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Jan. 27, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:18
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 Girardo.
And he was, you wanted to talk about Cruz.
Obviously, you're a big Cruz supporter.
You've got a very positive attitude about Cruz and his intellect and his ability to take the heat.
Where were you going with that?
Well, my question is, obviously, as Cruz's rise in the polls, Donald taken him on more and seen 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 new side of Trump that he's seeing the abrasiveness of Trump coming from Trump and not just another member of this 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 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 well.
But I don't think you can make Ted Cruz wilt.
I don't think there's any kind of heat that's going to cause him to shrink.
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, because 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 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, cat 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 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.
There are not too many people who would do that precisely because of the fear of the blowback on something like that.
So Cruz is everything you want.
He's a committee.
He's a true believer.
He is confident and has the ability to inspire.
And he's so much so that I'll tell you what's going to happen.
I 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 that 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, Trump is going to be implementing his own agenda, and 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 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 is.
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 policy creation or analysis or writing, whatever it is.
I mean, it's just people all over that town.
People that 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.
A U.S. Treasury, which collects about $3 trillion 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.
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 who 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 would be like if the Des Moines JCs decided to take over Augusta National.
The people at Augusta.
There's no way, whatever.
That may not be the perfect analogy, but hopefully it makes the nothing against the Des Moines JCs.
Don't take it that way at all.
Back to the bones we go to East Jordan, Michigan.
Lynn Wood, great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Thank you, Rasha.
This is a great, great show today.
You've answered questions far and above what I'd anticipated.
The point that I wanted to make was when I got up this morning listened to the early news and realized what was happening.
It hit me like a ton of bricks that this election has really come down to what our founding fathers put forth in personal liberty, free market economy, and our Judeo-Christian values.
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.
What was it in the news today, Lynn Wood, that brought that into focus for you?
What hit you in the middle?
Well, it was the seeing the way that Fox News and earlier in your show, the way that you addressed that was right on.
And the lady that called with the reaction to Megan Kelly back in August at the debate, I had a similar reaction to that.
And, you know, when you take Trump, Carly, and Ben Carson out of the equation, everybody represents government.
And everybody, and government, therefore, is it's, as you said, 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 Revere series is really great.
And if I might add, your arguments are so compelling when you allow your Judeo-Christian values, 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 I just really appreciate being able to listen to your comments.
Thank you very much.
I would really appreciate that.
You're very insightful, and I'm flattered.
I would include Ted Cruz in your list of people with Fi Arena and Ben Carson and Trump.
But let me veer into something here.
I touched on this.
If you missed it, you might want to check the transcript or listen to the first half hour of the program today at rushlimbaugh.com.
I want to go back to Megan Kelly because 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 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 have this two-pronged thing here.
I've got this little story of mediaite from August 25th of this past year.
This is after, of course, 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.
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 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 mention at the beginning of the program, I know Megan Kelly.
I'm not in her circle of close friends, but she's been to my home.
We've been out a couple of times.
She was at my wedding.
And I just want to stick up for her in one regard here.
She is extremely professional.
She prides herself in being professional.
She takes what she does very seriously.
She has long-term ambition.
She is ambitious.
Nothing wrong with being ambitious whatsoever.
She is something that she takes very seriously what she does.
And she can take the heat as well as anybody else can.
But I don't think Megan Kelly is anybody's weapon.
She's self-contained and she's who she is.
She has the same kind of professional aspirations that anybody else 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.
Now, before I forget this, since I have promised this a couple days here, from a website called the Political Insider, which is actually using source material from Crane's New York, Crane's business, Crane's New York.
So 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 who run New York City are about to make it 100% legal to urinate in public.
Sturdily can't believe this.
Even now, he can't believe it.
Why are they going to do this?
I'm just going to 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 would consider 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.
And we just don't feel right.
And we just, we don't feel right.
And for it's not fair that they should, you know, it's not their fault.
They don't have anywhere else to urinate.
So 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 actually this scheduled a January 25th hearing on the proposed laws, supported by the council speaker, Melissa Mark Vivarito, plus a majority of her 50 colleagues and the police commissioner, it says here.
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.
I'm telling you, I don't Here's a quote from Ms. Mark Vivarito.
We know that the system has been really rigged against communities of color in particular.
So the question has 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's a far step away from the tough rules implemented by Rudy, who cleaned up the streets with his broken window policy.
This sounds like it's from the onion.
I mean, this sounds like this.
Yes, we're going to not enforce the lies on public urination because most of them are minorities.
We feel so bad for them.
There's so many of them clogging the court system now, and it's denying them their full potential.
This reads like it's from 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 wait.
This finds 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 running 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.
I feel kind of bad dissing Megan after you gave her such praises, but I'm not in agreement about her professionalism, and I'll tell you why.
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 and the mother said, bull feathers, 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.
If you could dial it back up, look at it.
It was just like, I almost blamed Fox a little bit too.
Wait a minute.
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.
Was the mother critical of Hillary?
Was the mother saying Hillary lied to Hillary?
Okay.
Yep.
And, you know, she came out and said, oh, bullfeathers.
And the woman was.
And what did Megan do?
And Megan said, oh, Betty, 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 it's holding that length.
Are you sure it wasn't that Megan was commiserating?
I wanted to believe that, but I just, just something was wrong at that time.
I'm not a fan of hers.
Okay.
Well, I understand that.
But look, 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, the number of times I was misunderstood.
I can't tell you the number of times.
Well, I had my own TV show for one.
I thought I had a great show, and I'd go home and I'd start listening to feedback.
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, 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 provides the pictures, which is a distraction from what you're hearing.
But boy, that's why I've always believed that radio, there's nothing more intimate, done right, done well.
And because of this intimacy that can be achieved.
Now, don't misunderstand.
People are excellent on TV, and like Oprah, she can build the same kind of bond.
Trump's great on TV.
But they enjoy it and so forth.
I mean, I don't have an active dislike for it.
It's just I prefer this.
There's a bunch of other reasons.
TV is a giant collaboration, even when you're a guest.
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, that 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 listening to radio or talking to people in person.
Anyway, 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 soundbites, and I just didn't get to them today.
And it's some great stuff from here from Trump, examples of people in the media.
There's a lot of people in a drive-by that just think Trump is pulling off a brilliant maneuver here.
It's all rooted in their hatred of Fox.
But there's soundbites here from Trump as well.
And the problem with holding them over is that there's going to be others tomorrow that will replace these.
But Cookie, keep these handy for the moment.
You never know what's going to 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 asked Rich Lowry about it again.
Rich Limbaugh, they don't think it's a bad thing at nationalism 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, not to say that we've covered everything and in great detail.
And one other thing here, Megan Kelly doesn't need to be defended.
And I'm not trying to embarrass her by doing so.
I'm just, again, if you go back to the first half hour of the program, and if you missed it, it'll be at rushlimbaugh.com.
It's probably up there now.
It's the transcript and the audio.
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 there.
I mean, there are very few people who have reached her level.
And she's the best, 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 so forth.
And she doesn't need me 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's not going to put up with it.
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, to 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.
My question was to people that I think that you've had on your show so far that have called Megan Kelly unprofessional.
My question is when they ask that, why do they not think Donald Trump is unprofessional?
His comments that he made about her personally or made 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 POW?
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 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.
Toto la completa.
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