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Sept. 28, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:35
September 28, 2015, Monday, Hour #3
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Yes, sir Ree, welcome back.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Happiest period of my day being here with all of you.
800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program, and if you want to send an email, it's O. Rushboat uh EIBNet.com.
I checked the email during the break, as you know.
Now, folks, contrary to what is thought to be the case out there.
I haven't signed on to the Trump campaign.
I'm another I'm not a not a Trump guy.
Everybody's assuming that I'm a Trump supporter.
And you know why they assume that?
It's not from anything I've said, it's because I'm not a Trump hater.
And that's the better description.
I don't hate Trump.
I'm not worried about Trump.
I'm not alarmed about what Trump is doing.
And a lot of people have said, you know, if you were consistent, you would be opposing Trump the way you oppose Perot back in 1992.
And you know, I've I've pondered that.
I I've uh I pride myself on being consistent when it comes to ideology and politics.
I mean, I'm not a phony baloney, plastic banana good time rock and roll, and I don't change what I believe with the wind, and I don't tell people I believe things I don't believe, and vice versa.
I can honestly tell you that the Trump candidacy has in no way looked to me similar to the Perot candidacy.
I'll tell you why.
My instincts back in 1992, when the Perot phenomenon began, told me, and they were eventually borne out, that Perot was not in this race or in that race to win it.
That there was something else going on.
And even when he launched his campaign, and even when he was out showing up in debates and campaigns, there was something that told me he still wasn't serious about winning, but instead, I really did have the impression that he was attempting to what I say, sabotage.
I thought there was a vent.
I thought he had something going on with George H. W. Bush.
It turned out that there was something there.
Uh and it involved the Reagan administration and uh supposedly missing and then discovered prisoners of war in Vietnam.
But I've I the Trump candidates, I've never thought that Trump wasn't serious once he got into it.
Now I'm one of the people that didn't think he would actually pull the trigger and run.
But when people tell me now, can he win or is he serious?
I always say I think he's serious.
Uh he may drop out at some point.
But I I to me the two things are just different.
Um and a lot of people say, you you you oppose Perot, and you get the same reasons for opposing Trump, but you're not you're not opposing Trump.
By the way, things are a lot different today than they were then, too.
Vastly uh different.
But anyway, that's the best answer I can give you is that I even predicted back then that Trump wouldn't that that Perot would not finish the race.
I predicted that he would get out if he began to look like he was going to win.
And he did, if you recall.
And then he came back in later, uh, the second time.
Remember when he got out, he said that it was because he had discovered that uh people were planning on hijacking or sabotaging his daughter's wedding.
I forgot the specific details.
Anyway, that's just to answer these numerous email inquiries.
But the point is here, I people do fall in certain camps, and I think there are Trump haters out there, particularly on the Republican side.
I'm not one of those.
And because I'm not a Trump hater, some are assuming, well, then I must be a Trump guy.
I'm a nobody guy right now.
And I look, I've explained why I have this policy or philosophy during primaries.
I'll I'll give you, I'll explain it one more time, especially at a primary policy or campaign this long.
Folks, I I do not have anything to say about any of these campaigns.
I don't know where these guys are gonna go and Carly Fiorina.
I don't know what they're gonna say from day to day.
I have no idea how they're gonna change if they're not gonna change.
I don't know what's gonna happen to them.
I just do not feel confident hitching my wagon this far out.
Now many people say, but you could make the difference if you would.
Maybe I don't believe that.
I think there are too many forces at work out there for any one individual to determine the outcome of something like this.
It's more that I I want to be here next year and the year after that and whatever years not continuing that I want to do this.
I want to be here, and I don't want my credibility compromised in the process.
And my attitude has always been that politicians come and go, they win and lose.
That's just it's the name of their game.
It's the nature of their game.
And so I just sit back and observe.
I think the primary process is ideal for winnowing out those who can do it and those who can't.
And this primary process is proving most fascinating in ways nobody would have predicted.
And I think there's even a bigger surprise than Trump right now, and that's Ben Carson.
In terms of the establishment and pretty much anybody else, if you would have said, you would have told people that Ben Carson would be a factor six months ago.
I don't think anybody would have taken you seriously.
And if you would have then further said that Ben Carson is going to be very close to the lead.
And that the establishment chosen candidates are going to be so low that you need a microscope to see them, that would have been tough to believe, too.
So I just I sit back and observe these things and comment on them as they go.
Which is exactly what I've been doing here.
And because I have not expressed disgust for anger at or fear of Trump, people are assuming that I'm a Trump guy.
But let's move from that on to this talk about his plan, which I have here.
I haven't had a chance.
It came in after the program started, and I have not had a chance to delve into it.
But a lot of people are getting on his case for sounding a lot like Democrats.
I've had some email from people.
Oh my God, I just saw that the Trump tax plan.
Russia looks just like Obama's.
It looks like just like Clinton's, like it's the tax the rich tax plan.
And I don't think that's the case.
Now, again, it's limited how much detail I've been able to absorb here, but what I've been able to see of it so far, I don't think he's talking about the rich as the left talks about the rich.
When the left talk about the rich, they mean anybody, well, in 1990, in 1996, the rich was anybody of 50,000 or above.
Today it's not much more than that.
And that's not who Trump's talking about.
Trump is talking about the 1% of the 1%.
He's talking about some of these really highfalutin, he calls them the hedge fund guys, who aren't effectively paying nothing.
Now I went back, I mentioned to you that you can find in the 1980s, you can find evidence of Ronald Reagan with similar tax proposals to what I have seen of the Trumpsters.
If you go back to May of 1985, after the first Reagan tax cuts, he proposed even more tax reform.
He made a speech, and in the speech announcing his new proposals, which included slashing taxes for families, as Trump has done today.
In that same speech, Reagan said the following.
Under our new tax proposal, the oil and gas industry will be asked to pick up a larger share of the national tax burden.
The old oil depletion allowance will be dropped from the tax code except for wells producing less than 10 barrels a day.
By eliminating this special preference, we'll go a long way toward ensuring that those that earn their wealth in the oil industry will be subject to the same taxes as the rest of us.
It's only fair.
Continue to continue our drive for energy independence, the current treatment of the costs of exploring and drilling for new oil will be maintained.
We are determined to cut back on special preferences that have too long favored some industries at the expense of others.
We would repeal the investment tax credit.
We would reform the depreciation system.
Incentives for research and experimentation, however, would be preserved.
There's one group of losers in our tax plan, Reagan said in May of 1985.
The one group of losers in our tax plan of those individuals and corporations who are not paying their fair share, or for that matter, any share.
These abuses cannot be tolerated.
From now on, they shall pay a minimum tax.
The free rides are over.
Now some of this may come as a surprise to some of you because the impression of Reagan and taxes is that it was slash, slash, slash, cut, cut, cut.
And of course, by the time the left gets through with what Reagan did, the rich weren't paying anything.
I don't know how many of you, because that has been part of the left's history revision and revisionism since the 1980s.
I don't know how many of you think that Reagan got rid of taxes on the rich.
But it's just the exact opposite, folks.
The rich ended up paying more after Reagan's tax reform.
And the way it was made to happen was not by raising their rates, it was by lowering their rates and getting rid of all these silly brackets where income could be sheltered for crazy wacko investments.
Deductions, they recalled.
Reagan got rid of the top marginal rate was 90% when he took off.
Maybe it was 70% when he took office.
70 or 90%.
We did have a 90% tax rate at some point, maybe 70% when he took office.
And when he left office, it was now 28%.
So what happened is that it became much easier and attractive for the wealthy to declare their income and only pay 28 cents of every dollar rather than go through a much complicated procedure to try to avoid a 90% bracket that was paid on, of course, the last dollars people earned.
How else do you explain after Reagan's tax cuts?
You figure this has always been the story I've tried to use to explain tax cuts generating revenue.
In 1981, Reagan takes office.
Top marginal rate 70%.
The amount of revenue collected via the tax code is about a half a trillion dollars.
Eight years later, Reagan leaves.
The top rates down to 28% from 70, and the amount of money collected from the tax codes almost doubled to 900 some odd billion dollars by reducing the rates.
When they tell Democrats about this, the Democrats, well, that doesn't matter to me.
That's a way with it's not fair that the rich only pay 28%.
It's not fair.
We need a higher rate on them.
It's not about the revenue to them.
It's about punishment.
So when I look at at Trump's tax proposal here, and again it's a cursory glance.
It doesn't look like a left-wing tax plan to me.
It looks like and sounds like, in fact, like maybe some people that helped Reagan put his together are working for Trump.
It's that close.
You know, oil and gas has been replaced by the carried interest hedge fund guys.
But clearly there are people today, as there were then, who weren't paying any tax, and Reagan made sure that that was ended.
Contrary to what people have been told that Reagan cut taxes for the rich, it's just the exact opposite.
He might have cut rates or implemented low rates on income that was not taxed at all, but the rich ended up paying more.
And they still are, by the way, you've seen the numbers on the 50% of all taxes are paid by the top 2% of wage earners.
It's really kind of out of balance now.
But my point is that no one, despite all of this, no one cut taxes of every kind more than Ronald Reagan did.
Individual tax rates, corporate tax rates, nobody cut taxes more or better than Reagan did.
Yet in order to flatten tax rates and increase deductions of certain kinds, which was intended to spur growth and assist families, he insisted on closing some loopholes in exchange for lowering the rates.
Well, I'm sorry, it's it seems like exactly what Trump is doing.
And again, I hedge this on the basis that I just have a cursory glance at this.
But Trump's talking about four rates, and one of them is zero.
So actually there's there's there's three black brackets, 10, 20, and 30, or 5, 10, and 20, or whatever, whatever it is.
But yeah, it's 20, 25 is the top marginal rate now is 39.6, so he's gonna cut taxes for everybody.
Um, I I still think this is too complicated.
I'm I'm I'm for a fair tax or flat tax, you know, 15, 18 percent and be done with it.
I j I know that's never gonna happen.
I know that the tax code writers are never gonna give up their power.
Um we'd have to elect a whole brand new Congress.
But nevertheless, that's what I favor.
But let's let's not sit here and pretend that Trump's tax plan is Bernie Sanders.
This is something that people that don't like Trump are gonna drag out now to try to scare his supporters to make it look like Trump's tax plan is Obama's or it's Bernie Sanders or it's the Clintons or what have you.
And I just don't think that's the case, folks.
And back to the phones we go.
This is Ellis in St. Louis.
Hi, Ellis, great to have you with us.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Um, thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
I'm a 25-year listener, a longtime 24-7 subscriber.
Appreciate that.
Um I'm uh um just about uh uh uh Trump's or uh any other politicians uh tax plan.
I uh when when they say they're gonna tax the rich, um i in my opinion it's a political misdirection.
Um rich have the they have uh they're rich because they have created or have what people want.
And you know, raising taxes on the rich only is only gonna raise costs for consumers.
It's kind of like you've talked about crony capitalism and uh Warren Buffett well knows uh he supports higher taxes because he knows that neither he nor his companies are actually gonna have to pay that.
They are gonna they will raise prices, they are a conduit uh to they'll remit the taxes to the government.
Well uh Warren Buffett's case, that's right, but that's not why he proposes higher taxes.
He does it for strictly personal PR reasons.
That that may be, but you know, uh in general, uh companies, you know, larger companies I think have less uh objection to higher taxes because they have a greater ability to pass the taxes along.
Um small business have less hold it that we you can't just say that I I understand the economic theory that businesses don't pay taxes, they pass along the taxes to customers.
However, in a competitive environment like we have now with a slow economy, sometimes raising prices is not the best thing you can do.
Raising prices can sometimes do great damage to your bottom line.
So it's not automatic or axiomatic that you can get away with passing on increase costs or taxes in the form of prices for your product.
But that's not really what you're addressing.
You're saying you don't like Trump talking about taxing the rich because you think it's pandering, my guess is.
You think it's is is just he is trying to do the same thing that uh that other politicians do by telling them they're gonna be better off because he's gonna go get the rich.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And you just wish he wouldn't do that.
He's different, and you wish he wouldn't talk about the rich the way every other politician does.
I I think it's uh it's just disingenuous.
Um I I don't uh Well, it is, and it says it's I don't know, but disingenuous, but it's an it's an automatic political win win.
The rich are never gonna defend themselves.
The rich are never gonna come out in belly ache about anybody saying their taxes ought to go up.
They're gonna shut up about it and deal with it and realize that it isn't gonna happen.
But they're not gonna complain about it.
Um and it is it is a way of of I don't know, pandering may not be the best word, but it's it's a way of trying to let the little guy know that you're on his side, but you're going to go out and get the rich.
And it is a Democrat tactic.
But don't forget Reagan used it too.
That was my point in the previous segment is that Reagan based his taxation of these rich entities on the basis they weren't paying anything, or very little, and that everybody needs some skin in the game.
But Reagan's tax cut approach was always aimed at economic growth.
It was aimed at prosperity.
It was aimed philosophically at your money.
The presumption that all money is governments, and what you end up with is what they decide to let you keep.
That's what Reagan attacked.
That whole line of thinking.
It's your money and what government gets, however much or little it is, it's up to government to live within that means and not act like every dollar in the planet is theirs.
Anyway, I understand you're looking for Trump to be different, and when you heard him go after the rich on taxes, you thought you were hearing just another politician, and that's what you don't want to hear from Donald Trump.
The saga continues.
A man, a legend, a way of life.
I have been waiting for this next story to happen.
And I have been wondering where this story was going to be when it did happen.
You might remember it in the last 10 days or two weeks.
The New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady publicly said that he thinks it'd be cool if Donald Trump became president.
Now this does not happen much.
Professional athletes making such high profile endorsements.
But beyond that, the sports media is as far left wing as the news media is, and maybe even further left wing in some cases.
So what do I have here?
I have an outraged sports illustrated story, headlined, Tom Brady needs to answer questions about his support for Donald Trump.
Really?
Why?
Why does Brady have to answer any questions about this?
It's by Aaron Leibowitz, and the story starts this way.
For many, that was reason enough to cheer the four-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback.
Brady's reputation, though damaged, was on the mend.
And then Brady expressed support for Donald Trump.
It started September 8th when one of Trump's Make America Great Again trucker hats was spotted in Brady's lock.
By the way, that's another thing.
I'm starting to see people make fun of the baseball caps that Trump wears.
Like this guy, the trucker hat.
It's a baseball cap.
What is there to make fun about the cap?
No, no, it's not what it says on it.
They're not making fun, they're making fun of the way it looks.
Well, and that it says make America great again.
That to people on the left is kind of banal to make it good.
That's that's cheap theatric patriotism, and they frown on that.
But Trump's baseball caps look different than any other baseball cap you're gonna buy out there.
Now, the official baseball cap in this country is made by New Era.
New era makes all the baseball caps for all the major league baseball teams.
They do make the best baseball cap out there.
If you want the authentic cap worn by your favorite baseball team, find one made by New Era and get one that's sized, not one of those adjustable things in the back with different holes and you can change the size.
That's not what the professionals wear.
They wear hats that are personally sized to their noggins.
But Trump's is a different design.
It's got a crease in The crown and it's bigger, and it's made for people with big faces.
Nothing looks stupider than a big faced guy wearing a tiny cap.
Trump is smart in this way.
And these are the cap now, his caps are not new era.
I I have one, but I don't know.
I can't remember the manufacturer.
I'm just throwing in the new era stuff.
This guy calls Trump's caps trucker caps.
Anyway.
Story goes on.
Brady explained that Trump had given the hat to Patriots owner Robert Kraft to pass along to Trump.
Or to Brady.
Trump, Brady said, always gives me a call and different types of motivational speeches at different times.
He said their friendship dates back 2002, adding that it's pretty amazing what he's been able to accomplish.
He obviously appeals to a lot of people.
He's a hell of a fun guy to play golf with.
Then on September 16th, Brady was asked if Trump has a shot at becoming president.
He said, I hope so.
That would be great.
There'd be a putting green on the White House lawn.
I'm sure of that.
This guy adds, there's already a putting green on the White House lawn.
Snark, snark, snark.
Now, on the one hand, back to the story, on the one hand, Brady did not say point blank that he is voting for Trump, nor did he say he endorses Trump's policies, but he had two chances to distance himself from the nation's most polarizing figure at the moment, and he chose not to.
That would be great, is as close to an official endorsement as you can get.
And Brady's words carry weight.
He is one of the most recognizable figures in the country, an entire subsection of New England, young and old, worships him.
While he has every right to be friends with Trump, endorsing him for president means endorsing or at least not condemning what Trump stands for.
Slapping a golf joke on the end does not change that.
And here I thought, imagine me, my naivete.
I thought it was okay.
I thought an American citizen could support whoever he wanted without being derided for it.
But apparently to Sports Illustrated, it's not cool, and Brady's got some explaining to do here.
Back to the story.
Of course, athletes endorsing candidates is nothing new.
In 2012, Obama's supporters included LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Derek Jeter, and Cristiano Ronaldo.
By using their fame to take political stands, athletes open themselves up to scrutiny.
That takes courage.
But once you express support for a candidate, whether you're public figure or not, you need to be prepared to explain yourself.
Really?
Why do you have to explain yourself?
And to who?
Sports writers.
I don't think LeBron James is asked to explain himself.
I think he was applauded, wasn't he?
And by the way, this guy leaves out Dan Rooney, the owner of the Steelers, who ran one of Obama's campaign operations in Pennsylvania 2008.
And nobody made him explain why.
Why does Brady have to explain himself here?
Says there perhaps Brady'd be perfectly willing to discuss Trump's views, and he has just not been asked to do so.
So far, though, his praise of the candidate has been surface level and said with a chuckle.
Brady may not even want to go any deeper than that, but he should.
The implications of Trump as president of the United States are serious.
Really, I think the implications of Barack Obama as president were damn serious too, but nobody in Sports Illustrated seemed bothered by that.
As I recall.
Then what is this?
By aligning with Trump, the candidate, Brady is by default aligning himself with Trump.
The xenophobe, Trump the Islamophobe, Trump the misogynist.
If Brady takes issues with those aspects of the man, he should say something.
Otherwise the implication is on some level that he condones Islamophobia, xenophobia, and misogynism.
And that would stand in direct conflict with Brady's supposed character.
It says supposed in parentheses, character.
When Brady talks, people listen.
There's still plenty of time for Brady to distance himself from the ugly side of Trump.
But continuing to embrace Trump, free of qualifiers or disclaimers, should be concerning to those who defend the quarterback's legacy.
Does anybody remember when Sports Illustrated used to be a sports magazine?
Does anybody remember that?
I just saw Madeline Albright on Fox, and it reminds me there's a whole stack of great stuff here.
I'm gonna have to defer to tomorrow.
I just didn't get to it.
One of the stories in the stack is Madeline Albright says that she was flying over the country recently, looking out the window.
And when she looked down and she saw all this empty land that was just perfect for us to absorb more refugees from the Middle East.
Honest to God.
And Sports Illustrated is worried about Tom Brady liking Trump.
Here's Madeline Albright looking out the window of an airplane.
Wow, look at all that empty space down there.
Look at all the room we've got for refugees from the Middle East.
Crime and I got all kinds of great stuff like that in the stack.
I got Bob and Pensacola, Florida up next on the phones.
Hi, Bob, how are you, sir?
Hey Russ.
Uh, Bob, I uh when you've had that first segment and we're talking about the uh news about the events on Mars.
Yeah.
It struck me right off the bat on a scientist was describing uh what happened to make the water disappear as catastrophic.
And um, I don't know, to me, the word catastrophic implies some sort of qualitative judgment, good or bad.
And in my opinion, in the absence of uh any human activity or van at all on the on the uh planet, out in the middle of nowhere, um geologic events are they're neither good nor bad.
They just are.
That's exactly right.
It's a great point.
How can something be catastrophic when there aren't any people around to feel a catastrophe?
Exactly.
Uh that tells me that that science is corrupted when they're using terms like that about just a purely scientific observation about something that happened.
Exactly.
Not just corrupted, but politicized.
Well, it seems that way.
It's a politically charged term.
Climate, catastrophe, Mars used to be two-thirds covered by water, all gone.
It was uh it was a half mile deep or a mile deep, whatever it was.
I don't know how they know it, but that's exactly right.
The Mars guy the scientists said a catastrophic event related to climate change.
How does anybody know that?
How can anybody possibly know?
You won't remember this, folks.
1969 moon landing.
Do you know why Armstrong was so careful in putting that first step on the moon?
Because back in that day, and I'm not making this up, there were some who believed that the moon was quicksand.
Honestly, look this up.
There were some who thought that the surface of the moon was so soft that it would not support the weight of a lander or a human being.
They really did.
I remember reading this in the weeks leading up to the landing.
And I thought it was a crackpot belief then.
How in the world could anybody know?
So they were just studying this from their telescope data and whatever from the moon.
It was just a bunch of mad cap scientists theorizing.
But that's why.
I mean, there was a serious I don't know how large it was, but there was a serious contingent at NASA that believed that that was possible.
And that's why there was such trepidation one.
There would have been trepidation anyway, it's a brand new place, nobody's ever been there.
But that's why.
And there's no way anybody could have known.
Now it might have been wise to take precautions, but this is absurd, catastrophic event when nobody lives on Mars.
Until they're going to tell us they did.
Yep, and global climate change destroyed them.
Don't rule it out, folks.
We're leave we're we're dealing here with desperate leftists who will do anything to advance their agenda here on Earth.
I know, but don't laugh.
Hey, cookie, give me the sound bites tomorrow that had my name in them today.
I just didn't get a chance to get to them, but they're they're they're great illustrations of how I get defamed, so they're funny.
Let's happen back here tomorrow, whatever else happens too.
Thank you, folks.
We'll be back tomorrow and fully revved.
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