The views expressed by the host on this program, documented to be almost always right, 99.8% of the time it's Friday.
Let's keep it rolling.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's open live Friday.
One big exciting, busy broadcast hour remains, hosted by me, your guiding light.
An excellent role model for the youths of America.
Rush the boss serving humanity simply by being here.
Hey, we have a Mike, do we not have a special warning from the White House from somebody on the blizzard?
Yeah, but it's starting to hit here.
It's in Charlotte now, and it's heading into Washington.
And a lot of people think they're going to die this weekend.
Media is telling everybody they're going to die.
Have you seen some grocery stores?
The shelves are bare.
Have you seen this?
I mean, it looks like Moscow.
It looks like the gum store in Moscow.
It looks like communism in some of these Washington, D.C. and suburban groceries.
Literally, nothing there.
There's nothing on the shelves.
People who don't want to die have gone to the grocery store early to pick up beans and franks and whatever other canned goods the government says to go get and whatever.
There's nothing.
I've seen a bunch of pictures in the grocery store shelves.
Totally, totally empty.
Okay, back to the back to the audio soundbites.
And we've got a few of these here that we'll get your phone calls in as we wrap up the very, very busy broadcast hour.
Anna Navarro is a Republican strategist.
She's a Republican consultant.
She is on CNN all the time, giving the Republican perspective on things.
She lives in Miami.
She travels wherever there's a camera.
She'll go.
I'm just kidding.
I met Anna at a cigar dinner one night, and she gave me the business about Republican Party and immigration and how I was missing the boat.
I better get my mind right on it.
And she's funny.
So she was on CNN with new day today, the show Allison Camerada, and responding to the National Review entire magazine, entire issue devoted to taking out Donald Trump and Allison Camarada, formerly of Fox News, by the way, who then went over to CNN.
So the question is, was she a liberal and hiding it at Fox?
Or is she a conservative and is a liberal faking it at CNN?
I mean, these are the big questions.
This is what the kind of thing people want to know.
So she's talking to Anna Navarro.
She said, what do you think of National Review coming out, the special edition basically devoted to proving that Trump is not a true conservative?
My only question to them and to conservatives now taking this line is what took you so long?
It's almost a little bit too late.
And, you know, I think Donald Trump has handled it, frankly, very well.
He basically doesn't deny it.
He says, yeah, I've changed my mind.
I've given money to Democrats.
I've invited the Clintons to my wedding.
Yeah, it's true.
But this is where I am now.
I'm not sure how much of an effect it's going to have now.
It should have been nipped in the bud months ago.
You know, she's speaking for a lot of people.
Where was this back in September?
Where was this back in August?
Well, it's too late now.
And have you heard Trump's tweets on this?
Did I write them down?
Did I keep them here on my cheat sheet?
He's had a series of tweets.
In fact, some of them go back to last year.
Last year, or maybe it was April of this year, in April of this year, Donald Trump was actually tweeting that he felt very bad for National Review.
It was losing so many readers, and we needed to be helping it.
He was urging people to help National Review because it was very important that it survived for the conservative movement.
Now, that was back in April.
His tweets now are essentially, I'm paraphrasing it, I don't have in front of me, but it was basically, you know, it's a dying paper.
It's a dying paper.
And it's a shame to see, but it's a last gasp effort.
They're trying to save themselves at my expense.
But they don't have any influence anymore.
Nobody cares.
Typical Trump response.
Anna Navarro says, hey, Trump's admitting that he gave money to Hillary, admitting that he invited her to the wedding.
That was then.
This is now.
Speaking of which, let me grab a call.
We got a call about that very thing, and it is Frank in South Lyon, Michigan.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Frank, hi.
Hi, Rush.
How are you doing?
Very well, sir.
Thank you.
Yeah, the reason I was calling was in my first debate.
I mean, Trump almost had a Jack Nicholson and Fear Good Men moment where he almost admitted to a crime.
He said, I gave money to them, and they do what I tell them to do.
And before he said, you know, they gave him building permits or something, he said, I invited her to my wedding and she came.
But I just don't know why people aren't investigating for crimes of bribery, or at the very least, looking at him as a lobbyist.
Wait, wait, wait.
Investigating who?
Trump, because he's bribing officials to get what he wants.
I mean, people are getting bribed as well.
If that's bribery, then every K Street firm is going to be in jail by Monday.
That's not bribery, but that's one of the things that people are very frustrated by, that money, the donor class, is running the show.
I mean, it's clearly why the Republican Party is content to sit by and let the Democrats get their amnesty and comprehensive immigration reform.
Look, see, this is another thing.
The people are not stupid.
They're not mind-numb robots.
The people who think immigration is the beginning and end of stopping the destruction of this country, they know full well that it's not an issue of compassion.
The Democrat Party not trying to help the downtrodden.
They know full well it's not about helping people overcome horrible obstacles.
It's not about extending the American dream to people.
It's about registering voters.
The people of this country who oppose illegal immigration are not nativists, as they've been called.
They are not bigots.
They're not prejudiced against foreigners.
They know what's going on here.
They know that the Democrat Party wants this endless stream of unskilled, uneducated people to become registered as Democrats who will then become the permanent underclass that will always vote Democrat because other than that, they won't have a way to live.
Now, who in their right mind would support that?
That's the primary form of opposition to this.
And they don't see the Republican Party making a serious effort to stop it.
Quite the opposite.
It's a matter of survival to them.
But the donor class, they want that low-skilled, uneducated, never-ending flow of people because they'll work for less.
And the donors have become more important than the voters to many in the Republican Party.
So if you, masses of people who vote, want something, the power of your vote collectively expressed has now been dwarfed by the amount of money given by donors.
And if the donors want the Republican Party to stand aside or maybe even join with the Democrats on comprehensive immigration form reform, then that's what elected Republicans are going to do.
And it's, look, money has always been dominant factor in politics.
But I don't recall, and look, I could be dead wrong about this because I've only been alive as an adult paying attention to this stuff 50 years or so.
But I have never seen, I can't recall a period of time, speaking now of the Republican Party, where the expression of public opinion, majority public opinion, doesn't mean anything.
I remember after the 2002 midterms, that was the year of the Wellstone Memorial.
The Democrats had it in their heads that they were going to smoke the Republicans because by that time they thought they had really amplified the hatred for George W. Bush coming off the Florida recount.
The 9-11 happened.
And they're out there and they just despise Bush.
We got the beginnings here of the debate on the Iraq War.
The Democrats wanted it both ways on that.
So they had this, the Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash.
They had a memorial for him in Minnesota, and a bunch of Republican colleagues, senators went to it, and they got booed out of the place.
And they turned that memorial, essentially a funeral service, if you will, for Paul Wellstone into one of the most despicable, pathetic displays of pathetic political selfishness on the part of the Democrat Party anybody's ever seen.
Well, here came the midterms later in November, and guess what?
That's a year and off year.
The opposing party, in this case, Democrats, is supposed to just score huge, and the Democrats lost.
The Republicans added seats in the House of Representatives.
And I was doing election analysis coverage on NBC with Tom Brokaw and Russert.
Brokaw could not believe what was happening.
After those midterms, the Democrat losers for two weeks afterwards went to the microphones and went on television and said, you know what?
We failed in listening to the American people, and we're going to fix that.
We're going to start listening to the American people.
There was another big issue in that midterm was value.
Value voters came out of nowhere, according to Exit Polls.
So the Democrats started talking about how, you know what, we're going to have to pay a little bit more attention to the values questions.
In other words, they were acknowledging the will of the voters.
That doesn't happen anymore.
The will of the voters matters only if you win, but it's the donors to whom elected officials have become loyal in terms of policy implementation and execution.
Whether anybody wants to admit it or not, there's a guy in this race not taking that kind of money.
I'm here to tell you people are aware.
They're not dunces.
They're not uninformed on this kind of stuff.
They see it.
So there are explanations to this.
Hugh Hewitt, who is radio talk show host out LA, was part of the Reagan administration and has appeared on CNN as a moderator for some of the debates that they have had was on Anderson Cooper last night.
And they're talking about all of this confusion out there, the National Review doing the issue and the Trump cruise phenomena, what it all means.
And he was John Berman filling in for Anderson Cooper, and this was the little exchange that they had.
It's not universal.
I mean, Rush Limbaugh, for instance, who some people would consider the dean of Conservative Talk Radio, he's kind of gone back and forth and in some cases given Donald Trump a lot of cover.
Rush is Donald's friend.
And Rush is, in fact, the big kahuna.
He is the maker of the feast, as Scrooge was referred to after his conversion on Christmas.
He always makes the market for talk radio, and so everyone knows that Rush matters a lot more than pretty much anybody else.
And he does like Ted Cruz a lot.
I was listening to his show today, and so maybe there's a tilt there.
Maybe there isn't.
I don't think he's declared, obviously.
You know what?
Hugh Hewitt is a smart guy.
But what strikes me here, I just realized this.
Look at all these CNN people who know what I'm doing on this program.
You know how odd that is?
Most of these people, they never listen here.
They find out what happened on this program by going to a watchdog website like Media Matters or what have you.
But there was, here's John Berman.
We've had two or three other hosts, this foreman guy.
And for a couple of three weeks now, these CNN people, at least, we still have the ban on MSNBC, so I don't know what they're saying, but these CNN people, I mean, they must be following this.
I wonder why.
They're following this, and they have concluded, you know what, we haven't heard Rush come down one way or the other.
What's up with that?
How did they even know?
I thought that this program was so beneath their standards that it's so unimportant.
It's just, you remember who it was to call me first to call me the big kahuna?
I'm not trying to take anything away from Hugh Hewitt.
I admire Hugh Hewitt a tremendous amount.
Well, let's go back November 13th, 1995 to the floor of the House of Representatives.
And they had the big kahuna of GOPAC come speak, none other than Rush Limbaugh.
He was hailing the GOP budget.
Was wonderful because it would starve the poor and it would drive Medicare recipients, including his mother, to eat dog food.
But not to worry, mom, he says.
I'm sending you a new can opener.
Wow.
That tells you what today's about.
Patsy Schroeder, exactly right.
One of the early feminazis.
She was a Democrat.
She ran for president and cried when she realized she couldn't win.
That wasn't so bad, it's that she cried on the shoulder of her husband.
And at that point, nobody knew she had one.
It was a total betrayal of the feminists.
A cry, and to B, admit she had a husband who had a shoulder on which she would cry.
Oh, it was a bad day for him.
She actually, I had made a speech at GoPak.
Time against me.
I'm sorry, I got to take a break.
Okay, it was a Sunday.
I was asked to make a speech at GoPak.
I did, but I demanded a TV because the Cowboys and 49ers were on.
So I demanded a TV back in the green room and a delay in the start of my speech so I could see the first half before I had to go out there.
So they accommodated me on that.
What was going on at the time was a big budget debate, as always, and there were Medicare cuts.
The Democrats were threatening all these Medicare cuts that the Republicans are going to make.
And the Democrats are running around saying that seniors were going to have to choose between dog food or medicine because of all the budget cuts.
So I went out there and mocking the Democrats, I told these GOPAC guys, I was proud to be a member, and I said, don't sweat the budget.
Look, I understand that it's a choice here between dog food and medicine.
Do what I do.
I'm going to send my mom a new can opener, making it easier to open the dog food.
Mocking the whole thing.
They laughed uproariously at GOPEC.
Patsy Schroeder thought I was serious.
Here is a woman who literally thought that I was serious, that I was fine with my mom eating dog food.
I was going to send her a new can opener, and that would fix it.
She went to the floor of the house.
And by the way, somebody got to her because she didn't say a thing about it ever again.
Somebody grabbed the hooks.
Patsy, it was a joke.
Just amazing.
Bob in Garden Valley, Idaho.
Great to have you on Open Line Friday.
Hello, sir.
El Rospo.
Hey.
How are you doing, sir?
Very well, sir.
Thank you.
The reason for my call is this: this Trump and cruise bashing.
Yeah.
I found, I discovered something out about the United States government a long time ago while I was still in the Army.
And because of that oath, I've lived by it since.
But going back to the Trump and Cruz bashers, they're doing this because they're very afraid of what Trump and Bush can do.
Do I like either one of them?
Well, I won't say that's between me and my creator of both.
But these people that are going out of their way to intentionally verbally harm Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, they are actually the people that your listeners, all six of them, yes, that's a joke.
Time is dwindling here.
Need to understand that those are the people they need to not listen to.
They need to listen to people like Trump and Cruz because they are, in fact, telling at least a modicum.
I got it.
I got it.
We'll be right back here.
A man, a legend, a way of life.
The last caller, his point was that all of these people that he didn't identify, but you know who they are.
Attacking Crew is attacking Trump in his, and he's a seasoned citizen of sorts and served in the military.
And his point was that he's seen a lot.
And he was going to say, when unfortunately, time ran out here, he was going to say that these critics are just trying to protect their money.
I mean, to put it, basic essentials, that everybody's trying to protect their money.
Whoever is trying to protect their donors, protect their clients or keep their donors donating and keep their clients buying and what have you.
In other words, it's all personal, this opposition to Trump.
There is a lot of fear out there.
I addressed this earlier this week, long before the National Review story hit.
And it was in relationship, if you recall, to this piece that I dredged up in 1996 That presaged, presaged, if you will, that predicted this very point in time in American history, predicted almost to a T, the Trump campaign.
The guy who wrote it in 1996 was an advisor then to Pat Buchanan.
And one of the points that he made in his piece, he said, Pat, if you're going to go anywhere, you're going to have to stop talking about being a conservative.
You can't, they're not going to do anything for you.
They're not going to help you, but it's limiting you because what's happening here is beyond conservatism.
Well, Buchanan couldn't drop conservatism.
He was too closely identified as one.
He had run in 1992, I think it was 96 as well, as a conservative.
He was a conservative columnist.
He was the conservative part of CrossFire for all those years on CNN.
So he couldn't abandon conservatism.
And what this columnist was suggesting was that populism nationalism was going to sweep the country because of the failure of the other things.
As the ruling class, he called it a different thing then, but as they continued to usurp the very economics of the country, that more and more people would have less and less.
And that what's happening today, as illustrated Trump campaign, was inevitable.
It was going to happen at some point.
He didn't know when.
He was hoping it would happen sooner than it did as in now, but it's happening.
One of the points that he made in the piece anyway, he warned Buchanan, he said, you don't need these other conservatives.
He said, one of the problems is going to be that they are going to realize that they have nothing to do with the insurgency.
Here they will have spent all of these years diligently writing and recording their conservative intellectual books and position papers, and they will have been advising candidates.
There will be think tanks and all this made up of the smartest, brightest conservatives ever.
And they're going to realize, Pat, that they are irrelevant.
That all the think tanks and all the position papers and all the policy papers haven't done anything for anybody.
And they will lash out and just be livid because they will want to protect what they've created.
They will not want to be demonstrated as irrelevant.
The guy wrote this back in 1996.
And I saw it reprinted, well, excerpts of it in the issue of a web publication called The Week and talked about it earlier this week.
And I glass caller was simply saying that, I mean, he didn't say it in that way, but his point was that all the opposition to Cruz and Trump is really coming from people who are afraid they're going to lose their livings if this is all successful.
Because here you've got two candidates who are going to triumph, if one of them does, without the infrastructure that everybody's thought was necessary.
I found it a fascinating piece, particularly given the fact that it was written back in 1996.
Matthew and Raleigh, North Carolina, we have an 11-year-old on the phone.
Matthew, it's great to have you with us.
How are you this afternoon?
Oh, hello, Mr. Rush, Mr. Limbaugh.
I'm here to tell, I'm 11 years old, and I go to an extremely liberal private school in Raleigh, North Carolina.
No, I mean, like, no, it's terrible.
No, no, no, I believe.
I believe you, Matthew.
I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm, you're 11 years old, and you're talking about this the way adults do.
I find it charming.
I think it's great.
I'm a huge Trump supporter, and I'm very outward about it.
I like how he's going to close the borders.
I like how he's going to obliterate.
I just, well, a few days ago, people are still charging me.
A teacher wrote on the board, beside Martin Luther King, who are some visionaries in the world.
People wrote down Abraham Lincoln.
People wrote down Rosa Parks.
People wrote down Cope Francis.
And I wrote down Donald Trump.
And the next day, the teacher pulled me over and said, he raised that comment.
And I was like, why?
And she's like, what good has he done to this world?
I'm like, well, he's created a business.
And he's built magnificent buildings in many countries in the world.
And he's actually running for president while he's actually stating his ideas.
And he made me erase it.
And I was thinking, like, wait, why is I thought I have freedom of speech?
I mean, an acre baby gets citizenship.
Why don't I?
And then, you know, and I kind of got mad after that.
And people are targeting me.
They're saying, Donald Trump sucks and you do too.
And I really don't know what to do.
Matthew, part of me said, join the club.
Join the club.
A lot of people are telling me that I suck too, and I don't know what I'm doing.
But in all seriousness, you lumped Trump in with Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln, and your teacher told you to erase Trump because the teacher didn't think Trump was qualified to be mentioned in the company of those other people, right?
Yes.
And you stood up for Trump and you tried to explain to her why in your mind Trump should be listed with those people.
Oh, I'm on.
She still forced me to erase it because I didn't want to disobey the teacher, but I mean, I don't exactly like backing down that much, and I was kind of disturbed by that.
Well, wait a minute.
Now, you say you don't like backing down, but you didn't want to disobey the teacher.
Yes.
In that circumstance, you did the right thing.
She is the authority of the classroom.
And Matthew, in all truth, you do not have freedom of speech in there.
Your teacher can, your teacher can abridge your freedom of speech all day.
The government cannot, but your teacher can.
And if you know, when you get a job and you go to work for, you know, when you become the CEO of Apple, the board of directors might try to tell you what you can and can't say or what have you.
But you did the right thing.
You have to respect the authority figure.
As long as you're able to not let that teacher convince you you're wrong, if you really believe what you were doing, then in your heart, it stays there, and you're just doing what you have to do.
It's a great life lesson.
You're doing what you have to do.
She owns that classroom.
And obviously, it's a learning exercise for you.
You can learn a lot from it.
And among those things is how to stay steadfastly devoted to what you believe.
Because this is going to happen to you like it happens to everybody many times, sometimes a day, sometimes many times a week.
But you're going to have a lot of people as you grow up telling you you're wrong or you don't know what you're talking about, or how can you say that?
And in this case, you had a teacher, the ultimate authority figure, telling you.
So you have.
I have my hand like 50 other kids behind me.
I mean, I can take on one-on-one, but when there's, but after I put that comment and everything, they were, they were like, well, Matthew, hey, let me tell you something.
Let me, can I explain that to you too?
Yes.
All that means is that they're jealous as heck of you.
They already know you stand head and shoulders above them.
And so the teacher coming down on you made them feel bigger.
And they just couldn't help themselves and go ahead and yen.
But don't let you're obviously an advanced human being.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh.
That's an honor.
There's no, well, it's an honor to have you in the audience, and there's no question about that.
So you're very, very mature.
Your parents are obviously got to be so proud of you.
You just continue to stay, I can't believe I'm saying this to an 11-year-old.
You just stay dedicated to what you truly believe, understanding that all kinds of people are going to insult you or tell you you're wrong.
And some of them you're going to have to kowtow to like the authority figure of a teacher.
But others, in all cases, let it go in one ear and out the other.
Behave as you must, depending on who is insulting you or commanding you.
Like you would your parents.
I mean, your parents are your authority figures at home.
Right?
Or do you tell them what to do?
Yes, I've read your book in our library.
It doesn't have your series, but it's Chelsea Clinton series.
And I really do like your book.
I really love it.
It's one of the best series I've ever read.
Chelsea Clinton.
And I have it right next to me.
I was just reading upstairs a few days ago.
Does your teacher happen to know that you know who I am?
Yes, she does.
Well, that's explained.
Of course, that's some of it, no doubt.
Matthew, I have to go here.
I'm a little bit out of time, but I am so.
It's an honor meeting you.
Thank you for letting me on your show.
Bye.
Pleasure is all mine.
You hang in there, Matthew.
Hang in there.
Matthew hung up before we could get the stuff we needed.
He said his books were not in his school library, but the Clinton books were.
So the usual thing, we want to send him some Rush Revere books and stuff, and he hung up.
So, Matthew, if you're still out there, call us back.
Use the same number.
Snerdley, there's nobody that can fake being you, Matthew.
So keep trying to get through, and Snerdley will keep a sharp eye out for you.
We want to get your address.
You're in Raleigh, North Carolina.
And we tried, folks, we tried to get to him, but he hung up before we could get there.
I should have mentioned it to him.
I thought Snerdley was going to be nickety split there.
So we just missed him.
But he can call back.
We'll take care of it.
Nick, Greensboro, North Carolina.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Rush, mega ditto.
Thank you.
The reason I called is I've heard multiple conservative commentators say that if Trump's the nominee and if he asked Ted to be his VP, that Ted shouldn't take it just because based on Ted's own conservative principles.
But I'm thinking if Trump wins and offers Ted the VP, I think Ted should employ similar logic to that of what Lyndon Johnson employed in 1971, you know, about J. Edgar Hoover.
And that being, Ted should say to himself, it's probably better to have me on the inside urinating out than for me to be on the outside urinating in.
You're speaking from Trump's perspective?
No, from Ted's.
That's what he should say to himself.
If he can't beat Trump in the primary, what he should tell himself is the same logic as what Leonardo.
Well, you know what?
Now that since you bring up that whole thing of VEP and VP, it reminds me.
I wasn't going to make it because it's only two people.
It's purely anecdotal.
But I've had a couple people tell me that if that would be a dream ticket, I've read a couple people who don't want to have to make the choice of one or the other would love one of those guys to be at the top of taking the other guy be the VP.
A couple people tell me that.
No, not golf buddies.
Not just others, but maybe more.
And others are obviously thinking about it, given the nature here.
Nick's call.
But that's it for us here, folks.
A brief, brief timeout, and we'll close it out when we get back and get ready.
Okay, we got young Matthew back, 11 years old from Raleigh, North Carolina, and we're going to take care of him in his school with some classic Rush Revere books, audio books, and other exciting gear.