All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 22, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:39
January 22, 2016, Friday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome back, folks.
Great to have you here, Rushlin Born at Cutting Edge of Societal Evolution.
America's real anchor man, Doctor of Democracy, Truth Detector, General all round good guy, and radio raconteur on Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
And it is Open Line Friday, where callers are free to take it wherever they want to go.
800 282-2882, if you want to be on the program and the email address.com.
How about this headline in the Daily Caller?
Bill Clinton to give speech in Las Vegas during porn exo expo.
Does that make sense?
Bill Clinton to give speech in Las Vegas during porn expo.
And they've got some pictures, the Daily Caller.
They got some pictures with Clinton.
Definitely the babes look like porn stars from previous porn expos.
Anyway, great to have you back here, folks.
Let's go straight to the audio sound bites.
Rich Lowry's the editor of National Review.
He's on Megan Kelly last night.
And this is about the whole issue here trying to take Trump out.
They've got uh contributors, 300, 400 words each, and the editors, noted uh staff columnists and writers in a giant singular focused issue designed to inform people that Donald Trump is not a conservative, and whatever else he is, you should not support him.
He represents an existential threat.
So Rich Lowry, the editor, and by the way, National Review once put me on the cover.
I forget the year.
It was in the early 90s.
And it was called the Leader of the Opposition.
And Bob Novak wrote it.
The late great Robert Novak wrote the story.
They they they affectionately called him the Prince of Darkness.
He was not a dark guy.
He wasn't a great, great guy.
Robert Novak was a I he had that show on CNN with Roland Evans.
And it was, it was just is a hoot.
It was a hoot to what they had asked me and asked me and asked me to be on it, and I kept saying, no, I don't want to do it.
And finally I accepted the invitation and went over there and uh Mr. Limborn.
It was just Rolly Evans was trying to say, trying to run things by me that he just couldn't.
I mean, he was the quintessential private club guy.
You know, Rowley Evans, at the end of the day, you see him in the lobby of some the Exeter club with the with the cigar and port with a newspaper road and sitting there talking about things with his buddies a classic.
Uh but it was it was a great time.
But they wrote this story on um me as the leader of the opposition early on in this program's life, and it was rooted, if if my memory serves, I have it somewhere in one of my computer drives here.
But it was if I think it was it was rooted in the fact that the Republican Party should take some guidance from me.
The theme of the story was the leader of the opposition, meaning I was conservative.
The Republican Party should start paying attention.
I remember it ran not much.
Yeah, it was 92, I think, because I ran in.
Okay, well, whatever it was, I ran into Bob Novak after he had written at the Republican convention in 1992 in Houston.
It was some sort of a cocktail party.
And I walked up to him and I they did not talk to me about it.
They didn't interview me.
I had no idea it was come.
Wait a minute.
No, Novak did.
No, no, sorry, Novak did not write it.
Novak wrote a column in 1992 that was the same theme.
I'm sorry, it was a different guy that wrote the National Review cover story on me.
Bowman?
the last name Bowman?
Anyway, we'll find it.
But it was the theme was the Republican Party's not conservative enough.
You need to listen to this guy.
And it was uh I can't, it was a this is highlight, highlight in my career at the time.
Second only to the night that I met James Bowman.
I knew James Bowman, but it was the it was it was uh second only to the the night that I met Mr. Buckley, which was long after that cover ran.
Well, not long after, but sometime afterwards.
And so what year was it, 1993?
So how many years ago is that?
This is 23 years ago.
Twenty three years ago.
And even back then, yeah, September 6, 1993, and the theme of the story was the Republican Party should pay attention to me, what's going on because they weren't conservative enough.
Uh and obviously they were trying to provoke the Republican Party with the cover.
They provoked a lot of people, actually.
But for me it was a great honor.
And here we are, 23 years later.
And I look at myself as having not changed.
Yeah, I'm still the leader of the opposition.
But I mean, in terms of of the core principle, my core, I haven't changed.
I haven't bent with the wind.
I haven't bent and shaped and figured out, you know, I haven't chosen the more popular position on things and gone there.
Uh, but that's not true of quite a few others.
It's just it's it's interesting to go back and look at the at the landscape.
Anyway, as I say, this is to me, in my lifetime, anyway, it's unprecedented where a political party is attempting to take out, or elements of the party are attempting to take out both of the frontrunners, Cruz and Donald Trump.
Did you see, by the way, National Review had their invitation to co-moderate the next debate rescinded because of this issue.
You want to talk about weird?
Look, folks, you and I know the Republican establishment no more wants Donald Trump than they want Cruz.
They don't want either of them, but they hate Cruz.
They despise Cruz.
They are because they're afraid of Ted Cruz.
They they really do not.
At the Republican Party, conservatism is an outlier.
Conservatism is something to make fun of or be afraid of.
Conservatism is something that you only make a pretension of accepting.
But in the inner sanctum where the people that run the show really are, you're not going to find any real conservatives in there.
They're going to be laughed at and mocked and uh manipulated or what have you.
And Cruz, they can't manipulate him.
They can't, as the vernacular is, do deals with him.
He's doctrinaire, he believes it.
He can, he's persuasive with it, he can articulate it.
Uh, and it just scares the heck out of him.
Because in it it both things are at stake here, in a sense, Ted Cruz would demonstrate the irrelevance of the Republican Party by winning.
Trump, on the other hand, they don't even think as a Republican.
When you get right down to brass tax of people inside the Republican Party, don't even think he's a Republican.
They don't think he's a party man one way or the other.
They think he's an opportunist, maybe engaging in a little populism here, uh, maybe engaging a little nationalism, but they don't think there's a Trump core outside of what's good for Trump.
And if it weren't for the fact that Cruz is in there, everybody would be joining National Review trying to take Trump out.
But Cruz represents the greater threat to the Republican establishment if he were to win.
They've got themselves convinced.
You listen to Dole, you listen to uh well, whoever the uh the establishment types piping up, Lindsay Graham.
I mean, they're all coming out and saying that Trump, well, yeah, yeah, we can work with Trump.
They think it's Trump Trump is malleable, meaning that they think they'd have their way in persuading him on things now and then.
But with Trump or Cruz, they know that's a lost cause.
But either way you slice it.
Elements of the Republican Party are trying to wipe out their two front runners, and going so far as to say on the on the Cruz side that if this guy wins, I'm voting Hillary.
Some of them have actually been quoted anonymously as saying that.
You remember yesterday on this program, toward the end, we saw an AP story that Richard Burr, North Carolina Senator, was in one of these private meetings with somebody, donors or staff or whatever, and somebody in the meeting reportedly told AP that Senator Richard Burr, North Carolina, told the group that he would vote for Bernie Sanders over Ted Cruz or Trump, I don't remember which.
Anyway, that caused all hell to blow up at the Richard Burr office and campaign.
Campaign aides for U.S. Senator Richard Burr Thursday denied a report that said he had told people he'd vote for Bernie Sanders over Ted Cruz.
AIDS have asked the AP for a retraction.
An AP spokesman said the news agency's sticking by its story.
They will not retract it.
Richard Burr and his people are out shouting from the rooftop.
Please don't believe this.
I didn't say it.
Senator Burr didn't say it.
AP won't retract it, but we didn't say it.
AP, when they are asked about it, no, no, no, no, we're standing by the story.
We got good source.
Our source told us that's what the senator said.
We're sticking with it.
So you can see it doesn't fly when people hear it.
Richard Burr's not the only one.
There are a number of Republicans who are leaking to the media via spokesman or anonymous admissions themselves, if Trump or Cruz, largely Cruz, if Cruz, well, oh my god, I'm out of here.
We can't have Cruz.
Count me, and I'm voting Hillary, I'm voting Bernie, whatever.
And it just sits there.
Because it's anonymous.
We don't know who it is actually saying it.
We're told it's a prominent elected Republican in each instance.
There are four of them that I know of.
This one mentions a senator, Richard Burr.
Look what happened when the news was identified and attached to an actual senator.
The senator goes into gear and denies it.
Why?
If Ted Cruz is such a bad thing to happen, why not when you're accused of not wanting him to be president, why not stand up and own it?
Forget it's Burr.
Anybody, any one of these Republicans or senators, if they're out there anonymously whispering to any buddy in the media.
Hey, let me tell you something.
I'll tell you how bad it is, they say.
If Cruz gets a nomination, that's it for me, bud.
I'm voting Hillary or Bernie, whoever it is in the Democrat side.
Well, okay, and they write it down, they save it for a rainy day.
Now you think they really mean it.
They're leaking it, they're saying, but when the news is reported and attached to a name, as it was with Richard Burr, what'd Richard Burr do?
He didn't stand up and say, You damn right.
You damn right.
If Ted Cruz gets his nomination, I'm out of here.
That's the end of this party for me.
I'm voting Bernie, I'm voting.
He didn't say that.
No, he ran out there and begged people.
Don't believe it, don't believe it.
I didn't say it.
Well, wait a minute now.
He's not the only one.
If it's that bad, if Ted Cruz winning is that bad that you would vote for a Democrat for president, why not own it?
That's what I don't understand.
It's that bad, and you're threatening to do this off the record.
Why not own it?
Well, the answer is they're really not going to do it.
They're in a state of panic.
They hate Cruz for any number of reasons.
He has taken them on in the Florida Senate.
He's challenged their integrity and their honesty.
I mean, reasons are understandable.
But to hell with party loyalty.
I mean, if he gets a nomination, screw it.
I'll tell you this if Cruz gets a nomination, they will work.
Some of them will work to undermine him.
I mean, there's no question.
And the same thing with Trump.
There's too much at stake here for the Republican Party, folks.
This is the point that I'm trying to make.
All these age-old Jurassic Park dinosaurs, they want to hold on to their club.
They want to hold on to control of the club.
They want to be able to be the ones that term who gets in the club.
They want to be able to determine who is a leader of the club.
They don't want to lose the club, and they don't want to lose control over it, and it doesn't matter what happens to the country in the process.
This is their livelihood, as far as they're concerned.
This is their careers.
This is their money.
This is their income.
This is their future.
See, when it's their future on the line, and it gets threatened, and they'll do whatever it takes to protect it when it's your future.
That's imperiled, resulting from policies they either don't oppose in Washington or support.
You're supposed to gut it up, tough up, and understand that there are larger things we have to work on here.
And then you're told you must continue to donate.
You must save the party, you must support the party, and the party won't even come out and openly support you, because to do so might make them get called racists or something by the media.
I'm looking at all this, and I've I think it's just it's momentous what's happening here.
I think it's bigger than anybody even realizes because everybody is talking about it is really looking at it personally.
Oh my God, what's this going to mean for me?
What's this going to mean for my think tank?
What's this going to mean for my magazine?
What's this going to mean for my party?
What's this going to mean for my committee chairmanship?
What's this going to mean for and the people?
The people, the voters.
None of that is of any concern to them.
The stakes for them are personal too.
And the places they have sent money and offered support, thinking that their causes and that their interests were going to be advanced or represented or defended, they haven't seen any of that.
So they say, okay, fine.
We're on our own, and we're going wherever we think we can best stop.
The Democrat Party, Barack Hussein Obama, and anybody else, part of that organization.
It really isn't any more complicated than that.
Back in the You know, folks, you recall this.
I have been saying for a long time, as I've been doing this for a long time.
How the Reverend Sharptons and the Reverend Zaxons do not want the race problems of this country to end.
They'd be out of business.
They don't want solutions to the civil rights problems.
The Democrat Party doesn't either.
The Democrat Party doesn't want a solution to illegal immigration.
They want to profit from it.
They want to register them as voters.
The worst thing that could happen to Jesse Jackson is if racial harmony descended and swept the nation.
They'd be out of business.
Yes.
Without any racial strife, without any imagined bigotry, racism, sexism, all of these left-wing social groups, would be out of business.
They need something to complain about.
They need things in rotten shape in order to make a living, in order to seek donations, which is how most of them make their livings off of other people's charity.
Well, there's that kind of thing is not restricted to just the democratic civil rights coalition.
There's all kinds of people out there who enjoy the opportunity presented by the academic exercise, the opportunity to be part of the debating society to show how smart you are and brilliant you are.
In other words, some people constantly need something to run against as a reason to exist.
And my point is that those people don't claim not to understand what's going on.
The people that are abandoning both establishments for other candidates, they are results oriented.
They want solutions.
They want some of this stuff to be brought to a halt.
They want some of these people who have been winning too long to lose.
It's that simple.
Okay, now to the audio sound bites.
Rich Lowry on with uh Megan Kelly last night on the Fox News channel.
She says, when Palin gave the endorsement, many said that Trump has won over the conservative base.
That hers is an endorsement from a conservative base, and you and the others at National Review stand up tonight and say not so.
The point we're making, it's up to conservatives who think that Donald Trump, whatever his virtues are, doesn't truly understand the ideas and principles that make this country great.
It's up to those conservatives to stand up and say, no, sorry, we oppose this.
If you truly are conservative, you believe in ideas and principles.
It's not just attitudes, it's not just who you dislike.
It's limited government, it's the Constitution, it's liberty.
Those are the things that truly make this country special.
And they are basically afterthoughts to Donald Trump.
He continued with this.
He has been on the other side on big hot button defining issues like abortion, gun control, taxes, even on immigration.
He is really conning people.
This is someone who three or four short years ago was criticizing nice, pleasant, polite Mitt Romney for being too harsh on immigration.
It wouldn't surprise me if one day Donald Trump, if he gets a nomination, wakes up the next day and says, you know what, deporting people, the best people in the country have told me it's not possible.
Forget it.
So the all-out effort is on now to uh convince you, if you are in the Trump camp that you are making a grave error.
That if you are doing this because you think Trump is a conservative, National Review wants you to believe that Trump is not a conservative.
And therefore you shouldn't fall for anything to be saying.
What was that, Mr. Snerdley?
Uh uh Mr. Snerdley says we've heard all this before.
We have heard this.
I mean, not not but not in this format.
I mean, uh entire magazine is not devoted every page to the concept.
There, yeah, people have run around.
Hey, Trump's not a conservative.
Hey, he voted for Hillary, or hey, he loves Hillary.
Hillary went to his wedding, or hey, he's made donations.
I know, people saying this all campaign, and it isn't mattering.
Do you know why it doesn't why do you think it doesn't matter?
Well, wait a second.
What what Snardley says it's not because they don't read National Review, but it's not just National Review saying this.
I mean, any number Jeb Bush has been trying to say it.
Uh uh John Kasich's been trying to say it any number, I mean, the a bunch of conservative uh pundits elsewhere have been trying to warn everybody that Trump is not a conservative.
And don't fall for it.
Is Trump running as one?
Look, I'm I'm back to the makeup of the Trump coalition.
The majority of it is probably Republican, but it's broad based.
I mean, you've got a lot of people In the Trump so-called coalition, 20% Democrats, minimum.
Demographic spreads pretty uh pretty broad.
Uh an argument that Trump isn't conservative is not gonna matter.
That's not why they're supporting him in the first place.
But National Review has got to put down a marker.
They are uh establishing who is and who isn't a conservative.
Uh and and that's one of their one of their roles.
But I don't know, folks.
I mean, I was Mitt Romney conservative.
McCain is McCain conservative.
Well, I know McCain hated conservatives.
Yes, you're right, Limbaugh.
And I had you in your mind.
Uh let's move on to audio assembly.
What is it?
Uh I guess we're up to number uh number seven.
Roger Stone.
Now, Roger Stone is uh how much you described a guy's uh racantor, he's a sometime Republican consultant, has ostensibly been working on the Trump campaign then left it early last fall.
Formerly married to a woman named Ann Stone back in the 90s.
Ann Stone does the name ring a bell.
She was leader of a group called Republican women for pro-choice, or pro-choice Republican women or some such thing.
She was one of the they're divorced now, but she was she was one of the early prominent Republican women trying to drive the pro-lifers out of the Republican Party.
She was prominent at the Republican convention in 1992.
Stone uh has been known as a uh consultant who likes to play tricks on opposing candidates.
And Meghan Kelly went out and found him too, brought him in last night, and asked him is what National Review is doing damaging to Trump.
His campaign being a conservative insurrection, an uprising with uh the fact that he is poised to sweep through these primaries.
Everyone who signed that letter, they're all friends of mine and they're good people, but they're purists.
There's plenty of red meat, conservative red meat in Donald Trump's platform on immigration.
You might have the first president in my lifetime who's actually unencumbered and actually able to cut federal spending, rebuild our military, and make the country great again.
Meghan Kelly then said, well, they're not really challenging your assertions about Trump making America great again.
They're saying they don't believe it.
I agree with William Buckley, the founder of the National Review, who once said, I'm for the conservative candidate who can win.
Donald Trump has crossover appeal to blue-collar Democrats, to African Americans, to non-Republicans, because he is free to criticize both Republicans and Democrats.
That's why he is potentially the strongest candidate.
I first met him, by the way, when I was organizing Ronald Reagan's campaign in New York at 1979, and he and his father were raising money for Ronald Reagan.
So don't tell me he hasn't been on the front lines because he has.
On the second amendment, there's only one candidate for president with a concealed carry permit, and I guarantee you he's packing he right now.
Okay, so there's Roger Stone for Trump, who is uh basically challenging one of the premises put forth by uh National Review, that he's bigger and beyond conservatism,
and so you can't really hit him with any strength or lasting effect from that focal point.
Uh once again, CNN in the midst of all this is still trying to figure out where I come down on all this.
And I find this fascinating.
Played it earlier, play it again.
Audio soundbite number nine.
This is Tom Foreman on Anderson Cooper 360 last night.
Trump has enjoyed oceans of praise on conservative radio.
The last ten minutes of what Trump did last night sealed the deal.
I mean, the sincerity, the appreciation for the audience.
But now that he's taking on his closest challenger, Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz, the tide is turning.
A genuine conservative, even in the Republican field would not go after Cruz this way.
As the months passed and the battle with Cruz became inevitable, the conservative talkers sharpened their words.
And the dean of conservative talk, Rush Limbaugh.
I think Trump is making a strategic error in the way he criticizes Cruz.
But folks, it's unrealistic to expect that they're not going to go after each other.
The conservative talkers will almost certainly hurt Trump if they keep hitting him this way.
But if he looks like he can win the nomination and the White House, they could change their tune again.
After all, they've been mad at the Democrats a whole lot longer.
Sticking with CNN, this is Dana Bash on uh CNN's newsroom this morning with the info babe, Carol Costello.
And they're talking about National Review's entire issue devoted to stopping Trump.
And Carol Costello says that Dana Bash, she's the she's the used to be the congressional, then the White House.
Now she's a chief political course, but she's climbing the ladder there at CNN.
And Costello says so.
What do you think the impact of national review is going to be on Trump?
You saw John McCain had problems in 2008.
Mitt Romney, first in 2008 and then 2012, never really got the heart and soul of the base behind him.
And in large part, it's because he changed his position on abortion.
He changed his position on other issues that have been uh really important to conservatives.
That has been thrown out the window for Donald Trump.
He was outspokenly pro-choice.
He has been outspoken in his history, even in a book that he published, wanting a single-payer universal health care system.
And so much of the conservative base, they just don't care.
It's not that they don't know, but they don't care.
Okay, why don't they care?
This is the if let's just let's take that for the moment as true.
There's an explanation for it.
And that's that's what uh actually, if I may be honest, I mean the focal point of me in this whole thing, I'm trying to explain to myself so I can pass it on to you.
Why certain things that used to matter don't now?
And this is a great example.
Although I'm you know, she makes a big deal here about uh you know Trump bookie published wanting single payer, but it doesn't matter.
Why doesn't it matter?
There are two immediate answers that come to mind.
I gotta take a break.
I'll have them for you on the other side.
Okay, so here's Dana Bash on CNN last night, and she's saying Trump was outspokenly pro-choice.
He has been outspoken in his history in a book that he published, Wanting Single Payer.
Universal Healthcare System, and much of the conservative base, they know it, they just don't care.
It's not that they don't know, they just don't care.
Trump was, as I understand it, this goes dates back to 2000, the year 2000 he's toying around with the reform party ticket.
There have been 16, 15 years go by.
A lot more is known about it.
Trump's not talking about it now.
But beyond that, the Republican Party nominated somebody that essentially gave us Obamacare.
You know, you can you can sit there and you but but but Trump is free.
Single peer, Trump's a single peer.
The Republican Party didn't stop Obama from doing Obamacare.
I mean, what are these people supposed to do?
Yeah, in the first term they didn't have the votes to stop Obama, but then they ran for office in 2010.
They ran for office in 2014, promising us that they would use the power of the purse, they would defund it, they would they would they would try to repeal it, and every effort they made was phony.
These people are not stupid.
They think why why continue to invest in a Republican Party which has openly said it's not gonna stop Obama?
In a Republican Party, you can you can talk about Trump all you want.
It's not Trump that's sidling up with the Democrats on amnesty.
And if you don't think that's the number one issue that's animating all of this, then you've got something really big to learn.
That issue pretty much encompasses everything else people are supporting in Trump.
It defines the massive change, the rejection of the two-party status quo on all of this.
So at this stage, you know, whether somebody's conservative or not conservative enough, that's so we're so far beyond that right now.
I'm talking about Trump's supporters.
I'm I'm in I've got my analyst hat here on, folks.
I could be wrong.
But this is what fascinates me, trying to understand why people do what they do.
This a whole career has been devoted to understanding the left and telling you who they are and passing it on to you so you'll recognize it and be able to stop it.
I have said for I don't know how long.
I don't know how many years I've been saying the single best thing we could do is educate everybody to ideology so they can spot liberalism because it's openly destructive.
We're living seven years of the destruction of liberalism.
Undiluted, concentrated, liberal destruction.
We don't have to speak theoretically.
We don't have to issue warnings.
All we've got to do is explain to people why they can't get a job.
Explain to people why open borders are happening.
Explain to people why the Iranians are getting a nuke.
Explain to people why 94 million Americans are not working and can't find a job.
There are demonstrative reasons, and you can trace every damn one of them to the Democrat Party and the American left, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, all of them.
And we don't get one syllable of that from the Republican Party.
So what are these people supposed to do?
They understand immigration.
It's not hard.
It's called the law, and people are breaking it.
And the people breaking it are being rewarded and given things that the people who are not breaking the law are having to pay for.
It's not hard to understand this.
But Donald Trump, Donald Trump, he wants right about here as a single payer.
Sorry, we've already got it.
If you haven't noticed, we've got Obamacare, and we're heading down that road already.
And who gave it to us?
Barack Hussein Obama and the Democrats, not Donald Trump.
And who didn't try to singularly stop it or repeal it when they told us they would?
GOP.
What are people supposed to do?
Well, Trump's not a conservative.
I don't know.
That's not even thinking about that.
This is serious stuff to these people.
In addition to their livelihood and their careers being destroyed, they're being blamed for everything because they're racist.
They're being told they're bigots.
They're being told they're sexists.
They're being told that they are the problem.
They are being told by the Democrat Party and the American media that they have been the problem since the founding of this country.
And they are openly told, we're taking it back from you.
We're taking it away from you.
And so college educations are being perverted.
With this wacko studies and that wacko studies.
This has been for seven years a sitting duck of an opponent waiting to be blown to smithereens for all time.
American and worldwide liberalism.
We're living it.
We don't have to warn people.
We don't have to say, if you're not careful, we're going to end up because it's happening.
So somebody comes along, gonna put the brakes on all of it or seems to, and massive change in direction or what it's not hard to understand this.
But if your livelihood depends on never mind.
I'd take a back after this, book's not broken.
I know, I know.
I've been a little uh little remiss here in integrating.
I love that word.
Integrating.
Uh your phone calls into the mix here.
So that's uh that that's coming up.
Uh Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, that we spoke a little bit about it at the beginning of the program.
Hillary is out there, you know, Bernie is accusing her of being part of the establishment, which proves to me that Bernie is a freaking copycat.
He's stealing our best stuff and appropriating it himself.
And Hillary, Hillary, I I don't know what establishment means.
What does that mean?
I only know what vast right wing conspiracy is, but I don't I don't know what establishment is.
What a phony baloney plastic banana good time rock and roller.
Anyway, John Kerry has admitted that some sanctions money is going to go to terrorism.
And he says, so what?
▲
Export Selection