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Jan. 27, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:25
January 27, 2016, Wednesday, Hour #3
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And we're back at it, ladies and gentlemen, El Rushbow behind the golden EIB microphone analysis and insight unavailable.
Anywhere else.
Always great to have you here.
Always.
It's just a thrill.
I look forward each and every day to being here with you guys.
800 282-2882, if you want to be on the program.
I want to go back to Mike, who's driving around the truck.
He's from Sykeston, Missouri.
It's 30 miles south of where I grew up in Cape Girardeau.
And he was you you wanted to talk about Cruz.
Obviously a big Cruz supporter.
You've got a uh very positive attitude about Cruz and his intellect and his ability to take the heat.
Where were you going with that?
Well, my my question is obviously as Cruz's arrived in the poll of Donald Trump taking in, you know, taking him on more and seeing him as an enemy and wanted to combat him, which is, you know, rightly so as any candidate would do.
My question is how do you think Cruz is handling the heat?
How is he handling the uh the new side of Trump that he's seeing the abrasiveness of Trump uh coming from Trump and not just another member of his party, the Senate, or the media.
I think he's handling it well.
I think he's known that it was coming, and I think he's he's amped up well for it and prepared well for it.
And I think he will probably take full advantage if Trump actually doesn't show up tomorrow night, I think he's going to take full advantage of it, and the other candidates will try to as uh as well.
But I don't think you can make Ted Cruz wilt.
I I don't think there's any kind of heat that's going to cause him to shrink.
Uh he rises to the occasion.
The thing about Ted Cruz is that you never have to doubt, you never have to doubt his conservatism.
And you can, in fact, you can be totally confident that that's who he is.
He's not going to have to remember what to say when it's in his heart.
It is part of his fabric.
It's his essence of who he is.
And so he is able to articulate it, explain it, implement it in ways that are infectious and positive, and he never wavers from it.
He is a committed true believer, and I say this in in comparison to somebody like Romney, who is not conservative but wanted people to think that he was.
Those kinds of people have to study conservatism.
They do it with people who have a misunderstanding of it, and so they come up with phrases that they think will be persuasive that will convince conservatives that they're one of them.
But they always blow it.
God bless him, Mitt Romney describing himself as a severe conservative.
Well, Kat was out of the bag.
There's no such thing.
But he was trying to tell people, he's trying to assure conservatives he's committed.
He meant to say that he was committed, rock solid conservative, but there's no such thing as severe conservative, but somebody who's not conservative and has a negative impression of it, will think of somebody who's committed to it as a severe.
It's not a positive or uplifting laudatory term.
My point is with Ted Cruz, there's no phoniness here.
There's no pretense, and he's not gaming you.
He's not something else pretending better than anybody else to be a conservative.
And I don't think Mike, you have any worries at all that he's going to wilt uh to a challenge or from a challenge.
I mean, it's not very many people that would go to the floor of the Senate and openly proclaim that the leader of his party in the Senate flat out lied to him on the floor of the Senate.
And not too many people would do that precisely because of the fear of the blowback on something like that.
So Cruz is everything you want.
He is a committee, he's a true believer.
He uh is confident and and and uh has the ability to inspire.
And he's so so much so that I, you know, I'll tell you what's gonna happen.
I think you look down the road here, looking through the proverbial crystal ball.
If either one of these guys wins, either Trump or Cruz, and I don't think we could say this about any of the others in the race.
If either one of those men is elected president, the entirety of the Washington establishment is going to be out sabotaging them.
Whatever their agenda is.
They're going to be stabbed in the back by members of both parties as payback.
Remember, Washington is not conservative.
The Republican Party per se is not conservative.
The last thing the Washington, as Cruz calls it, the cartel, the last thing the Washington cartel wants is anybody whittling it away.
There's nobody in Washington that wants it to get any smaller.
There's nobody in Washington who wants it to get any poorer.
There's nobody in Washington that wants any less attention, less focus, less power emanating from the place.
And Trump and Cruz present a challenge to that in different ways.
Cruz's challenge is that he is a full-fledged conservative, and his objective is going to be to reduce the size of government, to limit the government's role in everyday life, to cut taxes, to therefore reduce the amount of revenue flowing into Washington.
He's going to do everything he can to pare down the welfare state and bring some sort of fiscal responsibility, coupled with an associated increase in individual liberty and freedom.
Cruz believes that it's the people who make the country work, that it's not Washington or policy.
He thinks that stuff gets in the way.
He wants to broom it, get as much of it out of the way as he can.
Well, everybody in Washington lives off of government, Leviathan.
The bigger it is, the better.
The bigger and more money it's got, the more money there is to get.
The last thing they want is Washington being de-emphasized.
So they'll be out to sabotage Cruz.
When it comes to Trump, uh Trump is going to be implementing his own agenda, and he doesn't care.
He'll be trying to do it without people in Washington if he has to.
But precisely because he doesn't play the game, precisely because he breaks the rules, these guys are going to do everything they can to try to sabotage anything he wants.
In fact, folks, it's it's so bad that I have no doubt that the degree of sabotage would be such that even if it's harmful to the country in a temporary basis, it will still happen.
Because we're talking about people who want to preserve the things that create their standard of living, make no mistake that's what all this.
Washington is the greatest source of revenue.
Look at all the people that feed off that trough there.
I mean, it's not just elected officials.
It's not just the lobbyists.
There are more people doing nothing in Washington and getting paid for it than you could shake a stick at.
Under the guise of uh policy, uh, creation or uh analysis or writing, well, whatever it is.
I mean, it's just people in all over that town.
People are trying to game the regulatory system for themselves.
But the point is it's where the money is.
That's what attracts people to it.
Not ideology, not ideas.
It took me a long time to learn this, and I'm so naive.
I always had these civics 101 thoughts running around my head that everybody there was actually interested in doing the best thing for the country and the people, and they're not.
They're trying to do the best thing for themselves.
And it makes total sense.
The U.S. Treasury, which collects about three trillion dollars a year, happens to be in Washington.
Why wouldn't a whole bunch of people who want some of that money go there?
And that's what it is.
And they're trying to get their hands on whatever amount they can, in whatever way that can be seen as legitimate as they can dream up.
And both these guys, Trump and Cruz, in their own different ways, present a threat to that quote-unquote Order.
So both will be deeply sabotaged.
The attempts to deny them policy success, agenda success, to thwart every move they make to make them look ineffective or what have you.
Your question really is how will Cruz bear up under all that with everybody in that town ganging up against?
He'll do just fine.
Same he'll do the same thing Trump would do.
Go right over their heads and go right to you, right to the country, get on media, however which way they can, and tell you what's going on.
Because the election of either one of those two men contains a message, and that is Washington has to change.
It's got to be reduced.
It's got to be whittled down.
It's got to become less dominant and less of a factor in everybody's day-to-day life.
And the people that live and work there, and by the way, when I say derive their standard of living, that's exactly what I mean.
It's their job.
Their job is government, one way or another.
That's how they earn their living.
And the unemployment rate where they live is only 3%.
And the per capita income is sky high.
You want to talk about the wealth gap.
The real wealth gap you need to talk about is the wealth gap between people live in Washington and people that don't.
So either one of these two people, Cruz or Trump, present an existential threat to the established order.
It would be like let me see if I can come up with a golf analogy.
It w it would it would be like if the uh Des Moines JCs decided to take over Augusta National.
The people at Augusta no way.
Whatever.
That may not be the perfect analogy, but I'm you know i it it it hopefully it it makes the uh nothing against the Des Moines JCs.
That's not that don't take it that way at all.
Back to the bones we go to East Jordan, Michigan.
Linwood, uh great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Thank you, Roshay.
This is a great, great show today.
You've answered uh questions far and above what I'd anticipated.
The point that I wanted to make was when I uh got up this morning to listen to the early news and realized uh was happening, uh, it hit me like a ton of bricks that this election is really come down to what our founding fathers uh uh put forth in personal liberty, uh free market economy and and our Judeo-Christian values.
Um that was the formula for the success of this country.
And this election is about those values versus government.
It's as simple as that.
And and what was it?
What was it in the news today, Lynn Wood, that brought that into focus for you?
What hit you in that?
Well, it was the uh seeing the way that uh Fox News and you earlier in your show, the way that you addressed that was uh went right on.
And and the lady that called uh with the re uh reaction uh, you know, to Megan Kelly uh back in August at the debate.
Uh I had a similar reaction to that.
And uh, you know uh when you take uh Trump, Carly, and and Ben Carson out of the equation, everybody represents government.
And everybody, and government therefore is uh it's it's as you said, it uh uh that's the way the game is played.
It's government telling us what to do.
We are governed by consent of the governed, and that's what Washington has forgotten, which by the way, your rush uh revere series is really great.
And uh if I might add, uh your your arguments are so compelling when you allow your Judeo-Christian values, uh, your faith to come forth to make those points, and I applaud you for that.
I love you for it, pray for you, you and your wife, and it just uh really appreciate being able to listen to your comments.
Thank you very much.
I I would I would I really appreciate that.
You're very insightful.
Um, and I'm flattered.
Uh I would include Ted Cruz in your list of uh people with Fiorina and and Ben Carson and and And Trump.
But let uh well, I let me veer into something here that I touched on this.
If you missed it, you might want to check the uh transcript or listen to the first half hour of the program today at Rushlimbaug.com.
I want to go back to Megan Kelly because she's she's uh she's under assault here from a lot of places today, including on this program.
There have been some callers.
She's had her supporters who said they were disappointed.
There have been others who have been uh critical in the sense that these reporters are just getting too big and have become the story, not just a part of the story, but the story, and they're not, and they're overshadowing things and so forth.
And I uh I have this this two-pronged thing here.
I've got this little story of media it from August 25th of this past year.
This is after, of course, the the September 6th debate, or the August 6th debate, when all this blew up in the first place.
Donald Trump has been criticizing Megan Kelly all over the place for asking him tough questions at the GOP debate, but he was singing a far different tune four years ago.
Back in late 2011, Trump sat down with Kelly and talked about hosting a Republican debate.
Yet for those of you who don't remember, back in 2011, Trump floated the idea of him moderating a newsmax Republican debate because, quote, I know the issues better than most.
The debate did not happen.
Trump said that there are a lot of debate moderators who don't know anything about the big issues America faces.
And Megan Kelly said, Do you really think you're a better moderator than I am?
And Trump said, No way, Megan.
No, I could never beat you.
That wouldn't even be close.
That that would be no contest.
You have done a great job, by the way, and I mean it.
So that was Trump back in 2011.
Obviously, things have transpired and they're different, and things have changed here.
But let me I mentioned at the beginning of the program, I know Meghan Kelly.
I've I'm not in her circle of close friends.
But she has she's been to my home.
We've been out uh a couple of times.
She was she was at my wedding.
And I I just want to stick up for her in one regard here.
She is extremely professional.
She prides herself in uh in being professional.
She takes what she does very seriously.
She has long term ambition.
She is ambitious, nothing wrong with uh with being ambitious uh whatsoever.
Uh she is something that that she takes very seriously what she does.
And she can take the heat uh as as well as anybody else can.
But I don't I don't think Megan Kelly is anybody's weapon.
I think she's she's self-contained and she's uh who she is.
She has uh the same kind of professional aspirations that that anybody else uh in the business does.
And she's very, very grateful and gratified for the success that she's had and the people who've helped her along the way.
She's not a bad person.
Yeah, but before I forget this, since I have promised this a couple days here from a website called the Political Insider, uh, which is actually using source material from Crane's New York, Crane's business, Crane's New York.
The uh so it's it's not just this website that you may not have heard of.
The actual source here is Crane's New York business publication.
Left wingers are on New York City about to make it 100% legal to urinate in public.
Sturdley can't believe this.
Even now he can't believe it.
Why are they gonna do this?
I'm just gonna read what it says here, because many minorities have been arrested for it.
They would rather legalize the behavior than enforce basic rules of public sanitation.
From Crane's New York, urinating and drinking in public would no longer be treated as crimes under a package of bills.
New York City Council were considered to ease enforcement of quality of life offenses that lawmakers say clog the courts And have been disproportionately enforced against minorities.
So there are just too many people urinating in public.
There are too many people violating basic hygiene in public.
It's clogging the courts.
It's impossible to enforce.
And besides that, the majority of the perps are minorities.
We just don't feel right.
And we just we don't feel right in force.
It's not fair that they should, you know, it it's not their fault they don't have anywhere else to urinate.
So why why we don't want to hold that against them because life is already stacked against them enough as it is because they're minorities.
The city council stated uh actually this uh scheduled a January 25th hearing on the proposed laws, supported by the council's speaker, Melissa Mark Viverito, plus a majority of her 50 colleagues, and the police commissioner, it says here.
That that that's what makes me doubt this.
Bill Bratton's on board for this.
The proposal would remove the possibility of permanent criminal records for public urination and violating park rules, mostly treating them as civil offenses, along with public drinking, littering, and excessive noise.
According to the New York Times, one liberal official who sponsored this change noted it was designed to help minorities reach their full potential.
To pee in I'm telling you, I don't.
Here's a quote from Ms. Mark Viverito.
We know that the system has been really rigged against communities of color in particular.
So the question's always been what can we do in this job to minimize the unnecessary interaction with the criminal justice system so these young people can really fulfill their potential.
And it says here it's a far step away from the tough rules implemented by Rudy, who cleaned up the streets with his broken window poly.
This sounds like it's from the onion.
This I mean, this sounds like this.
Yes, we're going to not enforce the laws on public urination because most of them are minorities.
We feel so bad for them, and so many of them clogging the court system now, and it's denying them their full potential.
This this reads like it's from uh one of those satire sites.
But that's what it says.
Crane's New York, quoting the New York Times in there.
Look, let's let's wait to spine this is real before we start reacting here like this.
This is kind of one of the reasons I've been at arm's length with this thing.
It doesn't sound believable.
Not even liberals, if they really think this are stupid enough to talk this way.
In other words, public urination will be allowed so that people can reach their full potential.
I don't doubt that De Blasio thinks it, but I can't believe these guys are run around to actually say it.
To be quoted in the New York Times.
Here's Connie in Hartford, Connecticut.
We head back to the phones.
Hi, Connie.
Great to have you here.
Hi, Rush.
Um, I feel kind of bad dissing uh Megan after you gave her such praise, but I'm not in agreement about her professionalism, and I'll tell you why.
Okay.
She had on the mother of one of the victims of Benghazi, and this poor woman was obviously suffering still three years later.
And after this woman she made a statement in the and the mother said bullfeathers.
She went, Oh, Betty, I know, but they're saying there's nothing that they could do.
It's like she poured salt into the wounds of this poor lady.
Hmm.
I didn't see that.
Um I if you can dial it back up, look at it.
It was just like I I almost blame Fox a little bit too.
But wait a minute, what now what actually happened?
She had a Benghazi mother on and she did what?
The mother was grieving.
Yeah.
And it was after Hillary did 11 hours of testimony.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then she brought the mother up, and the mother was so upset.
I felt so bad for that poor lady.
And was the mother critical of Hillary?
Was the mother saying Hillary lied to Hillary?
Okay.
Yeah.
And you know, she came out and said, Oh, bullfeathers, and and the woman was And what did Megan do?
And Megan said, Oh, Betty, I I know, but they say there's nothing that they can do.
And I was like, are you kidding me?
It was almost like Fox should have taken her off the air.
So, are you sure are you sure it wasn't that Megan was commiserating?
I wanted to believe that, but I just something was wrong at that time.
I I I'm not I'm not a a fan of hers.
Okay.
Well that I understand that.
But look, uh, this is one of the not to make this personal.
This is one of the reasons that I'm not crazy about TV.
I can't to the number of times I was misunderstood.
I can't I can't tell you the number of times.
Well, I had my own TV show for one.
I I thought I had a great show, and I'd go home and I'd start listening to feedback, and people were complaining about my tie.
Or some extraneous stuff, or that I should have said something other than what I said.
I said, you know what, this never happens after a radio show.
It never happens after a radio show.
And I concluded that people watch and pay attention to TV in an entirely different way than they do radio.
And I know why.
I have figured it out.
Radio, I think is the most powerful influential medium out there in the hands of somebody who knows how to do it.
Because there's only one sense of perception you're using, and that's hearing.
And everything else, it's up to a talented host using your imagination to provide the pictures.
But TV provide the pictures, which is a distraction from what you're hearing.
Uh but boy, uh I that's why I've always believed that radio, there's nothing more intimate done right, done well.
There's not and that's because of this intimacy that can be achieved.
Um don't misunderstand.
People are excellent on TV and like Oprah, she can build the same kind of uh bond.
Trump's great on TV.
Um, but they enjoy it and so forth.
I mean, I don't I don't have an uh an active dislike for it.
It's just I prefer this.
So there's a bunch of other reasons.
TV is a giant collaboration, even when you're a guest.
Uh and there's no I've never had a meeting before this show.
Never.
I've never had a meeting.
I've never taught I've just come here and do it.
And television, for every hour, there's probably two and a half hours of meetings, if not more, to go into it.
And you have to collaborate.
And I'm not a collaborator.
I am a solo flyer.
So I have varying different reasons.
But I've also learned that people perceive things entirely differently when they're watching TV, as opposed to uh listening to radio or talking to people in in person.
Anyway, I pr Connie, I appreciate the call.
Thanks much.
Brief, brief timeout.
Back with much more after this.
You know, folks, I got a little bit of guilt here.
We've had a really or we had just a really interesting roster of sound bites, and I just didn't get to them today.
And it's it's it's a great stuff from here from Trump.
Examples of people in the media.
There's a lot of people in the drive-by so that just think Trump is pulling off a brilliant maneuver here.
It's all rooted in their hatred of Fox.
Um but but there's sound bites here from from Trump as well.
Uh and the problem with holding them over is that there's gonna be others tomorrow uh that will replace these.
But Cookie, keep keep keep these handy for tomorrow.
You you never know uh what's gonna happen between now and then.
And some of these things are gems.
And there's a couple in here involving me about this whole thing where I have again been misreported as having said that populism and nationalism have usurped conservatism.
I didn't say it.
Furthermore, I was quoting another writer who postulated it, and I have been discussing it as a what if it's true.
But here NPR, they ask Rich Lowry about it again.
Roach Limbo, they don't think it's a bad thing at nationalism and popul and populism overtaking conservatism.
And they take that quote out of context without any acknowledgement that it's a question that I'm asking.
They assert that it's something I'm saying and then ask conservatives to react to it.
This is like the third or fourth day in a row of this.
Anyway, um to say that we we've covered everything and in great detail.
And one other thing here.
Megan Kelly doesn't need to be defended.
And I don't, I don't, I'm not trying to embarrass her by doing so.
I'm just if again, if you if you go back to the first half hour of the program, and if you missed it, it'll be at Rushlinbaugh.com.
She's probably up there now.
It's the transcript and the and the audio.
Uh but it's she's she's a professional and she's ambitious, and she she's trying to be the best she can be.
And not everybody is the same in the way they happen to conduct themselves in the media and so forth.
She's breathing some pretty rarefied air near him.
She's uh there are very few people who have reached her level.
And it's she's the best I've I've been able to determine that she is doing her best to not let it get away from her, ego-wise.
I mean, she takes the job very seriously, she doesn't assume anything.
It's something that she thinks she's got to get up and work hard at and prove every day.
So I know there have been a lot of people criticizing her here today and and and and so forth.
She doesn't need me to to defend her.
I'm just sharing some things about her I know to keep all this in some kind of perspective.
She may have been trying to embarrass Trump.
She may have been trying to put Trump through the ringer.
This is what journalists do with candidates.
That's what I meant earlier about the game and the rules.
And Trump just doesn't want to play.
He doesn't think he should have to.
Why subject himself to unfriendlies when it isn't necessary?
Everybody else says, that's what I got to do.
This is the game.
These are the rules.
Media shows up for a debate, put up with whatever they do.
Trump says the hell with putting up with what they do, the hell with that.
I'm running this show.
I'm not going to put up with them insulting me.
The hell with that.
So that's where we are.
Here is Linda Grand Junction, Colorado.
Glad you waited.
Hello.
Hi.
Thanks.
Thank you, Rush, for taking my phone call.
You bet.
Um, my question um was the two people that I think that you've had on your show so far that have um called Megan Kelly, you know, unprofessional.
Um my question is when they they ask that, uh, why um do they not think Donald Trump is unprofessional?
His comments that he made about her personally, or uh made um of other candidates personally attacking them.
Do you not think that's unprofessional?
Well, you see, this is a very interesting and good point.
People throughout the political spectrum are asking themselves, how in the name of Sam Hill does this guy survive by talking about her being on the wrong time of the month in that debate by mentioning the blood.
How does he survive saying he has no respect for McCain being a POD?
There people are asking that question all over the place.
And the fact that he is not hurt by any of that, they've sort of given up in frustration.
It's one of the great, great mysteries of this whole campaign, one that in which I have endeavored to explain.
And it's all rooted, the answer is all rooted in what I continue to call the bond that Trump has built with his supporters and so forth.
But sadly, at this moment we're out of time for further detail, which means don't miss tomorrow.
Well, another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence.
Total completa.
But we are back tomorrow, revved and ready and loaded for whatever happens to come our way.
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