We are back, El Rushbo, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have with half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's open line Friday!
Yeah, one big hour remains here for you to talk about whatever you want.
I know it's going to be the debate, the campaign.
That's fine.
We'll try to squeeze as many as we can in in our remaining hour here.
And a couple things, soundbite-wise, some accompanying news stories I want to touch on.
800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
There was one thing I noticed.
I need to observe this.
One thing I noticed during the entire day yesterday, the day before, about the possibility that Trump might not show up.
Now, obviously, Fox News was concerned, and they did not hold back their concern.
I mean, O'Reilly's got Trump on the night before begging him to show up.
Fox News was engaged, apparently, in negotiations all day.
So they were making it known.
They really would like Trump to be there.
It was not something that they didn't care about.
But the RNC, did you notice that the drive-by media, well, not the drive-by so much, but the Republican establishment didn't seem all that concerned about this?
And you know why that is, don't you?
Oh, because this set the table to take out Ted Cruz, who they really hate.
Remember now, the establishment's out there saying, we think we could deal with Trump.
Trump, yeah, he'll make deals with it.
Trump's not a rigid ideologue, meaning he's not a conservative.
But Cruz, Cruz is somebody we can't do business with.
Cruz, if he wins, he's going to be straight down the board conservative through and through.
We don't want any of that.
Trump's absence put Cruz in the center of the stage, which meant that all the fire was going to be aimed at Ted Cruz.
So Trump not showing up actually facilitated the desires of the Republican establishment.
Well, it furthered the possibility of their desires.
I mean, I'm not saying the RNC got together with Fox and said, hey, take out Cruz, because everybody's going to be aiming at Cruz anyway.
Of all the people there, he was the front runner.
Trump not there.
You can hit Trump all day long, but it's arguable whether you'll do much damage.
But you can go after Cruz if you want.
And a lot of people did.
Rubio did, understandably so.
The moderators were going after everybody.
It's just the way the moderators have decided to do these things.
We talked about that earlier.
So it did set Cruz up for headlines today that he did not come through.
He did not do quite as well.
This is the kind of thing the RNC or the Republican establishment doesn't mind seeing at all.
Just an observation.
And I don't think there's any question about it.
I thought Cruz did, I thought Cruz had a couple of really great moments.
Rubio did too.
Their story here in Vanity Fair, you might say, Vanity Fear, who gives a rush?
Who cares a wit about vanity fear?
Well, to a lot of the elites and the big-click guys in pop culture, Vanity Fair is like a Bible.
And their headline, A Lost Republican Field Struggles to Debate Without Donald Trump.
Subheadline is, without the gravitational pull of the reality star, the candidates suddenly became aimless.
As Thursday night's Republican presidential debate progressed, it became clear that the Trumpster had pulled the rest of the Republican candidates into his gravitational well, locking them into near-permanent orbit around his personality.
Without Trump, who boycotted the Fox News event over a disagreement with one of its hosts, that's not why he boycotted the thing.
The rest of the candidates seemed confused at how to define themselves on their own terms or to confront each other without the frontrunner president.
So this story clearly making these Republican candidates on the stage last night look like they were lost dwarves.
Big Daddy wasn't around.
Didn't know how to act without Big Daddy on the stage.
The writer here is Tina Wynne.
She's Vietnamese N-G-U-Y-E-N, pronounced Wynn.
A couple of pull quotes.
Nowhere was this more evident than in Megan Kelly's ruthless questioning, utterly devastating Rubio and Cruz, with pointed video clips of them flip-flopping on positions like amnesty and legalization of undocumented immigrants.
Cruz and Rubio likely anticipated those attacks on each other and probably hoped that the drama of their televised clash would differentiate each other, but they had no idea how to communicate a clear, unique answer to questioning from a third party.
Did you get that impression?
I mean, the clear opinion here is that Cruz and Rubio might have been ready for one or the other to come after them, but they were lost when Megan Kelly came after them.
Totally lost, totally unprepared for Megan Kelly's then and now video.
I don't think they came across as lost.
There might have been a brief moment of gulp.
What the hell is this?
But the recovery, Rubio's recovery, Cruz's recovery on this stuff was stellar to the point that Megan Kelly had to admit to Cruz after the debate on her show that after she had done exhaustive research, guess what?
She had learned that he was right all along, that he had been trying to poison the legislation with amendments that would make it, would expose it for what it was.
A lot of people say, well, thanks for nothing.
You conclude after the attempted destruction that he was right.
Another pull quote: In a normal cycle, candidates could hone those positions on air in front of millions of people, learning what the electorate responds to best and how to forge their own narrative.
But in this cycle, the majority of candidates have been forced to spend each debate attacking Trump's temperament and lack of leadership, slow to realize that his positions resonated with most of the country.
Excuse me, that's not exactly what happened here.
I mean, you can write, you can say that the candidates spent the debate attacking Trump's temperament, but that's because that's where the moderators took them.
Remember, that's what Cruz at the CNBC debate finally stood up in exasperation.
Look, this is pointless.
In the last 30 minutes, you have accused him of this, him of that.
Somebody over here are doing that, me of this.
But see, they played by the rules.
They followed the rules.
The moderators took them where they wanted to go.
They went there until finally somebody stood up.
Well, here's an example.
This is Megan Kelly opening the debate with a question about Trump, and it is for Ted Cruz.
Let's address the elephant not in the room tonight.
Donald Trump has chosen not to attend this evening's presidential debate.
What message do you think that sends to the voters of Iowa?
Let me say, I'm a maniac, and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat, and ugly.
And Ben, you're a terrible surgeon.
Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way.
I heard a lot of laughter there.
I had some people say, Cruz ought to leave the humor alone.
He's not a funny guy.
That kind of worked.
What are you looking at me like that for?
You don't think it worked?
I mean, it didn't work for you.
Okay.
Well, then let's try this.
This is Brett Baer, and he's asking a moment of Jeb Butch.
Dr. Krauthammer, by the way, Dr. Krauthammer said that this was Jeb's best night so far, except the last debate, which was his best night so far.
And then the night before that was his best night so far.
Dr. Krauthammer watched the debate.
He said that this is, but he's saying what he said that no, no, quest hands down.
This is Jeb's best debate.
In fact, Jeb might have finally triumphed in a debate.
I think Dr. Krauthammer said.
Let's see here.
So it is Brett Baer.
He says, Governor Bush, it's hard for anyone of your pedigree to avoid being called establishment.
But isn't that part of the problem in this race that three others on this stage are splitting the mainstream Republican vote and thereby possibly handing the nomination over to an anti-establishment candidate?
I kind of miss Donald Trump.
He was a little teddy bear to me.
We always had such a loving relationship during these debates and in between and the tweets.
I kind of miss him.
I wish he was here.
Everybody else was in the witness protection program when I went after him on behalf of what the Republican cause should be.
Look, I'm an establishment because my dad, the greatest man alive, was President of the United States, and my brother, who I adore as well, is a fantastic brother, was president.
Fine, I'll take it.
I guess I'm part of the establishment because Barbara Bush is my mom.
I'll take that too.
No, no, no, no.
Ryan says, he admits being part of the establishment because his parents are part of the establishment.
And since they were part of the establishment, how could he not be?
And he's proud of his parents, and so therefore he's going to be the establishment.
The question was, you're not the only one up there.
There's a bunch of them up here.
Aren't you afraid you guys might split the vote and leave it open for Trump?
Oh, no, I miss Donald.
I miss Trump.
He's a little teddy bear to me.
Next, this is the Today Show Today, Savannah Guthrie speaking with Chuck Todd about the Republican debate last night.
And Savannah Guthrie says, and normally at this time in the morning, I would ask who won the debate, but today I'm going to say who won the night?
Did Trump's big gamble pay off Chuck?
I think it did.
And the reason I think it paid off, because nobody on that debate stage was able to take advantage of the moment.
That was an opportunity for a couple of the frontrunners to come out and really go at Trump.
He wasn't there to respond, and they chose not to do it.
If you're Trump, you're sitting here going, well, this was great.
Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, the two guys chasing me, ended up beating each other up.
And oh, by the way, we're the targets of everybody else.
So then Willie Geist, who's also on the show, said, hey, a lot of people thought that Ted Cruz, because he's running so close with Trump in Iowa, would have a target on his back.
How did he handle that pressure last night, Chuck?
I think he struggled with it early in particular.
He was the one getting a lot of incoming.
I thought he looked a little testy at times.
His jokes fell a little flat.
His little tweaking of the moderators didn't seem to go over well.
If anything, Rubio may be nipping at his heels a bit.
This may be a closer three-way race here than we thought.
You know, I marvel at this.
I try to put myself in the position of people that are going to caucus on Monday night.
And by the way, we haven't discussed this.
I just assumed everybody knows what happens at a caucus.
But maybe it would be worthwhile just a short, short, short little illustration here, as it differs from going up to vote.
When you show up at your polling place to vote, you go in there, you do it in private.
You mark your ballot, as many of them as you can get, if you're a Democrat, and you turn them in and you leave.
You little sticker saying, I voted.
You feel like great citizen.
You walk around, you peel a sticker off when you walk out and get in your car.
You go home.
Tell everybody you vote.
When you go caucus, you go into what could be somebody's living room, a gymnasium, could be a library, any number of places, and all kinds of people from your district are in there.
And people of varying degrees of intensity supporting various numbers of candidates start working on you.
And you start caucusing.
You start talking about it.
It's like being on a jury.
You go in there and you start examining the evidence and who's for who and why.
And people work on you and try to change your mind, talk you out of what you're thinking.
You might do the same thing.
And it goes on for a little while, an hour or two.
And that's why everybody talks about the ground game, having a big ground operation is so important there, because you've got to turn out people that are going to show up to the caucus for you, committed to you, because everybody representing other candidates is going to try to shame you out of it, talk you out of it, threaten you out of it, or what have you.
And then, who is it, Bernie Sanders?
I think, no, it's the Hillary camp, is accusing crazy Bernie of bussing in a bunch of college students from out of state to show up at various caucus and pollute things, much as Obama did in 2000, which he did.
That's precisely what Obama did.
And he ended up winning the Hawkeye Caucasi when he wasn't really thought to be in the position of winning it.
I mean, back then, Hillary was going to just, even then, she was going to run the table.
So as I listened to these guys analyze the debates, he's like, here's Chuck Todd.
Well, you know, I don't know.
I think Cruz struggled with it early.
It's as though, imagine you're a caucus goer and you're going to go for Cruz.
And you like Cruz because you like his issues, you like his temperament, you like this.
So you want the guy to do well in a debate.
You watch a debate and maybe he's not doing well, but you really want him to.
I don't know that people analyze it the way these guys do.
You know, he didn't start out strong.
Man, those jokes that he tried to fill flat.
I can't caucus for Cruz.
I don't think it works that way.
It's the way they look at it.
It's the way these horse race types look at it.
This is like trying to analyze the outcome of a football game in the first quarter by judging who's breaking the huddle the fastest.
Who seems to have the momentum?
Well, there's going to be a whole bunch of momentum shifts before the game is over.
But it's, and it's not new.
It's just I've always been interested, perplexed at the same time in the way these professionals sit there and analyze these debates or performances half hour by half hour, five minutes by five minutes, answer by answer, as though this is how people are watching and their minds can be changed.
When in reality, most people's minds, if they're going to be changed, are going to be changed by others at the caucus leaning on them, pressuring them, what have you.
Got to take a break.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
And it's back to the phones with Rush Lindbaugh meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
This is Bob in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Hello.
Hello.
I'd like to thank you for taking my call today.
You bet, sir.
I think you did an excellent job of explaining phase one of Obama's plan to protect Hillary Clinton.
Phase two is the big somewhere in the White House, closed door, no recording devices, will be a meeting with the president, the Attorney General, and Secretary Clinton.
She will tearfully apologize for a lapse of judgment in the handling of her emails.
It'll be recognized that she is remorseful and that she has endured intolerable mental anguish over this.
They will grant her a presidential pardon, expunge her record, and seal the record to where nobody can mention it anymore.
Does she still run for president in this scenario?
Yeah, and if somebody tries to bring up all this good stuff, she'll sue them for slander because it never happened.
So, you're just trying to be funny here.
You're trying to catch me on a serious day trying to be funny and loosen things up here.
Do you really?
Well, as far as the lawsuit, yeah, that's kind of a gag.
But in the not-too-distant future, I can actually see a presidential pardon to help cover her to where she can become president.
Why would they go?
Why?
Why would they do that?
Well, as you said, there's all kinds of people in the FBI and other legal circles going crazy trying to figure out why nothing has been done about these.
Yeah, but this is, well, Bob, thank you.
We will continue.
Stay with us.
Okay.
Now, about our last caller's theorem, that essentially what's going to happen is that Hillary will be dragged into the White House.
There'll be Obama in there and Loretta Lynch, and that she will apologize, and she'll say she's sorry, and she wasn't aware, and so forth.
And they will announce she came in and apologized, and Obama will pardon her, presidential pardon, for any and all future acts, crimes related to this.
And then she will seal a record, they'll seal a record, but it never happened.
And she'll go run for president, and that'll be that.
Folks, I know Obama has said he doesn't think Hillary has done anything wrong.
He's on the record saying that a number of times.
Now, we just learned today the last batch of Hillary's email is not going to be released until the end of February, which is way past the original judge's deadline.
And the State Department's saying, no, we're going to hold these back.
It's a little too volatile to release them now.
They're claiming they've got built-in delays and there's all kinds of things stopping them and preventing them.
And now, get this.
Even Fox just ran this, and I've got this, this story is just been added to the mix that Hillary's emails are too damaging security-wise to release.
They're so bad, they contain such secrets, there are such transgressions, it is so bad, we can't release them.
It would compromise national security like it's never been compromised to release them.
Of course, if that's true, they already have compromised national security because it means that our enemies have already seen it.
So, them trying, these are so bad.
This is so volatile.
This is such juicy stuff.
We can't afford to release this stuff and make it public, which would tend to convey a cover-up.
But again, I'm just looking, question always comes down to this.
I can't tell you the number of times.
I asked you this last week.
How many times, for those of you who are adults and were adults back in the 90s, how many times in all of these past 25, 26 years, have you been led to believe by one story or another that we're going to get the Clintons?
This is it.
They're not going to slither out of this one.
This, whatever it is, Hillary stepped in and out.
How many times?
More times than you can count on two hands.
And each and every time, nothing ever comes of it.
Why should that change?
We have a Democrat totalitarian regime running the country.
A member of that regime is in line to be the next president.
Why on earth would that totalitarian regime take out one of its own ranking members?
And the only answer you can provide is that the current leader of the totalitarian regime doesn't want Hillary anywhere near his totalitarian agenda after he's gone.
It doesn't make sense that the Obama regime would take out one of their own.
But Rush, but Rush, he doesn't want her to be president.
Well, there's all kinds of ways to have done this before we've gotten this far.
But to me, it's the old experience guided by intelligence.
Angle, how many times, honestly, folks, how many times have you been led to believe that somebody has got the goods on Hillary?
Whitewater, Robert Redbone, and all of Cattle Futures, the Rose law firm billing record showing up out of clean air in the maps room in the White House, Monica Lewinsky, bimbo eruptions, Hillary Clinton running the show, Hillary Clinton lying about sneaking past sniper fire, wherever it was, and all the others lying to Grandeur, all these other things that I have forgotten.
How many of those?
This is it, this is, and nothing ever, ever happens.
So common sense would lead you to conclude nothing's going to come of this either.
And each of these previous incidents where at one point or another, somebody thought, this is it, we finally got the goods.
We've got that characteristic here.
All these people who claim to have seen the evidence the FBI has accrued.
We get Tom DeLay saying the FBI, oh, yeah, my FBI buddies tell me this is bad.
It's a slam dunk.
Daryl Ice is out there saying, I not only want to indict Hillary, I want to go get Huma.
Joe DeGenova, let me tell you something.
This evidence, this is so bad that if they don't indict, there's going to be a revolt.
It's the same stuff.
We've heard all this before, just about different things.
We've been there.
We've done that.
And nothing ever happens to them.
The smart bet, the common sense place to put your money here is nothing's going to happen to her here either.
Here's Jude in Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania.
Hi, great to have you on the program.
Hi, Rush.
How are you doing, sir?
Good.
Good.
Thank you.
Oh, what an honor.
I thought I would never get through.
It's taken over three years to just let you hear about what has happened in my life, which is great.
Well, here you are.
Thank you.
It proves the liberal left theory on you?
Uh...
Okay.
My...
My wife, and now she's 27, but at the time she was 24.
And when I had met her, when she was about 23, 24, I always talked about Rush Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh.
I listened to Rush Limbaugh all the time, and she was horrified.
She goes, you know, why do you listen to him?
He's full.
Blah, blah, blah.
Had she ever listened?
I'm sorry, sir.
Had she ever listened to me?
Exactly.
No, she had not.
And I remembered at that time, ironically, you were talking about how the media says that you scare away 24-year-old women.
So I laughed at the irony of that situation.
So I challenged my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, and I said, Hey, will you listen to him?
And she reluctantly agreed.
And would you imagine, in one week's time, she was hooked.
Absolutely hooked.
No kidding.
Normally it takes six.
We encourage six weeks here.
But you pulled it off.
She did it one week.
One week.
One week.
You know, the first two days or so, I didn't hear much out of her.
And on her lunch, she would listen, you know, from the monologue from like 12 to 12:30.
And she's like, man, he's making sense.
He's making sense.
And sure enough, you're a regular topic.
And for three years, I just wanted to let you know.
You know, it had to be a culture shock.
What do you think she thought she was going to hear?
I mean, she hears all this BS they say about this program.
You know, she's since become so far right-wing.
I'm just absolutely proud of her.
She's a big cruise girl and Trump supporter, also at the same time.
I'm happy for you.
I'm happy out there for you, Jude.
Because that's going to make a big difference in a relationship going forward.
Is there a chance I can ask you for a favor?
Sure.
What is it?
Since it's taken over three years, I've just been dying to ask you.
Is there any way I could get an autographed photo of yourself?
Do I give autograph?
I sell them like Trump does.
And where would I be able to purchase one?
I'm not on RichieLimbo.com.
Don't sell them.
I don't sell them.
I don't sell them.
Okay.
Here, hang on.
Mr. Snerdley will get your.
We don't normally do it this way.
Do you understand why?
Because now I think everybody is going to ask for one.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
And I can't say yes to everybody or.
Hey, you could look at, you know, it's a baptismal gift for my wife, in a sense.
How's that?
It's a good idea.
Brought her over to the dark side.
How long have you.
Now, you guys are married or not?
Yes.
Yes.
Do you have any crumb crunchers?
What is that?
Kids.
Yes, I'm actually holding my 11-week old son on my chest in a little.
Okay, I'll tell you what we're going to do.
Here's the way we're going to do this.
Okay.
You hang on, and Snerdly will get your FedEx address.
And we're going to send you some Rush Revere.
You don't have to do that, but thank you.
Going to send you some Rush Revere stuff.
Oh, thank you so much.
For your daughter, the little cuddly Liberty doll, which is a great question.
Thank you.
We absolutely love you.
My father turned me on to you, but I didn't start listening until I was about 18.
And now I'm 29.
I listen to you every day, almost if I can, depending on my work schedule.
But I always go to rushlimbo.com, check out the transcripts, etc.
That's awesome.
We just absolutely love you.
I can't tell you how flattered I am how much I appreciate it.
So hang up.
We'll send your daughter.
She'll grow into this stuff.
She'll eventually like the Liberty Doll.
She'll even like that now.
And we'll send some stuff as audio versions of the books and real books signed and throw a picture in there or something.
So you just hang on.
This is how we'll do it.
As we get our hooks into another future American adult.
One child at a time here on the EIB.
Speaking of the devil, White House Press Secretary, Josh Ernest, and the Daily Brief.
Just moments ago, Fox News Channel, White House correspondent Kevin Cork said to the White House press secretary, Can you say with certainty and confidence that Secretary Clinton will not be indicted?
That will be a decision that is made by the Department of Justice and prosecutors over there.
What I know that some officials over there have said is that she is not a target of the investigation.
So that does not seem to be the direction that it's trending.
So he says she's not a target.
She's not a target of the investigation.
That, folks, that cannot be true.
You know, target, subject, person of interest, there's all these different characterizations of bad people that the good guys pursue.
Subject, a lot of people think subject and target are the same thing, and they're not.
They can be at times.
Person of interest, subject.
There's no way she can't be a subject.
You know, this is just some people putting out trying to say, what they're trying to tell you is she's not a target.
If she wasn't a target, they would have said she wasn't a target.
They're trying to make you think that by saying, well, she's not a subject.
She's not only a subject, she's a person of interest.
Don't fall for this.
This has been said, by the way, it was a couple of weeks ago, I think, that somebody said she's not a subject.
That's so multi-purposed in U.S. attorney jargon.
Here's Sal in upstate New York as we head back to the phones on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for taking the call.
Hey, question.
I'll preface this saying I am a Trump supporter for a lot of reasons, not just the boldness of the man.
But from last night's debate, I watched it open-minded, hoping to learn something new from any of the other seven candidates.
And I got to be honest, other than the fact that we need a watchdog or a truth tracker to determine who's telling the truth between Rubio and Cruz, everything or mostly everything that was said during that debate has been said in the prior six debates.
So we get all these people on all these talk shows, CNN, Fox News, whatever they may be, saying, well, now this was a substantive, substantial debate with topic.
But again, I really, I didn't come away with anything new.
And my question for you is, can you give the audience, what did, and you may have covered this already, and I apologize, but what did you learn differently that you did not know from prior debates about these candidates?
Well, I never learned anything in them, Sal, because I know more than the people in the debates know.
So it's always a challenge for me.
I never learned anything.
I mean, I learn policy-wise.
I may learn a personality characteristic or something I didn't know.
But these debates, your point is well taken.
People, when you're looking for something new, you're looking for characteristics.
If somebody take the occasion of the frontrunner being gone to really step up and command it last night, those are the kind of things you look for.
Because policy-wise, you pretty much know it.
And, for example, Jeb Bush has been Jeb Bush for whatever you said, six, seven debates.
What could he do to change your opinion to him last night?
What could any of them do?
What could Chris Christie do that you all I think these debates are largely for the networks and the there's the rules, the game, the two sides work together, the media and the political organizations, the candidates, people, to keep the enterprise going.
In terms of learning something new policy-wise, I don't think it's about that.
I think it's about consistency and the opportunity to continue to expose what you believe to new people.
With each new debate, you hope the audience is bigger or made up of different people, such as in Iowa.
Maybe people watched last night that haven't watched before because of the caucuses coming on Monday.
Thank you, Rush.
So that's actually a good point.
Now, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Kasich's dad was a mailman.
I think, I'm not sure if I knew that.
I'm kidding.
Actually kidding.
It's actually a good question.
And if you look at Frank Lunt's focus groups, those are all about what did you learn that you didn't know or what caused you to change your mind.
So for some people, there are things they see that they haven't seen before, supposedly, or things that they learn.
I wasn't trying to be flippant.
My job and my career, whatever, knowing who these people are is something that I have, there's nothing that I don't know about them that I need to know, policy-wise, things that would determine whether or not I would vote for them.
But not everybody spends the time that I do in this regard because it is my job.
So I didn't mean to be flippant.
I didn't mean to swat the question away.
I mean, I do know more.
I'm convinced.
And I'm righter than a whole hell of a lot of people running for president, too.
But so are you.
That's the frustrating thing, isn't it?
Okay, so when we get back here next time, it's going to be Monday.
It's going to be the day of the Hawkeye Caucasi.
And the AnkiWeather people saying a big snowstorm's headed into Iowa.
But not really until Tuesday, but some of the early stages of it may happen Monday night, which could affect turnout.
We'll just have to see.
It's a long ways away from now.
Anyway, folks, I hope you have a great weekend and be back here loaded, revved, and ready, as we'll be, we will be on Monday.