Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And hi, folks.
How are you?
Great to have you with us.
Rush Limbaugh, the most eagerly anticipated radio talk show each and every day.
You are listening to the most talked about radio talk show out there, the most talked about host of the most talked about radio talk show out there.
Once again, coming under fire today as a result of being misquoted, taken out of context.
I had a friend, I didn't even know it.
Friend sent me a note last night.
He said, man, I don't know how you deal with this.
Now people on our side are starting to take it out of context.
And I wrote it back.
You know, I long ago stopped caring about it because it doesn't matter.
You know, I'll tell you what it is.
And I think it's instructive, too.
This goes back to the week before last.
By the way, telephone number 800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program, I found a piece at National Review Online on the corner by a guy named David French.
And it was he who speculated one of the problems that the Republican Party is having vis-a-vis Trump and so forth is that they have overestimated their conservative base.
And I endeavored to interpret that on my own.
And he also made a couple of other points that I thought resonated well, and I expanded on them.
And one of my expansions was to posit, mean, put out there for consideration.
Because everybody has been pulling their hair out trying to explain Trump.
So many people on the Republican side in the conservative movement, it doesn't make any sense.
They can't make Heidner tales of why so many people who've long thought to be orthodox, solid, not intellectual conservative, but people that understood it that were principled conservatives.
How in the world could they be going to Trump?
So I have been trying to offer assistance in helping to explain this to people.
And the David French piece at National Review was quite helpful to me in advancing my own thinking on this.
And one of the areas I took it was to speculate, to posit, could it be, and by the way, let me add something else to it.
When I discovered that piece written by Samuel Francis back in 1996, urging Pat Buchanan how to win the Republican nomination back then.
And I've told you about this piece, and we've published it.
Well, we've linked to it at rushlimbaugh.com.
It is one of the most prescient pieces of opinion journalism.
I mean, a guy writes it in 1996, and it practically is verbatim what's happening today in the Trump campaign.
This is fascinating.
A guy named Samuel Francis back in 1996 advising a conservative Republican how to win the nomination.
In that case, it was Pat Buchanan.
And Trump, whether he knows it or not, irrelevant, is doing exactly what this column suggested doing back in 1996.
And what it was, essentially, was advice for Buchanan to go above and beyond the conservative movement because it was not going to be helpful to him that he needed to branch out and get into other areas.
This guy was advocating things like populism, nationalism, and so forth, and suggesting that an approach like that would work because of the mindset of Americans who are fed up with elites and their condescension and their general inattentiveness to the things that bother the people who make the country work.
And it was his theory that a nationalistic approach, i.e.
big-time patriotism, make America great, America first, America last, America always, combined with a populist appeal supposed to conservative, would work.
And so people have found that piece.
They've looked at it.
They've compared it to the Trump campaign.
They said, my gosh, this guy back in 1996 actually wrote Everything Trump's Doing.
So I then, in talking to people and you, I posited, I asked the question, could it be that nationalism and populism have usurped conservatism today in the minds of a majority of Republican-based voters?
Well, what has happened is that I am now accused of actually saying that and of actually believing that and therefore of betraying conservatism, which people can't believe because I am Mr. Conservative.
I am the Mr. Big, if you will, of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
All these people are out there.
My God, my God, what's the, and it's all resulting, it's the same thing that happens when Media Matters gets hold of things here.
Take one sentence out of a very detailed, nuanced monologue or discussion in which I have engaged.
Take one little sentence.
Megan Kelly asked Rich Lowry about it on Fox last week.
But she got it right.
So did Rich.
When she posited the question, she said, you know, Rush Limbaugh has suggested possibility here that.
Nationalism, populism, have you served?
And Rich Lowry said, gee, I hope that's not true.
But I was not accused of having definitively.
I don't believe it.
I'm just, but if you are not, if you don't listen to the program, and many of the critics of this program never do, listen to it.
This program is far more nuanced than some of the things these egghead writers publish.
And talk radios, everybody who hosts a conservative talk radio show gets lumped in together.
And so they, whoever the host is, they think the shows are all the same.
And they always zero in on what they think the lowest common denominator is and then attach my name to it.
And so now some conservatives and their publications are beginning to go down this path and so forth.
And I assure you, folks, all I am doing here is trying to explain the reasons why I think this phenomenon is happening and why I believe this phenomenon is big.
I think it holds tremendous potential.
I have no idea where it's going.
I don't yet know, and nobody does.
We don't have enough data.
We don't know what it all means yet.
We don't know if Trump is flighty, lash in the pan, real long term.
Don't even know if he's really going to win.
All of this remains speculative, and therefore I am just keeping my powder dry and my eyes open and trying to absorb as much of this as I can because I have numerous people asking me, what does this mean?
A question I got today, Rush.
Hillary Clinton's in trouble, Rush.
I mean, she's under 50% in the polls.
She's coughing phlegm up all the time now.
She's got health problems relating to her concussion.
And now this coughing spasm due to the thyroid.
I mean, she just looks horrible out there.
She has no energy.
Some 82-year-old guy, 75, whatever it is, Bernie Sanders, however old he is, is running rings around her.
Why aren't the Democrat establishment guys paranoid?
Like the Republican establishment guys are?
Why is this Rush?
These are the kind of questions that I, your beloved host, get all the time.
Why, Rush?
Why is there no panic on the Democrats?
There's all kinds of panic on the Republican side over Trump.
Why is there no panic on the Democrat side?
I think because on the Democrat side, the game's rigged.
I've thought from day one, Bernie Sanders isn't going to win this.
And I'm using intelligence guided by experience.
How many times in the last 27 years, and that's the length of time I've been doing this program, how many times have we thought, have we been told, has it been suggested to us, we've got the Clintons now?
How many times, how many times have we been told, this is it for Hillary man, or this is it for Bill?
It's too many to count.
And it's never been right.
Now, supposedly, Hillary's in deep doo-doo over the emails and the server and all of the FBI people investigating her.
And the data is in, and it's unsurvivable, they say.
But yet, there she is.
She's still out there coughing up Phlegm.
She's still looking like Miss Haversham.
Well, a chubby Miss Haversham left at the altar.
She's still looking sick, unenergetic.
Did you watch any of that thing last night?
See, that's another thing.
I'm fighting depression today, folks, because I had to watch it.
I had to watch this last night, and I endeavored to, and we've got lots of sound bites on it, and I think we found evidence that the whole thing was set up.
We found evidence, at least, that the questions were prepared for the people who asked them.
In other words, I don't think any or very few of the questions any of those people got were actual questions dreamed up by the people who asked them.
And the giveaway is one guy asking a question slipped up.
Grab it.
Audio soundbite number four.
Chris Cuomo, who this was such an odd format.
These guys go out separately.
It's a town hall.
And Bernie Sanders was first with Chris Cuomo.
And it was funny as can be.
Chris Cuomo, even when Bernie Sanders was doing everything he could to defend Hillary Clinton.
So Bernie, crazy Bernie's out there answering his questions, promising a tax increase, promising free Medicare for promising everything for everybody.
And then after that, Martin O'Malley came out, and Martin O'Malley was number two, and he was by himself.
And the biggest reaction to Martin O'Malley was when he took off his jacket and was, I guess, they were just waiting for him to take off his shirt.
The point is, that was it.
That was the total level of excitement for O'Malley was when he took off his jacket.
Then Hillary bringing up the rear, she came out last, and I almost had to turn the mute on because of that cackling laugh.
For the first 10 minutes, that's all she did.
Whenever anybody said anything to me, well, you know, it drove me absolutely nuts.
But I endeavored to sit through it.
Now, here is the soundbite.
It was at Drake University in Iowa.
And the moderator is, Chris Cuomo introduces a member of the audience named Brett Rosengren.
And his purpose is to stand up there and ask a question of Mrs. Clinton.
Listen carefully.
Brett Rosengren, he's from Logan, Iowa.
He's going to school, works as a supervisor for a janitorial company, says he's undecided, has a question.
Great.
Secretary Sanders, or Clinton.
Sorry.
I can see why they gave you this question.
I just wanted to know which of our previous presidents has inspired you most and why.
Did you hear this year with this guy, Brett Rosengren?
I can see why they gave you this question.
This guy has sitting there.
Who knows if he's even there legitimate?
It might even bust this guy in.
Who knows?
The whole thing could have been totally staged with CNN's cooperation.
But this guy stands up.
Secretary Sanders.
Oops.
Oops.
Laughter starts.
Mrs. Clinton says, that's okay.
And then Rosengren says, I can see why they gave you this question.
I just want to know which of our previous presidents is what kind of nobody asks a question like that.
No serious voter gives a rat's rear end a question like that one week away from the Hawkeye Cork.
Could you tell me which previous president has inspired you the most?
And the guy blows it by saying, I can see why they gave you this question, which means he was handed the question.
So anyway, I watched this whole thing and we've got appropriate audio sound bites coming from it.
It's not that I want to torture you, but we have spent a lot of time talking about the Republican side.
And it is interesting as well what's going on over there on the Democrat side.
So let's take a brief time out.
We'll take a quick pause, come back and continue full speed ahead right after this.
A lot of people remarked to me yesterday after the program, gosh, Russia, I can't remember the last time you have not said a word about the National Football League and the championship games the day before.
I can't recall a time you have come in here on the Monday after the championship games and not said a word about the NFL.
And I said, is that right?
I had to pause.
I said, yeah, that's right.
I didn't say a word about it.
And I'd better not go any further than that.
I mean, it wasn't.
It's just not there.
It just wasn't in my mind.
I don't know what it means.
Listen to this.
From the UK Daily Mail, police flee for their lives at Swedish migrant camp after they surrounded by a screaming mob as they tried to relocate a 10-year-old boy who had been raped multiple times.
The attack allegedly happened in a town in central Sweden.
Staff at the refugee center feared the 10-year-old boy was being abused.
They failed to remove the child after the refugee would not let the child go.
Ten cops, and they were armed.
You may not know this.
Swedish police are allowed to carry guns.
Some police in Europe are not allowed to carry guns, but in Sweden they are.
There were 10 cops.
They failed to keep the child safe after being attacked by the mob.
So a mob attacked the cops and the cops split.
Migrants, immigrants, illegal immigrants.
They should have been appreciative.
They should have welcomed the Swedish cops.
They should have said thank you for letting us come into your country.
Thank you for letting us flee our war-torn homelands.
We're so happy to be here and we're so appreciative of you, Swedes, for giving us this opportunity to escape the torture and the poverty of our homeland.
And instead, they practically mob the cops and send the cops fleeing for their lives.
So what do you think is going to happen the next time?
It's just another sign of the kind of things going on in Europe that if people want to pay attention might be somewhat indicative of our own future down the road.
Ted Cruz.
No child.
The incident happened last Wednesday.
A 15-year-old asylum seeker was accused of murdering a girl.
According to Russia Today, many of the problems are now facing nothing on the kid.
They tried to relocate the kid, get him out of there, and I guess he's still there.
I guess the kid's still there.
What are you going to do?
You've got to be tolerant.
Ted Cruz, grab audio soundbite number 14.
Ted Cruz has a brilliant point.
This is really, really crucial, good point for Cruz that he's making now as we are into the final week prior to the caucuses taking place in Iowa.
If Donald wins Iowa, he right now has a substantial lead in New Hampshire.
If he went on to win New Hampshire as well, there's a very good chance he could be unstoppable and be our nominee.
Even if you're thinking about another candidate, the simple reality is there is only one campaign that can beat Trump in this state.
And if conservatives simply stand up and unite, that's everything.
Now, this is important because Cruz is right.
Now, I know that there are many of you out there that you're on the Trump bandwagon.
I know a bunch of you aren't.
I know a lot of you are angry that people are on the Trump bandwagon and you don't understand it and you're ticked off about it.
But if you are in Iowa and if you are one of those people, I don't care what you think of Ted Cruz.
He's right about this.
He is the only candidate in Iowa, according to the polling data, who has a chance of winning Iowa other than Donald Trump.
And that's according to the polling day.
Strange things happen in this state because caucuses are different than showing up and voting and polling there is not quite the same as it is in other places.
But thematically, philosophically, he's exactly right here.
Theoretically, if Cruz doesn't stop Trump in Iowa, there may not be any stopping Trump.
That kind of momentum has been built up already.
So we take a brief time out.
There's more on this when we get back.
If you as expressed by the host of this program, documented to be almost always right 99.8% of the time and way, way up there.
And been way, way up there consistently.
So Ted Cruz making the point that, according to polling data, he is, depending on the poll, he's either ahead in Iowa.
There's a WHO poll out.
I think it's WHO poll that shows Cruz ahead in Iowa.
And it's interesting that none of the drive-by media outlets are interested in the poll.
You can't find it anywhere except if you know somebody that knows somebody at WHO and they forward it out or text it out to you, whatever.
But you won't find anybody picking it up.
They pick up all the other polls that show it either Nip and Tuck or Cruz trailing Trump now.
But regardless, there isn't any chance for anybody other than Cruz to beat Trump in Iowa.
And the only reason I mentioned this is I think Cruz had a very good point.
I mean, if you are interested in stopping Trump, if Trump's not your ball of wax, Cruz is your guy.
If you're in Iowa, Cruz is your guy.
That's the only chance.
And I don't know, the political professionals out there, the ones who claim to have all the answers, are indeed saying that it's hard to see Trump being stopped if he wins Iowa, where he wasn't supposed to two weeks ago.
If he wins Iowa, goes on to win New Hampshire, goes down to South Carolina, could be over.
And Cruz is making that point.
And look, it's a good campaign move.
And it happens to be exactly right.
Look, since I've opened this, what?
Do not ask me about it.
You're going to ruin my.
You're going to get me so ticked off.
Don't ask me about that.
Snurdy want to know how my battery life.
Do not ask him.
Seriously, I'm so ticked off about it.
You can't don't bring it up again.
I did as hard as I could to purge the whole thing from my mind before the programs.
Shut up about it.
I did all.
I have done everything.
Don't get me started on it.
Nobody's going to care.
And it's not going to solve anything.
And I don't want to get ticked off for the rest of the program.
I can't afford to let it happen.
Don't ask with the six devices.
Don't ask me about it.
Why are you bringing it up?
It isn't.
That's the point.
Nobody cares.
Everybody thinks battery life's a problem.
What's special about mine?
One, two.
I'm serious.
This has got me so ticked off last night I almost broke a window.
Okay, back now to what I was into.
There's another story.
This is from thehill.com.
Oh, oh, one thing.
Trump is saying that he's got a huge endorsement coming today.
And everybody's speculating, who is it now?
At this late age, it's not going to be some local committee man that is only known in Iowa.
It's got to be bigger than that.
So everybody's trying to get, okay, who would it be?
Who could possibly be so big an endorser that Trump would spend a lot of time promoting it?
Now, I'll tell you what I've heard, and it's just whispers, and nobody knows.
Senator Sessions.
And I don't know.
I'm not even guessing it.
I'm just passing on what some people have told me.
That would be huge in many reasons.
It could be a publication.
It could be a conservative publication.
You know, Trump's to kind of go, okay, National Review does their stop Trump issue.
So Trump goes out and gets an endorsement from another conservative magazine.
It could be that.
We'll just have to wait and see.
Now, the story here at theHill.com, Trump, I'll work with Democrats.
I saw that headline.
I said, now, wait just a minute.
What's this?
So I read the story.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is stressing his bona fides as a deal maker who would be able to enter the White House and work with congressional Democrats to hammer out agreements.
I think I'm going to be able to get along with Pelosi.
I've always had a good relationship with Nancy Pelosi.
Trump said today on MSNBC.
Yeah, and Harry Reid, he's going to be gone.
I've always had a decent relationship with Reed, Trump said, referring to Dingy Harry.
But I've always had a great relationship with him.
Trump said that he thought he would get along with just about everybody, including Senator Chuck U. Schumer, Democrat New York, likely to be the next Dingy Harry, the Senate Democrat leader.
Trump said he's been close to Schumer in many ways for quite a while.
Now, what is this?
This is not what Trump's legion of supporters want to hear, but it's interesting.
Is this not exactly what establishment Republicans claim we have to be able to do?
How many times have you heard it from Governor Christie?
You heard it from Senator McCain.
We probably heard it in one form or another from Jeb Bush.
I'm sure we heard it from Governor Kasich.
They've all touted their ability to cross the aisle.
They've all touted their ability to cross the aisle to work with Democrats to show that we can make Washington work.
A number of establishment Republicans have stated that they know how to make deals with the Democrats, how to be bipartisan, how to make Washington work.
That's what establishment Republican candidates say.
The establishment of the Republican Party thinks that's what you have to say in order to expand your base beyond just your conservative base voters.
The Republican Party thinks they can't win the presidency with Republican votes alone.
And they believe what's been said about them in the form of criticism that they're intolerant and that they're racist and bigoted and all that.
And so the establishment Republicans, you know this better than I do, for years have been making the case, Romney did it.
I'm the guy.
I'm the guy who can work with the Democrats.
And every time one of them said it, we cringed.
Or worse, every time one of them said it, we started.
That's not the, we don't want to work with them.
We want to beat them.
We want to defeat them.
We don't want to work with them.
We don't want to compromise our core in order to get along with them.
Because that's what happens.
In order to compromise, they don't compromise anything.
We give up everything.
We work with them.
Latest example, the budget deal.
But I mean, that's just one of many.
And now here comes Trump bragging on MSNBC, I will work with Democrats, touting his friendships with Democrat leaders in the House and the Senate.
Maybe he thinks he's already got the primaries wrapped up.
Maybe he thinks he's got the nomination.
I don't know.
But this is the kind of thing, this is the kind of thing the establishment, the mainstream Republican leadership in Washington, this is the kind of thing that they advocate.
This is the kind of thing they think they need.
And the candidate they've been paranoid about, the candidate they've done everything they could to stop, the candidate they have been scared to death is going to blow up and ruin their party is now out there echoing what they believe.
What do you make of this?
Back after this.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
Rush Limboy here behind the golden EIB microphone to the phones we start in St. Louis.
This is, is it Lisa?
Is that right?
Lisa.
Lisa, great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Thank you so much.
You know, I really paused when you talked about what Trump was saying about Pelosi and Reed, that, you know, he's got a good relationship.
He can work with them.
They're the reason the country is in ruins, I think.
They're the reasons the economy has been wrecked, I think, is because of Obamacare.
They have done all of that.
And it's almost like Trump is saying, you know, I'm going to work with them and make deals with them, and maybe the country will be less wrecked.
The country will be less ruined.
You know, if he's got, if his campaign theme is to make America great again, that's not the way to get it done.
Yeah, I hear you.
I think what's going on here, the entire interview features, and we have a ban on MSNB, so I don't have any audio of this, and I'm not going to lift the ban for this.
I can just easily tell you what they said.
So, cookie, don't go racing around there trying to get the video.
This all happened in a conversation about Ted Cruz in which Trump kept repeating how nasty Cruz is and how nobody in Washington likes him and how therefore nobody's going to cooperate with him if he's president.
He's never going to be able to get anything done because Cruz can't make deals because nobody likes Cruz.
He's just a nasty guy.
He went on and on what a nasty guy Cruz is.
He said, nobody, he's a guy nobody likes and nobody trusts.
He's a nasty guy.
He says things that are very nasty.
So I have to be nastier than him.
And it's just one of those things.
I've been in politics all my life, Trump said.
I've been dealing with politicians all my life.
So I think it's his attack on Cruz.
And he may not, I don't know, he may not realize that this is not something his base supporters are going to get excited about.
In fact, they may have red flags over it.
I think he thinks he's just running and ripping Cruz and touting his own abilities over what he believes are Cruz's inabilities and deficiencies.
And so either way, I mean, no matter how you cut this, it's going to give people like you and others who are for him some pause.
I would have to.
Right.
Well, you know, if Trump wins and he decides he's going to work with Pelosi and Reed, that means he's going to be working with, according to him, the losers.
Why should he have to work with the losers?
You know, it just sounds to me like he's doing great because he's really something different.
Yeah.
And I just wonder if it plays out in Legal.
So you've got red flags because this does not sound like the guy who's been on the outside who's carving a niche for himself that's different and divorced from the way things usually go on.
And then you hear about this.
He sounds like any other Republican, right?
Right.
He sounds like an inside guy.
He sounds like the guy in the closed-door room.
Right.
Well, in the closed-door meeting, I mean, you know.
Well, he thinks it's clear that he thinks that he is promoting himself, that he's touting a super qualification.
And remember, the context is everybody hates Cruz.
Nobody will let Cruz do anything.
Nobody will work with Cruz because they distrust him.
He's a nasty guy.
He's going on and on and on about this.
Cruz is not going to be able to get anything done.
But I, I, Donald Trump, I love these guys.
I've made deals with these guys.
I've lived among these guys.
I can get things done with these guys.
And whether he stopped to think how his base supporters are going to hear that, I don't know.
And, you know, it would be fine to make deals with people whose ideas are good.
But if you're trying to make a deal with the people that gave us Obamacare that's been a drag on the economy, that's not good.
Yeah, look, I haven't changed.
My sole interest in this is beating these people.
My sole, it's at the top of my list of musts.
If we are going to have a chance at changing the direction of this country that the left has actually been have us moving in for years prior to Obama, Obama just turned on the afterburners.
The left, as I mentioned yesterday, owns the bureaucracy.
No matter they win or lose the presidency, they're going to have career leftists that nobody knows.
We don't know their names.
We don't know how long they've been there, but they're going to be able to write regulations.
They're going to be able to stop or support things on a whim.
We have basically lost control over the regulatory agencies of this country.
They operate solely under themselves.
Nobody's done anything to stop it.
And the vast majority of them are leftists, and they've been there for years.
Ditto the judiciary.
Democrats, if they lose the White House, it's not a fun thing, and they're not crazy about it.
But they can always fall back on the fact that they have the mechanisms in place to put all kinds of roadblocks in front of the Republicans.
And they're there.
So this is a long process if it's to be successful in changing the direction of the country.
And it's not going to be involving making deals with these people.
Not unless they are the ones that totally capitulate.
And I don't see that happening.
We are the ones that usually totally capitulate in a misguided effort to show the American people that they are wrong about what they think of Republicans.
So the Republicans accept the branding.
They accept that the criticism the Democrats have made is believed, and they operate on it from a purely defensive standpoint.
The only way that they can grow is to agree with the Democrats.
Therefore, people couldn't possibly think they're racist or sexists or bigots or whatever the other criticisms are because they're agreeable.
They want to work with them.
They want to show they can govern and they can be bipartisan.
And that's supposed to change public opinion toward Republicans.
And all it's going to do is secure additional continuing Democrat Party victory.
So my top of my list throughout all of this has been these people have got to be stopped politically.
They have got to be defeated.
Working with them, cooperating with them is not going to make a positive difference, secure positive change in any way.
This has been my problem with the Republican establishment.
I hear McCain say, I'm the guy across the aisle.
Okay, check that one off the list.
Not interested, not what we need, not helpful, not useful.
Governor Christie, one that says, look, if I'm elected president, I'll listen to Democrats.
If they got good ideas, I'll listen to them.
Check it off the list.
Not what's important right now.
The evidence is in.
Like you say, Lisa, these people have destroyed the country and they are continuing to destroy the country.
The evidence, we don't have to speak theoretically anymore.
All we have to do is point to real life, life circumstances, and explain to people.
You want to know why you can't find a job?
You want to know why your health care is a mess?
You want to know why whatever's wrong is wrong?
Democrat Party.
Not a theory.
Evidence is in.
So working with them?
Nope.
Not helpful.
Back after this.
Don't go away.
And now, yesterday, there were people who were worried that Trump was going to be an authoritarian, a dictator, kind of like Obama.
He was going to be just doing what he wants to do, whether Congress cares or not.
And now, today, people are worried that he's going to work with the other party, work with the Democrats.
Anyway, that's it for the first hour in the can on the way over to the distinguished Limbaugh Broadcast Museum, virtual museum.