is a guy's in Biden's camp.
I don't think Joe's gonna run.
So I don't know how much stock to uh put in that.
Oh, and and in in the in Europe, Germany's about to do a 180 on all the migrants.
Yeah, no, just it's not what Angela Merkel, I think, thought was gonna happen.
It's uh close to here to say, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm gonna get the uh headline here near the top of the stack.
Oh, and the Pope of the Oh, oh.
That's a whole nother subject too.
Here it is.
EU nations pull welcome mats for migrants imposing new restrictions.
Germany may reverse itself completely.
So, all of that coming up.
First, I want to start with a C I told you so.
And I want to preface this by reminding you of something that I have said recently in an intense way, and I've said it over the years, off and on, but very consistently.
And it is that this whole business of the Republican Party and our conservatives needing to shut up about social issues is a tramp.
That we're not the ones that bring it up.
We're not the ones that are responsible for it.
We are reacting when we discuss social issues.
The left is destroying this culture.
The left and its march on this country is destroying moral foundations that have existed since the founding of the country.
And if we don't respond to it, we just sit there by let it happen.
So we respond to it, and everybody says, you gotta stop talking about the social issues.
The Republicans are never gonna win.
If you keep talking about the socialists, I tell you this, even to this day.
A lot of people I play golf with, after a couple of beers, two or three holes, invariably, one of them will come up and say, Do you ever get tired of talking about the same stuff?
Can't you just let this abortion crap go?
Can't you just you know social issues?
If you keep it up, you're gonna be the reason we keep losing.
Nobody cares.
The social issues are killing the Republican Party.
And I've told you the story, I'm not gonna repeat it all the way back to the early 90s, where some guy comes up to me at a party in the Hamptons and starts jabbing me in the chest with his indexing, what are you gonna do about the Christians?
What are you talking about?
Abortion, it's killing us.
You got we you we don't even want to go to the convention with them.
It was in San Diego that year, I think.
But anyway, you know the drill.
And I have not been taken off my game or intentions about this, because I don't think that the social issues are something that that harm.
I think ignoring them harms.
I thought I think because the social issues, that that appearing in quotes, it is the left.
Look at what's happening with marriage.
Any number of issues, the only reason they are issues is because the left is assaulting traditional values and institutions.
So those of us who cherish those stand up and defend them.
All of a sudden, we're to blame.
All of a sudden, it's our fault for talking about the social issues.
And what it invariably always comes back to, what all of that really means is would you stop talking?
And it's not aimed at just me, by the way, would you stop talking about abortion?
God, it's just killing us.
Never gonna change it.
You're losing the women's vote.
We're losing the millennials, we're using it, you just said it's old-fashioned, footy-duddy kind of stuff.
Just forget it, don't talk about it.
We can't win.
We're never gonna win because they think that because of ongoing media tricks and tricks by the Democrat Party.
It's no different, you know, trying to tell a Republican to stop talking about social issues is the same modus imperative operandi is the same trick as trying to convince Republicans they can't win the White House unless they agree with Democrats on amnesty.
If you look at Carly Fiorina, I'll give you just an example of this.
Carly Fiorina, one of her most eloquent moments in the debate Was describing the Planned Parenthood videos and the challenge that she made, Hillary Clinton, and any other Democrat who cares to actually look at the videos.
And there are that is the one thing that the establishment Republicans want to forget that she said.
There are supposedly conservative media people that have arisen, as Carly Fiorina scares me.
Oh my God, did you hear what she said about Planned Parenthood?
Oh my God.
Did you hear what she said about abortion?
So even today, the woman who everybody says won the debate, praising her to the hill, says, but, but, but.
But stop talking about that.
Because we can't win talking about that.
Isn't it interesting how the Democrats and the media continue to tell us what we have to do to win as though they are interested in that?
We can't win unless we support amnesty, along with them.
We can't win unless we support gay marriage.
We can't win unless we get wise on gun control.
We can't win unless we understand shut up about abortion, and quote unquote, the social issues.
And if you look at the sum total, what they're telling us, we can't win unless we behave exactly like them.
But the whole idea of them telling us what we have to do to win ought to make everybody suspicious to begin with because they don't want us to win.
The other trick is you can't win without getting the independence.
If you don't get the independents and the moderates, and what that means is you better stop talking about conservatism, because if you don't talk about conservatism, you're never going to get the independence, you're never going to get the moderates, and you're never going to win.
So the Democrats in that instance want us to get rid of our primary identity and strength.
Under the premise we can't get the independent or moderates to vote for us because conservatism is nobody wants it.
It's just too big and negative and all that.
How does that manifest itself?
It manifests itself with the Republican consultancy class telling candidates, hey, I'm the guy to get you elected, and you know how?
I'm the guy that can get you the independent vote.
And what does that mean?
It means they run a campaign aimed at 20% of the voters.
Not a hundred percent, or not 60%.
You assume your base is going to show up.
All of these tricks, and they are tricks employed with the power of the media.
And if you don't think that's power, even today, there are stories.
The Republicans in the Senate, no way, no how, no fight, not even going to bat an eyelash, not going to raise an eyebrow, fighting Planned Parenthood funding.
Know why?
Because that might mean a government shutdown.
I don't care what else happens.
Mitch McConnell and the boys are saying, we're not going to shut down the government.
The Democrats can do anything they want because we're not going to shut down the government, standing up for anything we believe in, because shutting down the government is a guaranteed negative.
We lose every time it happens.
Another great Democrat trick is, So what it all adds up to, the Republican establishment, if they're genuinely an opposition party, and that jury's still out on that, but assuming that they are, they've fallen for every one of these tricks, the end result of which is the Republican Party stays silent about what it really believes,
under the belief that voicing what they really believe will turn off so many voters that they can't possibly win.
So they shut up, they don't try to stop Obama, they don't try to stop the Democrats, and they lose.
But at least the government doesn't get shut down.
And they're really, really happy about that.
So here's a story.
What are you talking about?
Oh, I have here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
*gunshot*
Breitbart.com headline.
Social issues surge in importance to voters.
Establishment elites repeat in an echo chamber that voters don't care about social issues.
Or alternatively, that voters favor liberal positions on these issues.
So either way, Republicans should avoid them because they will lose.
But Republican candidates are ignoring this coastal elite groupthink by tackling these issues.
And polls show that voters do in fact deeply care about what kind of culture we live in.
I know what some of you were saying.
Come on, Rush, I'll bet it's a poll we've never heard of.
You found some obscure poll just to make your case.
On the eve of its September 16th Republican presidential debate, CNN released a poll comparing voters' attitudes on social issues today to where they were in 2011.
The result?
Voters are far more concerned about those issues now than they were four years ago.
What has happened in these last four years?
All kinds of cultural rot, all kinds of assaults on the culture and the traditional values and morality that define this country just in the last four years.
And yet it's we who get blamed for talking about social issues.
I start to get mad at this now when this happens in the golf course or wherever it is.
Because it's just, it's it's it's groupthink ignorance that's leaving people to just cast aside winning issue after winning issue after winning issue because of the media.
So we have a poll out here.
Fox News even reported three of the polls' results, which asked whether an issue was extremely important to getting at citizens' vote.
Regarding Americans' constitutional rights under the second amendment to own and bear guns, 22% said the issue is extremely important in 2011.
That numbers doubled to 42%.
Regarding the perennial issue of abortion, 20% of voters 2011 thought the issue was so important it should be called extremely important.
Now the numbers climb to near 30%.
And on illegal aliens in the country, 29% thought the issue extremely important 2011 number, now 39%.
These numbers are up dramatically.
That's not the point.
That's not what this is measuring, not measuring majority minority, they're measuring trends.
Paul is measuring trends, societal cultural thinking.
Talking about social issues is not hurting.
Is the point.
Okay, I'm done.
Folks, I think one thing that's become obvious during the campaign is that the news media try to pick our candidates long before even the first primary vote is cast.
And I think that's it's not new.
I just think it's becoming more and more obvious here.
And you can watch it here in the aftermath of all of these debates.
The uh the donor class sometimes is in uh harmony with the media, sometimes they're not.
In this case, uh more harmony than not.
But the way the media does it is with their coverage, fawning or negative pieces.
And of course, they do it via their polls.
Never forget that, which are often the result of their fawning or negative coverage.
So the the coverage feeds the poll result that they want to get.
And we are witnessing this in the current GOP race, the coverage of Carly Fiorina being the latest example.
It is more than obvious that the drive-by media and the rest of the ruling class inside the beltway have decided, based on Wednesday night, that Carly Fiorina now represents the best chance to knock off Trump.
That is the overarching objective.
And they'd hoped Jeb was going to be able to do it.
They wanted, they wanted uh Jeb the donors did, uh, and then they tried the news media to do it.
It hasn't quite worked, so now it's Fiorina.
It's it's not that they love Carly.
Do not misunderstand this.
See, this is the mistake that everybody makes on our side.
One of the One of the tricks here is when the media goes gushing about somebody, a lot of unsuspecting Republicans.
Wait, wait, me, the media likes maybe she can actually win.
Oh my God.
Because so many on our side still, despite their best instincts, still crave media approval.
Remember that dinner party of my own that I walked out of?
Because I had some guests there telling me they were ready to throw Palin overboard because the media hated her.
Same thing here.
In reverse.
They get people think, wow, Carly, hey, you see, the media loves her.
Hey, man, she may be the ticket.
And that's how it goes.
And the media is very much aware of this.
Not that they love her.
But she is attractive to them in a couple of areas, such as immigration.
I'll explain more as we get back from this time out.
And welcome back to Open Line Friday, where callers can even ask questions that have premises.
I won't even bother to correct.
You can even have an incorrect premise in your question, and I'll let it go.
Anyway, welcome back, 800-282-2882.
So it is it is clear here that the uh the objective is to knock off Trump.
And Carly Fiorina is the flavor of the week for this because of her sterling performance in the debate on Wednesday night.
A Washington Post, sorry, this is the politico.
New data shows Trump fever breaking.
Politico doing its best here to say that Trump is over.
My guess is they've had this story in the hopper for weeks as an Evergreen, you know, with blanks to fill in the details based on time.
And it just been in a drawer, like healthcare reform.
The bill was in a drawer for 20 years, with a bunch of blanks waiting to be filled in for current day.
Now there have been stories long before today that we have reached peak Trump.
There have been countless stories.
That's it for Trump.
Stepped in it here.
You can't survive.
Insulting a war hero like John McCain.
You simply can't survive.
You can't call a Mexican immigrant or a bunch of rapists and murderers and purse snatchers and muggers.
So we've been here and done that.
Just like with all of those previous we've reached peak Trump stories, it hasn't seemed to turn out that way.
Here's the way the story reads.
Donald Trump looked tired after a grueling Republican debate.
He might not be alone.
After a summer of spectacle and saturation coverage, signs are accumulating that for the public in the media, the onset of Trump fatigue has begun.
Mentions of Trump on both television and radio have been trending downward for a month.
From their post Fox debate high, his share of Twitter conversation relative to other candidates has declined in recent weeks.
And his odds in political prediction markets have dipped in the hours since Wednesday night's debate.
Radio and TV conversation about Trump peaked on August 7th, the day after the first debate.
There were close to 11,000 mentions of his name on each medium that day.
According to data through Monday, provided by media monitoring firm critical mention.
That was Trump's most dominant day of the campaign on Twitter when 80% of the conversations about Republican candidates were about him, according to data through mid-Thai, provided by analytics firm Echelon Insights.
And so Trump peaked the day after the debate.
Who knew?
And he's been trending down for everything, but now it's gotten the point where people may be experiencing Trump fatigue.
And they may be experiencing Trump boredom.
Early reactions to the debate, the debate at which Carly Fiorina emerged a winner and Trump struggled to break through, also suggest that the race may be moving beyond the Trump show Phase.
So you see here it's all over for Trump.
Remember how it was over for the Beatles in 1964 after Beatlemania subsided.
What?
You didn't know what till now.
The same year we discovered them.
They were saying the Beatles were over.
Beatlemania was over.
After the first round of concerts, that was it.
Oh, I don't I'll never forget that.
The Beatles were washed up once Beatlemania subsided 64.
64 was the year they were discovered here.
And later that year, they were finished.
And many parents across America were happy.
They were going, boy, we glad we took care of that.
Except they hadn't.
Beatlemania was nowhere near over.
It still isn't.
If you look at record sales and this kind of.
Well, I mean, the Bay City Rollers.
And Mary Hopkins didn't quite take off either, you know, on the Apple label.
But I mean, the Beatles Beatles Beatlemania was not over in 64, is the point.
But nobody maintains a peak like that.
So we have some wishful thing.
I'm just passing it along to you, Trump people out there so that you know what's being said.
They're dust, they're desperate for this to be real.
And uh Carly Fiorina is headlining the decline, if you will in the phenomenon of Trump.
Now, from the Washington Post, the Republican brand hits a new low.
Is Trump the cause or the symptom?
The Pew Research Center regularly surveys Americans on their views of the two major political parties.
Since January, those with a favorable opinion of the Republican Party have dropped from 41 to 32 percent of the total opinions of the Democrat Party are mixed, a net plus one favorability.
For the GOP, it's far worse, a net minus 18.
So the Republican brand in deep, deep trouble.
It's hit a new low.
And that couldn't possibly be Mitch McConnell.
No, no.
Couldn't possibly be Boehner or the Republican leadership in Washington.
No way.
Whatever problem the Republican brand has got to be due to Donald Trump.
Let me see.
We have uh yeah, let's let's let's uh before we go to the phones.
We got a guy from Miami on the phone.
Grab audio soundbite number three, because he's calling about this.
Last night in Rochester, New Hampshire, QA, unidentified audience member in Trump had this exchange.
Okay.
We have a problem in this country.
It's called Muslims.
We know our current president is one.
You know he's not even an American.
We need this certificate, man.
But anyway, we have training camps growing.
Would they want to kill us?
That's my question.
We're gonna be looking at a lot of different things.
And you know, a lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there.
We're gonna be looking at that and plenty of other things.
Okay, so now there is a cacophony all across the American media because Trump did not correct the guy and did not protect Obama, didn't shield Obama, didn't correct the guy.
Um very, very upset about this.
Uh let's go back and listen how McCain dealt with something like this.
Let's go back October 10th, 2008.
This was in Lakeville, Minnesota.
I gotta ask you a question.
I don't know uh believe in I can't trust Obama.
I I have read about him, and he's not, he's not, he's uh um he's an Arab.
He is not no man.
He's uh he's uh he's a decent family man.
Right?
He's a decent family man.
In fact, he'd be smarter, smarter to vote for him than vote for me.
He's a decent guy.
Yeah.
So that's how we do it.
That's how we seek the approval of the drive-by media.
And they love McCain for that.
Last night CNN Anderson Cooper 360, after playing a clip of that exchange between Trump and the realists and the and the campaign rally guy used heard.
Anderson Cooper weighed in.
He could have at that point said, you know what?
Muslims in America are not the problem.
You know, by and large, the Muslim population in America is well assimilated and are Americans just like anybody else.
We're supporting Muslim regimes around the world.
We have our soldiers and Marines who have fought and died to help Muslims around the world.
He could have said all of that, and that's I'm imagining he wishes he probably said that.
Same show, David Rodham Gurgen was on.
Anderson Cooper said, David Rodham Gurgen.
Is it the responsibility of a leader like Trump to actually say something like that when one of their stupid supporters pipes up?
It's the responsibility of the leader to push back against prejudice.
That question was heavily laden with prejudice.
Anderson, the presidency of the United States is not only the most powerful position in the world, but it also carries with it a certain moral responsibility toward the health of a society.
And if you're going to be a serious candidate for president, you've got to step up to that responsibility.
Chris Christie stepped up on the Today Show today, interviewed by Matt Wauer.
Question, does Mr. Trump need to apologize to the president and to the Muslims out there?
He's got to decide what he wants to do for himself, but I would just tell you that if somebody at one of my town hall meetings said something like that, I would correct them.
Those two things are self-evident.
And I wouldn't have permitted that.
If someone brought that up at a town hall meeting of mine, would have said, no, listen, before we answer, let's clear some things up for the rest of the audience.
And I think you have an obligation as a leader to do that.
And now we go to um uh Abin in in Miami, Florida.
Hi, welcome to the program.
Great to have you.
Hello.
Thank you, Rush.
You bet.
Yeah, well, my take on all that is uh since when is it Trump's obligation or duty to sort certify Obama's religion?
He couldn't do it if he wanted to.
He's not with him when he prays.
He's not in his head.
And no one confirm or deny anyone else's religion.
So I just disagree with all of those other pundits and politics.
Well, you know, you get Hillary Clinton is saying they got a story here.
Daily Caller.
This is February 21st, uh, 2015.
In March of 2008, she was vying for the Democrat nomination.
Clinton was asked by Steve Croft 60 minutes whether she believed Obama was a Muslim.
She initially answered the negative, it seemed to pull back his head in the end.
You don't believe that Senator Obama's a Muslim?
Well, of course not.
I mean, that you there's no basis for it.
No, no, there's no there's nothing to base that on, as far as I know, she said.
Well, I mean that the the correct way to say it is how would I know?
Nothing else.
Because we don't know.
Nobody knows.
Well, to say I don't know.
But but but but but but but the media people say that we should defend Obama because Obama has said he's a Christian.
And so if we're not gonna if we're not gonna call him a liar, then that's what's on the record.
Obama says he's a Christian.
He has never said he's a Muslim or Islamist, and so that's what everybody has to go on.
And given that the theory is that Trump should have corrected the audience member.
Right.
And now we have to vouch for it.
His honesty as well as his religion.
Well, that's exactly the way McCain did it.
Yeah, I know.
You know the drill exactly.
This is how the media plays the game.
They get the referee whether we're reprobates or not.
That's right.
And then we and people take debate all the time.
They just you just be very honest.
How do I know?
Now Trump's out there saying, Now, what do you think of this?
Trump is saying, Well, I I wasn't quite sure what the guy was asking me.
Well, I was I was watching when that happened, and I just l actually liked his reaction because what he did is he just turned his head to the side of the.
I get this on my first question.
And uh, you know, and then he let the guy go on.
So this is the thing.
This is, you know, it was kind of funny.
No, you she, Abin here, the caller, and a lot of other people have the same it it's not whether Obama's a Muslim or not, it's it's that why should we defend the guy?
The answer is how do I know what he is?
Well, he said, Well, how do I know?
It's exactly what she said.
How do I know what he is?
It's not my job to proclaim him something or not.
So that the the agenda here is once again to embarrass or to stigma uh stigmatize a uh conservative.
It's another area Where Trump distances himself and does not play according to the political correctness rules, which always redounds to his benefit.
Thank you for the call, and I appreciate it.
Open line Friday, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, man and legend away of life.
And we stick with the phones.
This is Robin Raleigh in North Carolina.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
My comment is the Trump phenomenon is bigger than any individual.
The Trump phenomenon is about patriotism.
This is a patriotic movement, and that's what scares the media.
That's what scares the left, and that's what scares the capital Republicans is patriotism.
I don't think that's that's not incorrect.
I I think I think the explanation for the Trump phenomenon is multifaceted.
Patriotism is clearly a part of it.
The one thing that may I may be being too literal here, but it's only because I have a desire that people genuinely understand.
When you say the media is afraid of patriotism, I I know what you mean.
But I don't think it's it may be specifically that, although I don't think anybody in the media running around, you know, we've got to stop this Trump guy.
He's sounding too patriotic, he's too pro-American.
What it more likely is Trump represents a threat to everybody in the establishment and to the political order of things.
Folks, it's a club.
We talk about the establishment and we give it names.
The inside the belt way elites, the ruling class or the establishment or whatever, but it's a club.
And admission into this club has nothing to do with merit.
There's no meritocracy involved in this.
It's it's like it's like any other uh club of elites.
There are other determining factors.
And Trump is never going to be in it because he does not in any way subscribe to the way of life these people themselves live.
It starts with where you go to school and how you're educated and where you work and for whom you work, and of course, what your attitudes are.
None of this is ever spelled out.
There are no bylaws in this club.
There's no manual that says this is what you have to be.
The way you know who gets in and who doesn't is how they react to people they don't want in the club.
And you see it manifested as Trump.
They know that see, this is the thing, too.
They know they're fully aware.
Everybody in this club knows that in terms of numbers, they're a minority.
They are the ruling class.
They are the powerful elite, but they know that they are a really small number of people.
And so how do they survive?
How does how does a small number of people like this survive being so outnumbered?
The way you do that is very simple.
You get control of government and you simply legislate away liberty.
You legislate away freedom, little by little, and you do it under the guise of making everybody safe.
Or you do it under the guise of protecting the planet, or you do it under the guise of protecting the environment, or protecting children, or what have you, but little by little, you limit the liberty and freedom of people you know who obey the law, for the most part.
And that's how you ensure that even though you are massively outnumbered, you are never ever anything other than the boss and in power.
And a lot of people want in this club.
You can see who they don't want in it by how they treat people who try to get in it one way or the other.
Be right back after this.
Don't go.
Open line Friday with Rush Limbaugh and the EIB network.
Much more straight ahead, Carly Fiorina and her tenure at Lucent Technologies.
It was brought up in the debate.
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