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Dec. 14, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:45
December 14, 2015, Monday, Hour #3
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Okay, I think I'm pretty sure what's going on here.
And it's Trump and Ted Cruz dust up.
And I think it all goes back to that report in the New York Times last week citing two anonymous sources at a Madison Avenue luncheon with Cruz.
Two anonymous sources told the New York Times that during that luncheon with Cruz on Madison Avenue that Cruz questioned Trump's judgment.
He did not disagree with Trump on the Muslim thing.
He didn't disagree with Trump on the Mexican thing.
He didn't disagree with Trump on the whatever thing.
He didn't disagree with, he just said that he questioned Trump's judgment, and he has not done that publicly, which was one of my premier points in the first week.
In response, the Cruz campaign, after that New York Times story came out, the Cruz campaign sent out a statement blasting the story.
Now, what I think happened here is that Trump responded in kind, which is his MO.
And I'm not defending anybody.
I'm not in anybody's payroll.
I've not endorsed anybody.
I'm not in anybody's camp here.
I'm doing what I always do in these primaries, and I'm just telling you what's what, what I see, what I think, what various things happen day to day.
So, New York Times has a story.
Two anonymous sources at a luncheon with Cruz say that Cruz questioned Trump's judgment.
Cruz then issues a statement denying it, ripping the New York Times story.
Trump, his M.O., somebody hits him, he hits them back.
And that's what happened here.
And he hit back on the same level that he thought Cruz hit him.
And that is, if you go back to this Trump soundbite, grab number 10 again.
Listen to the first two sentences in this, and I think this will confirm my interpretation of what's going on here.
I don't think he has the right temperament.
I don't think he's got the right judgment.
You look at the way he's dealt with the Senate, where he goes in there like a, you know, frankly, like a little bit of a maniac.
You're not never going to get things done that way.
Okay.
That's it.
So he reads a story in the New York Times where Trump, or Cruz is reported to have questioned his judgment.
So Trump responds by questioning Cruz's judgment.
I don't think he's got the right temperament.
I don't think he's got the right judgment.
And I just, folks, I just, it's disappointing to hear Trump hit Cruz the same way that the Republican establishment hits Cruz in the same way that the media hits Cruz.
This is a big deal to me.
This Republican belief that somehow the voters want a candidate who can compromise, who can make Washington work.
I mean, I just, I just, I get revolted at that.
That's not what voters on our side are looking for.
That is the problem working with Democrats, joining them on amnesty, joining them on Obamacare.
That's the problem.
We don't want somebody who can walk into the Senate and compromise what we believe with these people.
We want somebody to walk in the Senate and defeat them and ditto in the House and ditto nationwide.
And that's what Trump has been expressing he can do, wants to do, and will do.
And justifiably, he has just a huge groundswell of support because I know I'm right.
People who have voted Republican are fed up with this idea that what's missing is our unwillingness to compromise.
Screw that.
We are compromising.
There isn't any gridlock.
We are compromising.
We're going out of our way to compromise, and we have been for years.
The problem is there really isn't any disagreement in Washington.
And Cruz has been just as vocal about Trump.
I mean, Cruz has taken it to the floor in a Senate and taken it to the Democrats on the Senate and done exactly what conservative voters claim want to happen.
But then to turn around and accuse him of not having temperament or judgment, not being able to work with these guys, it's just disappointing because Trump's not working with people.
Trump's campaign's not based on his ability to compromise and work with people.
Trump's campaign's based on the people currently doing everything are goofs.
They're dumb.
They're not competent.
We need smarter people, and they're doing these things.
He hasn't made it a process by which the two parties compromise and work together.
That's for losers.
That kind of talk and that kind of belief is for Republican losers.
And I can name them for you.
Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and anybody else in this field who talks about it.
Anyway, that was one thing.
Then the Trump hit on Scalia.
I'm just telling you, raise red flags for me, folks.
That's all.
I think it's unfortunate.
Anthony and Scalia is the last best hope in the Supreme Court, along with Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito.
Scalia is not the problem there.
And to not know that to not know that Scalia wasn't using his own words, he was discussing theories that have been advanced by other academics, including Thomas Sowell and Stuart Taylor, who had formerly been a reporter for the New York Times.
They were talking about, they were the ones theorizing about affirmative action and admissions policies with African Americans at major American universities.
Scalia was bandying it back, just like Obama does.
It was like a faculty lounge conversation among academics.
Was it Scalia opining?
But man, the whole media, they hit their narrative filled.
They get their template.
Somebody goes out and says something they think is racist.
They're all on it.
This has been one of the most misreported things in recent memory that Scalia engaged in racist, discriminatory language while discussing a case at the Supreme Court.
Nothing of the sort happened.
And it doesn't even take a lot of digging to find that out.
And Trump has previously praised Scalia to the skies.
So I just wonder what's going on.
Look, folks, it's no more complicated than this.
We all agree that the establishment in Washington is disconnected from us and way out of touch.
And to attack a candidate the same way that establishment would, I don't know, it was just unfortunate.
That's all.
But I'm not going to sit here and pretend it didn't happen.
As I say, it's not going to matter.
In the Monmouth poll, it's out.
Trump's up at 41%.
It's the relationship that Trump has with his supporters.
I don't think the establishment has the slightest idea of understanding it, slightest ability to understand it.
They don't have anybody who's ever had that kind of relationship.
It's really true to point that out.
And as such, they don't understand.
They don't understand that kind of loyalty.
The loyalty they understand flows from dollars and cents and the hell with cents.
The kind of loyalty they understand flows with dollars.
You get some dollars in return, you're loyal to who gave them to you.
And that's not the Trump support's not based on money.
It's not based on quid pro quos.
It's totally based on ideas.
That's one of the things that scares everybody in the establishment about Trump's campaign.
They studiously avoid trying to connect with people on ideas because if they did, they would have to compromise what they think on ideas.
I mean, the Republican establishment can no more come out and criticize amnesty than the Democrats can come out and criticize abortion.
They just can't do it.
They couldn't even fake it, and they couldn't get away with faking it.
So they have to go about it in a different way.
And they chose the Jeb way, and that was getting a nomination without the base.
And how's that working out for them?
It isn't.
So there's still a lot of upsides here that ideas triumph and matter.
That money is not the sole determining factor.
But Of equal interest to me is this conventional wisdom belief that Hillary Clinton is going to mop the floor with Trump or Cruz.
If you think that, then you think that she's going to mop the floor with anybody.
And sadly, way too many people do think that.
I'm very much interested in people who think that.
I just want to find out why you think it.
I think the main reason to, if you want to use the word fear, Hillary Clinton is that there's a D next to her name, and whoever running for president with the D next to their name is automatically going to win New York and California and Massachusetts and get those electoral votes, no matter who or what she Daffy Duck running.
And if there's a D next to Daffy Duck's name, he's going to win New York.
He's going to win California and going to win Massachusetts and all the other states where Democrats have slammed dunks.
And to credit Hillary Clinton as being some great, if she's such a great campaigner, why hadn't she what happened to her in 2008?
She's not a great campaigner.
The truth of the matter is that Hillary Clinton's greatest liability is her own voice.
The more she speaks, the worse her numbers get.
That's why there aren't any Democrat debates, and the ones that are held are on Saturday when nobody watches.
They all know it.
She's not this inevitable, unbeatable person that everybody, or way too many people, seem to think that she is.
Anyway, I mentioned Matthew Continetti.
I'm going to go through this somewhat quickly because it's an interesting theory to me.
Matthew Continetti has a piece in the Washington Free Beacon.
And he thinks that either nominating or not nominating Trump is going to reshape the Republican Party in potentially devastating ways.
Now, the two ways are that Trump could win by assembling a majority of non-traditional Republican voters.
Now, the theory there is, if you have a Republican nominee who wins the nomination with a coalition of voters that are not typically Republican, somehow that's a problem for the party.
The thing that I have always wondered about here where it comes to Trump, and I'm sorry for repeating this, I know regular listeners have heard this a lot, but remember there's a new tune-in factor each and every day.
And while you may have heard it five or six times, this is going to be the first for many.
If you look at the demographic, ethnic makeup of the Trump support group, it looks exactly like what the Republican Party claims it wants.
The Republican Party, as constituted, really is embarrassed of its base.
They consider its base to be Southern hayseed pro-life rednecks.
And by extension, not very bright.
And that part of their base embarrasses them.
And I just shared with you an opinion piece of Kathleen Parker, supposed conservative columnistette last week, who postulates she's not alone.
That, you know what, for the Republican Party long term, it may be the best thing to lose and get rid of this base and reconstitute the party with a different group of people comprising the base because this base is always going to be a drag and it's always going to be an embarrassment.
So the theory is losing with this base is proof that the party can never win with its current Tea Party-oriented type base.
And she's not alone when I say that.
People are coming along and saying if that happens, the Republican Party identity is going to be shaken up in ways like it's very seldom been.
But it seems to me that the Republican Party would like a broad-based coalition.
They would like having some independence.
I mean, God, they talk about them enough.
They would like having additional influx of female voters.
All of these people make up the Trump base.
There are a lot of Hispanics in the Trump base.
There are a lot of African Americans in the Trump base.
You'd be stunned at the number of African Americans supporting Trump.
It seemed to me the Republican Party, the other factor that Continenti, if I'm reading him right, seems concerned about is nationalism, that Trump is promoting a nationalism and that that's bad because a nationalism is exclusionary and not inclusive and it's,
you know, too home teamish and so forth.
And I always thought that growing and expanding the party beyond where it is was an objective here.
I also don't understand what is so wrong with nationalism.
A good definition of nationalism, if you don't know what it is, would be to look at what's happening in France now with a conservative wing there.
This, what is her name, Le Pin?
I don't know if you pronounce it, Elie.
Is it Le Pen or Le Pen or whatever?
You've got her mother, Christine Le Pen or Martine Le Pen, but it's the daughter, a 26-year-old, that is running a can and just running away with it in France, talking about we've got to become France again.
You know, we've got to close our borders.
We've got to stop all this immigration.
We've got to get reacquainted with who we are.
We are the French and we've got to remain the French or we've got to become the French again.
And of course, people are attacking her as being racist and all these other horrible things.
That's another accusation being leveled here at Trump and that if he gets a nomination or doesn't, that the Republican Party is going to be reconstituted on one of these two bases or both.
And that it may not be the best thing.
I'm not sure I agree with either side of those things.
I mean, the Republican Party, as it's currently constituted, at least at the establishment level, is clearly incapable of winning with an agenda that is opposed to what the Democrats want to do significantly.
And that's no good.
That's got to stop.
I've got to take a break, too.
A little longer be right.
Ladies and gentlemen, did you know that immigration officials are prohibited from looking at the social media postings of visa applicants?
Yeah.
Homeland Security Secretary Jay Johnson decided against ending that policy.
It's a secret policy.
The policy prohibits immigration officials from reviewing social media posts of foreigners applying for U.S. visas.
Had they done so, they would have known and spotted the radicalism of the wife in the San Bernardino II because her social media was ablaze with her radicalism.
Her social media promised all kinds of hell being unleashed.
But we have a policy in this country that prohibits social media is not behind a freaking password for crying out loud.
People are vomiting this stuff about themselves.
So why can't they look at it?
Why can't they investigate social media, people applying for visas?
Why?
Why can't they look at it?
What's the reason for it?
Anybody know?
I don't know.
On the surface, it doesn't make any sense to me.
Here's this is Levi, Rochester, New York.
Hi, Levi.
Great to have you on the show.
Hi.
Hey, Rush.
Lots of support from a longtime listener here in upstate New York.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
My question is, I heard you talking earlier about Ted Cruz and just his appeal, you know, based on his integrity and just, you know, being a class fact and being polite.
And I guess so far I've been a Ben Carson supporter.
And I feel like he has a lot of those same qualities as far as he's not establishment.
He's a class fact.
He has a good track record.
And he's, you know, he speaks peacefully and doesn't attack people.
And I was just wondering your opinion on why you think he's kind of fallen off as opposed to Cruz.
Well, you're right in the first place.
I don't think there's a finer man in America than Ben Carson.
Just in terms of human characteristics, quality, decency, integrity, morality, virtue, he may be unparalleled.
I just have to take a wild guess.
I think what began the downward slide was an apparent unawareness of foreign policy questions.
That's right.
A man, a legend, a way of life.
David in Albuquerque, New Mexico, thank you for your patience.
And great to have you here.
Yes.
It's an honor to speak with you.
Megha Didos.
Thank you.
I was raised in a real, real liberal home, and a friend of mine turned me on to your program.
So everything I know about conservatism comes from you.
I consider myself a neocon, and I've been supporting Rubio all along the way.
So you had a caller earlier who said that he's been supporting Cruz, and now he feels like Trump is being thrown under the bus.
But I'll tell you what, I will meet that type of person halfway and vote for Cruz because there's no way I'm going to vote for Trump.
I feel like he's too much like Jesse the Body Ventura or Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Well, no way, that's interesting.
He's too much, those are judged to be celebrity know-nothings at the moment of truth.
That's how I judge Trump.
That's how I see him.
I think his celebrity is the thing.
I think there are enough people, I think the numbers are showing it, that they will not vote for him because our votes, at least to me, my vote is sacred.
I don't want to go to my grave knowing that I helped put somebody in the highest, most important, most powerful office in the world that was going to be terrible.
Just terrible.
And I'm not going to vote for him.
Let me probe here for just a second.
I just make sure I understand.
You believe that Trump is similar to Jesse the Body and Schwarzenegger, that when he gets into office, he's going to be overwhelmed, not really know what to do.
Right.
And that everything that he said up till now, you don't think it matters.
You don't think he really means.
Let me put it.
You don't think people support him because of the substance of what he's saying.
You think they're just dazzled by his celebrity and his personality.
I think there's a lot of that.
I think there's also a lot of people in the Hillary camp who want to run against him.
And I think that people like Rubio are far better equipped for what's going on right now with foreign policy.
And this is a foreign policy election more than anything else in my eye.
Well, I think he's going to be incapable.
When Jesse Ventura got in or Schwarzenegger got in, it was a disaster.
Republican or not, Independent or not, just incompetent.
So I'm not voting for him.
I will meet him in the middle of the vote for Cruz.
I will meet you in the middle of the vote for Cruz to that other caller.
What do you like about Marco Rubio?
Rubio seems to know foreign policy better than any of them and can speak so much clearer about it.
I mean, look at Jeff Bush.
He doesn't have the fire in his belly, but Rubio is very fluent on it.
I think if we had a ticket like Cruz Rubio with Cruz on top, we could have the White House for the next 16 years.
That's what I want to see.
I want to see us get in there with Trump and have him be just impotent and useless and then lose in four years.
And I don't think he would even get in.
So that's my opinion.
You know, this is interesting to me, this belief that the guy running away with it on the Republican side can't win.
He's at 41% now in the Monmouth poll.
Admittedly, Cruz way up in Iowa, although in Quinnipiac, they're tied.
Look, no cold water here, folks.
I just, a little truth about things.
I think it'd be big if Cruz wins Iowa for a whole host of reasons.
And I can imagine that day.
I can imagine the day after the Hawkeye Caucasi and Cruz as the winner.
I can't tell you how that's going to shake up the establishment.
You're not going to believe it.
It's going to rattle them like you can't believe, and it's going to energize Cruz and his campaign.
Right now, we're just dealing with polls.
There hasn't been a vote cast.
But you get to the actual first votes cast.
It changes everything.
It always does, by definition.
It should.
But here you have one other thing about the Hawkeye Coke.
The last guy that won the Hawkeye Cauckey was Rick Santorum in 2012.
And he can't get a cup of coffee right now.
And before that, in 2008, it was Huckabee.
The Republican side in the Hawkeye Cauckey tends toward evangelical, which is fine.
There's no criticism here.
I don't want anybody putting words in my mouth.
They're assuming that I'm saying things I'm not.
But it's always been the case.
You can lose Iowa and be damaged if you're expected to win it, like Howard Dean.
But winning Iowa, whether you come out of nowhere or are expected, does not necessarily, you know, New Hampshire's next.
I think Bill Clinton lost them both, for example.
And that's why he was called a comeback kid later on, way, way later that spring.
And then we have the SEC primary, which comes right after South Carolina.
And that's going to be big.
South Carolina is a greater indicator than either New Hampshire or Iowa.
But I still find it, it's just a curiosity to me that the Republican leading, and you have nothing to go by other than these polls says you got Monmouth out here today with Trump at 41%.
And there's nobody in that poll that's even close.
And the conventional wisdom is he can't beat Hillary.
So what does that say about these Republican primary voters?
That they're about to, at this point, their greatest enthusiasm is for somebody who can't beat Hillary.
I'd like to know the thinking on that.
And I'll tell you where I come from.
See, I think, and I could be way wrong.
I've been wrong about Hillary so many times, but I'm sticking with my instincts because at some point I'm going to be right.
I think she's defeatable.
I think all it would take is somebody really trying, not being afraid, not being defensive, not being negative, not thinking, oh, somebody unafraid to go after her because she's a woman, somebody unafraid of whatever mafia she has going after them, somebody willing to roll up the sleeve, tell the truth about this woman and her husband.
I don't, I don't, I don't see the invincibility.
I never have.
But you go to Washington, D.C., or inside official political organizations and apparatus I, and I guarantee you they think she's unbeatable.
I have never understood it.
I don't understand it now.
I can remember hosting parties at my house back in 2007, 2008, in a sense of gloom overtaking the dinner table when one of the guests said there's a 75% chance that Hillary Clinton is going to be the next president.
It just brought the evening to a screeching halt until I rallied everybody with a speech on liberalism and conservatism and everybody run into the beach for a midnight swim in celebration.
And a poll came over the table.
75% chance Hillary Clinton's going to be.
Why?
Maybe I'm the dense one on this.
Maybe there's something about Hillary.
I think it's more the strength of the Democrats and their electoral votes in the states they get than it is Hillary.
But time will tell.
I just don't understand.
You think teams that line up to play, say, the New England Patriots all week before the game go in saying we can't win?
You think the coach is telling the player, you know, look, our objective here, we want to come out of here with a moral victory.
We want to be at least lose by no more than 10.
You think that happens?
And may.
Coaches may have to fire players up.
Who knows?
But I just, I've never seen such defeatism disguised as brilliant prognostication when it comes to running against Hillary Clinton.
I've never understood it.
I probably never will.
I don't care what I'm told.
So I just got a flash note from Cookie, who is monitoring all of the cable news networks out there as we scour constantly for intriguing audio soundbites.
And she says, what does she say here?
She said, let me, I don't want to read it.
MSNBC cannot stop reporting that you turned on Trump today.
You know, can I tell you all something confidentially?
I don't want you to tell anybody.
It's just between us.
If you tell anybody, I guarantee I'll hear about it.
The media, they think I have the ability to make or break any of these candidates.
They can't.
They think I have the moral authority.
Now, don't tell anybody I said this because I don't want them to think that I know this.
Well, no, they're not listening here.
They're not going to hear about this snerdly.
They never listen here.
If MSNBC doesn't tell them I said this, they'll never know.
Or media matters or whatever.
But they've been waiting.
They've been waiting.
They've been hoping.
Oh, my God.
They hate Trump and they've been hoping and they think only I can do it.
So they think that my question, I did not throw Trump under the bus today.
I did not, what does it say here?
Turn on Trump.
I haven't turned on anybody.
I haven't thrown anybody away.
I haven't announced support for anybody.
All I did was raise a question about the way Trump went after Cruz.
That's all I did.
And I said it disappointed me a little bit because it sounded like the same kind of criticism we would get from the establishment Republicans, which Trump is running against.
So if you hear somebody say, if you're out there on social media and it's, yeah, Limbaugh turned on, you bet you now have it from the horse's mouth that I didn't.
And if you've been listening, you know that I didn't.
But so eager are they for somebody that they know has the credibility and the moral authority to do it that they're hoping they want the world to think that I did because whether I did or didn't, they think reporting it will equate it.
Do I think Trump will attack me now?
No, if he, you know, I've always thought Limbaugh was overrated.
Claiming he's got the biggest audience out there, but hell, nothing compared to what I had on TV.
It's radio.
Nobody pays any attention.
He's overrated.
He's third rate.
Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me.
No, it would.
He's not going to do that.
I didn't turn on anybody here.
Trump's medical records are out, and it says he's astonishingly healthy.
He's never smoked.
He has never consumed adult beverages.
He's clean and pure as the wind-driven snow and that kind of stuff.
And everything else too.
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