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Jan. 14, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:13
January 14, 2016, Thursday, Hour #3
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Okay, let's let's turn ourselves back to the Republicans and the presidential primary and the debate coming up tonight.
The prime time at 9 p.m. on the Fox Business Network, the moderators are Neil Cavuto and Maria Barcheromo.
No, I know it's Barteromo, but I'm just in New York you pronounce it Barcerromo.
It's uh Barcia Romo.
It's uh it's you have to study languages and speech and techniques and so forth, you hear those things.
By the way, congratulations to Cavuto, he just got a contract extension from uh from Fox.
So he's gonna be around for uh a few more years.
Great to have you with us, 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program, the email address, Lrushbo at EIBNet.com.
Uh I said that wrapped up with Nikki Haley a couple hours ago.
There's actually a couple other things in the news about her today, and they are offshoots of the response that she gave to the Obama State of the Union.
Now, let me get these in chronological order because it's uh there's this.
It was a real shocker to some in the blogosphere out there because a day after Nikki Haley criticized the Trumpster and other unnamed conservative media in response to President Obama's State of the Union speech.
Nikki Haley explained yesterday that it's not just Trump, that there are other areas where she doesn't see eye to eye with other Republican candidates.
I have disagreements with other presidential candidates.
She said Marco Rubio believes in amnesty, which I don't.
There's lots of things.
Stop the presses.
You have to understand something.
That may have been a throwaway line, but that was a hit right between the eyes.
In the sense of how it lines her up.
So she does this response.
She uses the language of what we call the establishment.
She goes out there and is critical of her own party because they're too angry in this and that.
Now we've all been led to believe, and I think it's not outside the realm of possibility, that South Carolina is where the RNC or the uh the anti-Trump forces in the party, that's where they're building their firewall.
Trump's gonna win one of these two, New Hampshire or Iowa, maybe both, we don't know.
But New Hampshire is where they're going to stop, and a lot of people, and I am not making this up.
A lot of people have been expecting that Nikki Haley was going to participate in the firewall to stop Trump.
That also places her on the quote unquote side of the establishment.
There were others who were speculating.
I'm talking about insiders, that as part of the firewall, she was going to eventually endorse Rubio.
You had heard that too.
Okay.
So I've I heard it then yesterday.
She comes out and hits Rubio between the eyes by calling him a supporter of amnesty.
That's a kill shot, folks.
In the Republican primary, that's a kill shot.
That's the thing that Rubio is trying to get past.
That whole gang eight thing.
So when Nikki Haley came out and did that, it stopped everybody.
Now, in later in an interview with Fox News, she tried to walk it back.
She said it's been a long couple of days.
What when I s what what I said was that I didn't agree with him.
I meant what I didn't agree with him on was the gang eight bill.
I I said that he wasn't for amnesty.
That that's not that's not what I meant.
What I meant was he supported the gang eight bill and I did not.
So here's the timeline.
Response to the Obama State of the Union, and Nikki Haley criticizes her own party, a front runner, and others unnamed for uh anger and tone and behavior.
Then the next day, In a round of interviews about it, she happens to hit Rubio between the eyes by saying he believes in amnesty, and I don't.
Then in the next interview, she walks it back to no, no, no, no.
What I meant was I didn't mean to say amnesty, I meant gang of eight.
So now people are asking if she was taken to the proverbial woodshed by unnamed Republican leaders.
Look, Nikki, we were going to pair you up with Marco here as part of the stop Trump firewall, or what it is.
This is nobody knows this is speculation.
So really, folks, it's it's this was a very, very curious thing.
I mean, you go after Rubio, you're a Republican, and you go after Rubio as supporting Amnesty, then you're cutting his legs out from under him.
He's trying to get past that.
Now the political has a story.
Republicans warn Bush team against harming Rubio.
This story is from uh WWE.
This story sometime yesterday or last night.
I think it could be today.
Jeb Bush called Tuesday for a leader with a servant's heart.
He said, We need a nominee who knows it's not all about him.
That's obviously attack on Trump.
Increasingly, establishment Republicans worry that Bush's campaign is little more than an ego trip, with the former Florida governor now sitting stagnant in the middle of the pack and his super pack ratcheting up its attacks on Marco Rubio.
A growing number of Republican centrists are coming to view Bush's campaign as a distraction.
One that could hurt their ability to keep a nomination away from Trump or Ted Cruz.
And lo and behold, we have this story from Chris Steyerwalt today from Fox News saying that there's a new accord between Jeb and Christie to take Rubio out.
The day before Nikki Haley hits Rubio between the eyes by calling him one who is in favor of amnesty to walk.
No, no, no, I didn't mean that.
I was a gang of eight.
Damage done.
Here comes Christie and Jeb with an alignment and a cord to take Rubio out.
And then amidst all of this, the New York Times has a story about how the donor class in the Republican Party is warming up to Cruz.
That's the last thing that many people expected to ever see.
Cruz is more reviled than Trump.
Cruz is more feared by the donor class and the establishment than Trump is.
And do not doubt me on this.
And the reason that Cruz is more feared is because there is no question who he is.
And there is no question what he believes in.
And there's no doubt that he believes it.
And there's no doubt he's going to work hard to implement it.
And there is no doubt he'll take prisoners and take names and do whatever it takes to get it done.
There's no with Trump.
They say, gee, we don't really know.
One day says this, the next day says that.
We don't really know.
So...
But then they also say that Trump's all about Trump.
And whatever Trump, but Rubio, if we join Rubio, Cruz, if we join Cruz, we'd be the team.
And now the New York Times, and there are others too, with stories that the donor class and the establishment now realize that they can't win this without the base.
And I think that's probably true.
I think Jeb Bush was, you know, canary in a minefield in there coal mine.
Well, I think it was a test.
I think there were, and probably still are, a lot of Republican establishment donor types who really wanted to find out if they could win the Republican nomination by saying pfft you to the base.
I think they were dead serious.
And Jeb was the vessel.
Jeb was the guy who's going to get all the money.
Jeb was the guy going to put the theory to the test.
Well, it has obviously blown up in everybody's faces.
Jeb is sitting there 3.6 points, 10 points in Reuters, third place in one poll.
But people have come to realize, you know what?
We do want to win, and we do want our committee chairmanships.
And uh, you know, we do want to be able to be in charge of things here, and it means we might have to win the base.
So they're rolling the dice, and it seems they've come up with a preference for Cruz over Trump, with Rubio apparently the guy they're aligning against to get out of the way now.
And in the process, some of the things, as I mentioned in the top of the air, some of the things that they're at the top of the program, some of the things they're they're saying about Rubio are long-lasting things.
And I just sit here in various stages of amazement when I think back to Rubio's early days and how he was said to be the next Reagan.
Uh, he was he was the greatest hope for the conservative future of the Republican Party and the things being done.
I mean, George Will has a piece on him today that's every bit as destructive as anything he's written on Trump.
I mean, they're they're they're pretty much doing so much damage to Rubio that it's going to go way past just this campaign.
And others to whom I've offered that theory said, uh Rubio's doing this to himself, it's not them.
Rubio's the guy that's all over the board.
Rubio's the guy that's trying to finesse the gang, and Rubio said this, Rubio's doing this, he's now all of a sudden talking about being in favor of renewable energy.
What is that?
So there are the people that some have sympathy for what's happening to Rubio, others think he's brought it on himself.
It's brutal, folks.
This is Bengal's Steelers every day, is what this is.
So now, a brief time.
Is there one more Nikki Haley?
I think there is.
Wait, just uh Oh, y she did hit Nikki did hit uh Bush on Common Core.
And here's the New York Times story.
Ted Cruz breaking through the establishment firewall of all the developments.
That's the one that has most people the most stunned and in disbelief.
Okay, a little bit of Trump and his rally, not a whole lot.
I would have a lot of bites, but enough uh and related items when we return.
Don't go away.
Welcome back, folks.
L. Rushbow with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Again, I watched Trump's rally in Pensacola last night.
It's quite by accident.
I um somebody sent me the link to it.
And I said, I wonder if it's on TV.
I didn't bother checking TV.
I just tapped on the link.
It was a U-2 link, and I had my iPad open as already reading things.
Sat down and I started watching.
I didn't intend to watch the whole thing, and I stuck with it.
Well, I ignored that the hours worth of intro stuff.
I I started it when Trump came, and he went about an hour and a half, maybe a little bit less.
And as I said, I really watching this, it took me back.
I felt like I was I was back on the rush to excellence tour, which is exactly what what uh a rush to excellence performance was.
It was an hour and a half, sometimes two hours.
It was just, it was no notes stand-up.
It was it was improv, stream of consciousness about the issues of the day and anything else that happened to pop into my mind.
And it was I oh I got nervous as hell before every one.
Not because I was worried that I would forget what I wanted to say, but these things depended on my mind being functioning and alive and and working and and coming up with things.
And it's I never prepared a speech.
I never sat down and wrote a speech.
You have a prepared speech.
There's no reason to get nervous about it.
It's there, you go do it.
But I just go out with a little, you know, sometimes an outline of things just to jog my memory, but no specifics of what I was gonna say.
And it was it was walking a tightrope every time I did one.
It was invigorating in a in a sense.
And it was nonstop.
And that's exactly what Trump was doing last night.
There wasn't a pause.
There was other than for applause.
And it was hopscotch all over the place.
You'd be hell bent to find a single theme, or two or three.
He'd be in the middle of making a point about Iran and say something that reminded him of the guy at Macy's and go off on 10 minutes on Macy's and then come back and finish what he was talking about with Iran.
Something there would remind him of the microphone at working, and he'd jump on that.
And you the audience behind him, the camera never moved.
They never showed the full crowd, and it was overwhelming.
They had to turn 5,000 people away, wherever this arena was.
It's jam-packed.
It was huge.
And the people sitting behind Trump, and there were maybe 10 or 12 of them within camera shot.
They're mesmerized.
You can see they're just literally mesmerized of what they're watching.
They don't know anybody who can do this.
There was no doubt.
There was no uh insecurity.
There was no, oh my God, what am I going to say next?
It was just ram-bam-bam and never stopped for an hour and a half.
The energy level peaked and stayed there.
And as I say, in every one of these things, there are four or five times, may run 10 seconds to 30 seconds, where all of the veneer is dropped, and you get genuine heartfelt sincerity about something.
And then it's back to the performance.
Which is what it is, and it doesn't discredit it to say that, by the way.
I do not call it a performance as a means of discrediting.
It's a specific talent to be able to do this.
And when he says brags about not needing a teleprompter, it's it's worthy of a compliment.
Not very many people can do this.
I mean, even the stand-up guys that got cue cards all over the place that you can't see, reminding them of this and and their punch lines, maybe even teleprompters outside of range, but nothing.
And it was the same energy level.
There was no deep sighs and pauses.
There was at no point in the hour and a half did it have to be restarted because it never stopped.
And during it all, there is an attitude from Trump that everybody in that room is the same.
He's not on some pedestal talking down to people.
I I'm just explaining all this, trying to help people understand it.
You've got all these prof political professionals claiming to not understand any of this.
You didn't have any advisors, you didn't have any consultants, and these professionals do not understand why so many people are supporting Trump or why these crowds are so big.
I'm trying to help you understand what it is.
He does not, even though he could if he wanted to, he does not position himself as way above everybody in that room.
He treats them as though they know everything he knows.
And he's telling them what he thinks about it.
I mean, there may be a couple of- Did you see this the other day?
You may not have seen this, he goes and tells them, but it's not as though they're stupid and don't know it.
They just haven't heard about it, and he's informing them.
It's circumstances where he exhibits and professes total uh respect for the people in his crowd.
The thing opened with him berating the cameraman for five minutes for not showing the whole crowd.
They're terrible.
They're losers, they're losers.
They won't show it, even though I'm telling him right now, they won't.
Look at that camera, it's not moving.
Look at it.
Do you believe it?
Do you believe it?
Bunch of losers, just losers, they're losers.
They won't show the whole crowd.
They never do, even though I ask them to, they won't move that camera.
And the camera stays rock solid, steady, and doesn't move.
That was the open.
Anyway, this is a moment where he reacted to Nikki Haley, claiming that he was angry, and we don't need any of that.
I think she's right.
I am angry.
I'm angry, and a lot of other people are angry too at how incompetently our country is being run.
I'm extremely angry.
Wait a second.
Wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on, stop it.
I have misled you, and it's my fault.
I did not read this.
I thought when I saw Trump turn sales, because I saw this last night.
So I thought this bite was from the appearance.
It's not.
This is from a phone interview.
And the next there's we've got, let's see.
Here, play number number number number 12 and 13 number this is from the thing last night.
We got to number 12.
This is this is I played it once.
This is Trump complaining about his microphone.
I don't like this mic.
Whoever the hell brought this mic system, don't the son of a b to put it in, I'll tell you.
No, this mic is terrible.
Stupid mic keeps popping.
Did you hear that, George?
Don't pay him.
Don't pay him.
You know, I believe in paying.
But when somebody does a bad job, like this stupid mic, you shouldn't pay the bass, sir.
Terrible.
Terrible.
It's true.
And you gotta be tough with your people because they'll pay.
They don't care.
They'll pay.
So we're not gonna pay.
I guarantee I'm not paying for this mic.
They're cheering, they're going nuts.
They're they're they're loving every minute of it.
And he said he called SOB, uh, B A S T all these things, and you would think, wait a minute, that's so beneath everybody's character dignity, but um, you know, there may be some people there that I wish you wouldn't say that, but it's not gonna turn them away from him.
Uh and you know, he waited till nearly the end of this to complain about the microphone, and it had been acting up all night, so it wasn't as though he started off complaining and was making excuses for it.
Uh I think he realized that it was a problem.
Half the people in there, I found out later couldn't hear him because of this microphone.
So, again, it was a way to relate.
Now I'm gonna go back and get these other sound bites.
It's my fault.
I saw Trump turns Haley's speech into, and I thought it was a clip from the uh rally.
Had I read this, I would see that it's actually from CNN last night.
We'll play it anyway, because he said pretty much the same thing.
Hang in there.
Okay, we go back to audio soundbite number ten.
This is Trump on Aaron Burnett out front last night, being asked to respond to Nikki Haley, who said that she was one of the or he's one of the angry voices, and it's not good.
It ought to stop, you know, that blind.
I think she's right.
I am angry.
I'm angry, and a lot of other people are angry too at how incompetently our country is being run.
I'm extremely angry and upset about it.
I think it's ridiculous.
And you know, believe it or not, it's Make America Great Again.
Mine is a campaign of hope and future.
But when you look at this Iran deal where we're giving 150 billion dollars, we get nothing, we don't even get our prisoners back.
And then you see the way they treat us with guns pointed at these young sailors' heads, and they only let them go to get the hundred billion dollars that's due over the next week.
Otherwise, you would have never gotten them back, unless I was president, by the way.
So I mean, yeah, I'm angry.
I'm angry at the way the country is being run, and by the results that we have, we don't have victories anymore.
So he went from that to on stage.
And on stage when he brought the subject up, he said, Yeah, I'm angry.
I'm really mad.
He says, There's no silent majority out here.
It's a noisy as hell majority, and I'm leading it.
I'm the noisiest hell majority.
And the way he ended this thing last night, he kept talking about how we're gonna win in everything.
We're gonna win, we're gonna win with China, we're gonna win with Mexico, we're gonna win with Mexico in the wall, we're gonna we're gonna win every trade deal, we're gonna win it, we're gonna win with the Iranians, we're gonna win win.
Folks, it's gonna be so bad, we're gonna be winning so much of people gonna say, Mr. Trump, would you just lose a couple here?
We're so sick and tired of winning, we feel bad for the other people.
Could we lose a couple things?
No.
I will never lose.
Lose is not what we do.
We will win, win, win, win.
People are coming out of their chairs left and right.
Now, before that, when he's talking about Iran and the sailors, he pulled lyrics to a song out of his pocket and read them.
It is a song and an artist.
We have popularized on this program.
We've played this song, we have heralded, we've had this man on prior to his death.
His name is Al Wilson, and the song is the snake, and Trump read the lyrics as a warning, and this is how we ought to be treating the Iranians.
This is how we ought to be training ISIS and all of our enemies.
I wanted to read this because I look at this, and perhaps you can look at it toward the migration.
Ready?
By Al Wilson.
On her way to work one morning, down the path along the lake.
A tender-hearted woman saw a poor, half-frozen snake.
His pea colored skin had been all frosted with the dew.
Oh well, she cried.
I'll take you in.
And I'll take care of you.
Take me in, O tender woman.
Take me in for heaven's sake.
Take me in, O tender woman.
Side the vicious steak.
She wrapped him up all cozy in a curvature of silk.
And then laid him by the fireside with some honey and some milk.
Now she hurried home from work that night.
As soon as she arrived, she found that pretty snake.
She'd taken in and revived.
Take me in, O tender woman.
Take me in for heaven's sake.
Take me in, no tender woman.
Sign the vicious snake.
Now she clutched him to her bosom.
You're so beautiful, she cried.
But if I hadn't brought you in, by now you would have died.
She stroked his pretty skin.
And then she kissed him and held him tight.
But instead of saying thank you, that snake gave her a vicious bite.
Take me in, O tender woman.
Take me in for heaven's sake.
Take me in, O tender woman.
Sighed the vicious snake.
I saved you, cried the woman.
And you bit me.
Heavens why?
You know your bite is poisonous.
And now I'm going to die.
Oh, shut up.
Silly woman, said the reptile with a grin.
You knew damn well I was a snake.
Before you took me in.
I just read it and I looked at it differently.
I thought it was pretty great.
Because we don't know what we're doing here.
We're going to get bit.
We're going to get bit.
And Trump read the lyrics of that.
And I actually read them pretty well.
He had the inflections in the right places, and the uh audience aided up, and he was in in relationship to immigration and migrants and our deals with uh with Iran.
Let me have brief time out here.
We'll come back, and we have other phone calls from many of you, so sit tight.
More coming up right here in the EIB network right after this.
Okay, soundbites.
I'm either gonna do number 16 or 17 next.
And that is if we get to them.
In the meantime, here's Rodney in Palm Beach Gardens heading back to the phones.
Rodney, I thank you for waiting.
Hello, sir.
Hey, hey, Rush, it's a real pleasure to talk to you today.
Rush, I haven't really heard anybody talk about this, and I wanted to take everybody back to the first Republican debate.
The first debate, first question was obviously aimed at Trump, and it basically said, be 100% guarantee that you'll support the nominee, or however they said that.
The only person to his credit that actually uh did not raise or that raise his hand saying he would not 100% guarantee that he'd support the nominee was Trump.
I know.
I remember he was skinned alive for that, and obviously it was aimed at him, and then the war kind of started on Trump.
Now, fast forward to now, and you've got people, I know the the Republican establishment and even some of the nominees look like they're not only not going to support them, but they're trying trying to do everything they can to keep him from being the nominee.
And but there hasn't been anybody to talk about that because they all raised their hands and said that they were going to support the nominee, whoever it was.
Well what's your what's your opinion on why we're not sure.
These pledges, these pledges are worth the day they're written on and not much more.
You're talking the first debate, I happen to remember it was August the 6th.
And that first debate's memorable for a whole lot of reasons.
You happen to recall the very first question, Mr. Trump, because they were trying to expose him as a fraud.
Remember, when this all started, they thought Trump was in this for some other reason than really winning.
He was in there to embarrass the Republicans or personal aggrandizement, promote his TV show, whatever.
Mr. Trump, well, you promised it, you will pledge it, you will.
And they asked everybody here.
Raise her hand if you'll support the Republican nominate Trump said, No, I won't.
I won't.
I don't know what's going to happen.
What if they don't support me?
What if I'm winning and don't support me?
Why should I pledge it?
And I think now, pledge notwithstanding.
Um Rodney, everybody's trying to destroy Trump right now, and that's what the process is all about.
And everybody's trying to destroy Cruz, who is in second place.
So I I don't think that what's happening now is out of bounds at all.
And the way it's happening, I mean, uh I in fact, even the way they're going after Cruz now.
Here's Trump again.
The first thing he went after Cruz on was this this eligibility business.
And it's really the way he does it, he doesn't accuse anybody of anything.
He says, you know, I've heard, I've heard.
I mean, people are talking, they're wondering if Ted's eligible.
Gosh, I hope he is.
I'd hate for Oh my, this would be horrible.
Can you imagine if we have to end up in lawsuit after a lawsuit?
People claiming our nominee's not a citizen and not eligible.
That'd be horrible.
I hope it works out for Ted, but man, it's gonna be a problem.
It's gonna be and he never once accuses him of anything.
Now, the next thing that's come up is that apparently Cruz when I got a loan for his campaign when he was in Texas on Goldman Sachs, his wife happens to work Goldman Sachs.
And so Trump Trump is now uh oh, gee, you know, this is this could be a problem for Ted.
I hope.
You know, I I what what Trump is saying about this Goldman Sachs.
I hear it's a big thing, folks.
I'm hearing it's a really big thing.
I hope it's not, you know, I like Ted.
Ted and I get along really well.
I hope there's nothing there, but people are telling me it's a big deal.
It's gonna be a big story.
Here's Cruz, by the way, on the Anderson Cooperal Grab Sun by 14.
This is Cruz answering it last night.
Dana Bash.
Senator, how do you explain to your supporters that you got a very large loan from your wife's Wall Street bank in order to fund your upstart Senate campaign?
The premise of your question is not right.
We made the decision to put our liquid net worth into the campaign.
And so we did so through a combination of savings, liquidating our savings accounts, through a combination of selling assets, and then we had a brokerage account that has a standard margin loan like any brokerage account has, and we borrowed against the stocks and assets that we had under ordinary terms.
And so those loans have been disclosed over and over and over again on multiple filings.
And he is exactly right.
He took a margin loan.
He and his wife made a decision to liquidate everything to go for this.
By the way, I just want to warn some people.
His wife, you don't hear much about her name is Heidi.
She is formidable.
If they anybody tries to go after her, you know, they're they're trying to denigrate Cruz.
His wife works at this big Wall Street bank.
You know, these guys that got bonuses and guys are foreclosed on the floor.
Yeah, Goldman Sachs.
Whoever decides if anybody does to go after her, they're going to have a tough awakening.
Because she is not a pushover.
She is not a wallflower.
And he had a standard margin loan, and he's exactly right.
Anybody with a brokerage account has access to margin loans.
The uh interest rates are really favorable for anybody that has one, and you borrow against the equity you have in your portfolio, whatever it is, and it can be sizable.
But they're trying to impugn Cruz with just the association, Goldman Sachs.
Wife happens to work there.
So that's supposed to be an instant disqualifier.
Never mind that the Clintons have been out raising money and collecting money from all kinds of questionable, dubious characters and reprobates all over the world.
In advance payment for services rendered after she becomes president.
Everybody knows it.
The Cruzes have done nothing illegal, marginally or otherwise.
The Clintons are indictable.
And of course, the drive-by is not interested in that aspect.
Okay, don't forget there's an accord tonight, supposedly, Jeb and Chris Christie lining up to take out Marco Rubio, which shouldn't come as a surprise.
Christie is already teamed up with Obama to take out Romney on the beach there after the hurricane.
I'll catch heck for that comment.
You watch.
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