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Feb. 15, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:40
February 15, 2016, Monday, Hour #3
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And greetings and welcome back, my friends.
Great to have you here, Rushlin Bohr, at a frenetic pace.
The energy is palpable here behind the golden EIB microphones.
Events are happening as rapidly as we can keep up with them, but they can't outpace us, folks, because we are on top of everything.
We're the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Not only do you find out what's going on out there by being here, you find out what to think about it and what other people are thinking about it.
Don't doubt me.
Snirdly staring at me with his mouth wide open.
800-282, totally dazzled in there.
Are you 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program?
Listen to Ronald Brownstein here on CNN today.
Chris Cuomo said, I want your thoughts, Ron, on Trump's attack on George W. Bush.
In this debate, Trump was as kind of unbound as we have seen him in any debate.
He was as intemperate, unpresidential, belligerent, and iconoclastic in denouncing Bush in language usually heard from Democrats.
If he can hold his piece of the coalition after this, it is really an indication of how deep that connection is, how difficult it is to shake it.
He really pushed the boundaries of acceptability for a Republican.
If he holds it after this, I think that's going to be a big statement.
Right.
But it's the statement, if he holds his people after this, the statement will be just how livid Republican voters are at the Washington establishment.
Now, you may, come on, Russia knows that.
I'm not sure that the establishment yet has an accurate idea of how deep this resentment is.
And here's another thing.
The more they learn it, the more they resolve to say, screw you.
There is no, there is no, it used to be, and it's not that long ago.
I go back in 2002 and give you an example of this.
When the voters rejected a party, the party tried, in Lenny Waste, at any rate, to tell voters they were going to change, and they heard, we hear you.
We hear you.
We understand.
There's none of that anymore.
Voters don't vote the way the party wants.
The party says, screw you.
And they dig their heels in it, Democrats especially.
But I think the Republican establishment over Amnesty and a couple other things, if Trump gains support here, it's not just about the solid nature of Trump's support.
And I'm not trying to diminish that, but it's also about just how angry people are at Washington.
And Trump is the best vessel to display that of all the other Republicans running.
Cruz is a close second.
Now, grab somebody 26 again.
Something else could be going on, however.
Here is Trump again this afternoon, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.
He is a liar.
He apologized to Carson after the event.
What good does it do?
Carson said, yeah, but I lost all those votes.
And he apologized to him after the event.
He should have apologized to me also, because frankly, it would have won, but it doesn't matter.
But he apologized.
He said, I'd like to apologize to you, Ben.
The election's over.
And what they should do, if Iowa had any guts, the people from the Republican Party, which they don't, they should disqualify him from winning Iowa.
I really mean it.
Because what he did was a fraud.
Now, what is this really all about?
That's about Cruz.
Why?
Why still be going after Cruz?
Just Saturday night, you go after George W. Bush, which Trump has walked back a little bit.
I should point that out.
He has walked back a tad his criticism of Bush, but he has not walked back his criticism of Cruz on this Ben Carson business at all.
The more I think about it, folks, I am more convinced that what Trump did Saturday night was a politically strategic thing, and that was to go after the fringe leftists in South Carolina who can cross over and vote in the Republican primary.
Now, why would Trump want to do that?
He's running in a Republican primary.
Why would he want, other than broadening the base or what have you, but I don't think that's what Trump's thinking.
What's he doing?
I think he, one of two things.
He either wants to smoke the field here.
He just wants this over.
He wants such a sweeping, domineering win Saturday that it sends the signal this is over.
Or something else is happening.
And the something else that's happening is something that you won't know about it, because if it is happening, the media isn't going to want to tell you.
Conservative or liberal media isn't going to want to tell you.
And that could be that Ted Cruz is gaining ground.
And with Trump continuing to focus on Cruz, it tells me that maybe this is indeed happening out.
I mean, still going after Cruz on this supposed fraud that happened with Ben Carson.
The effort there, obviously, the purpose of that is to delegitimize Cruz as a candidate in the eyes of voters.
There's no question that that's what Trump's appealing to here.
But why?
Why worry about Cruz after you go after George W. Bush and Iraq at weapons of mass destruction and 9-11 and all that?
Then the circle back to Cruz still.
Well, I have this story here from the Daily Beast, not the Daily Caller.
That's Chatsworth Oswal Jr. site.
The Daily Beast is a hard left site.
The Secret Army stumping for Ted Cruz is the headline here.
And the story, this point, or the point this story makes is that Ted Cruz keeps outperforming his polling, and he's getting no press on it.
In fact, if you, I challenge you, like I did, go read any of the standard operating procedure analysis of the Saturday night debate of Cruz.
I don't care who it is.
I'm not calling names here.
Just go anywhere you want in conservative media that has an establishment bent, and you will read Rubio made people forget his slip-ups in the previous debate.
Trump did whatever he did.
And they talk about Carson.
And when they get to Ted Cruz, they say, Cruz mostly turned in a solid but unnoticeable performance yet again.
Ted Cruz didn't stand out on Wednesday, Saturday night.
Ted Cruz had an off night.
Ted Cruz, never, ever is Cruz credited for being the great debater that he is.
Rubio was chided for blowing his chance by that constant repetition to Christie's questioning.
But then the focus Saturday night, after people stopped talking about Trump, they went to Rubio and they said, and this was on Fox and CNN, the other places, yeah, yeah, you know, we're all wondering here if Marco Rubio could make people forget that horrible performance in New Hampshire, and we think, Joe, that he did.
Well, thank you, Ted.
Appreciate your analysis.
What do you think, Jane?
Yeah, I'd have to agree with you.
I think Marco was so damn strong tonight, he actually did make people forget.
And what do you think of Ted Cruz?
Well, you know, he was there tonight.
But here we have the Daily Beast secret army stumping for Ted Cruz.
Cruz keeps outperforming his polling.
He's getting very little credit or press for it.
It's very much under the radar.
And of all places for it to be noticed here, a left-wing website.
I'll give you a poll quote as an example.
South Carolina Politicos describe it as an effective, relentless operation.
This is Cruz and his packs.
And it has some of Cruz's opponents feeling a little jittery.
An operative for a rival campaign unnamed said, I'll be very shocked, honestly, if Ted Cruz doesn't win South Carolina.
Trump is led by double digits in all the recent South Carolina polls, but some are skeptical that his lead is really that commanding.
And they point to the different ground games, particularly Cruz's and others as evidence for their doubt.
The Keep the Promise Pact.
Their staff explained that the group has been door knocking across the state in a few targeted regions and counties since last November.
In early January, those door knockers started focusing on persuasion, identifying likely Republican primary voters who favor an evangelical Christian candidate, knocking on their doors and having conversations aimed at persuading them to back Cruz.
Another poll quote, Matt Moore, the chairman of South Carolina Republican Party, said the PAC may have an even farther reach than the campaign proper, since Keep the Promise, the PAC supporting Cruz, is the first and only long-term large-scale super PAC canvassing operation in the state.
No other candidate has one like this.
Then he added, Matt Moore did, chairman, South Carolina Republican Party, that Keep the Promise is the only super PAC he knows of that has any sort of ground game in South Carolina.
Paul Lindsay, a representative for Rise to Right, said his PAC also has a professional canvassing operation.
It recently moved down from New Hampshire, but it hasn't made nearly the splash with locals that Cruz has had.
And the Keep the Promises team, Cruz's, is pretty confident that their ground game tops that of Trump.
Trump's team has sent RVs of volunteers around the upstate door knocking, but those efforts are more about marketing than anything else.
And then there is internal polling out there for the Bush campaign and others, which shows that Cruz is slowly, steadily closing in.
So here is a possible scenario to explain what happened Saturday night.
And by the way, don't underestimate the political infrastructure Trump has in his inner circle.
He has a lot of professional, experienced political operatives, consultants, and advisors.
It's not a shoot-from-the-hip operation per se.
By that, I mean there are strategic political objectives that are formed and executed.
And it could well be that the reason Trump made his appeal to the left-wing Democrats in South Carolina with his approach on Saturday night is because he knows that the South Carolina Republican base is so evangelical,
so oriented to somebody like Cruz that he may not think that he can win a majority of that base.
And so to offset that, he has made his appeal via his statement Saturday night to these Democrats and Independents who can cross over.
I don't have any doubt that that's what he did.
Now, the why, that's up for grabs.
We don't know.
I mean, well, we know that he's trying to attract them, and we know that he wants them.
Is it because his own internal polling shows that he's not doing all that well with Republican conservatives in South Carolina?
Or is it that he is and just wants to smoke the field and be done with this and move on into the SEC primaries with it all a formality?
Could it be that he just wants, he's tired of seeing Jeb Bush on the stage and wants him gone?
Could it be, this was somebody else's theory, and I don't think this is right, but this will show you what some people think of Trump.
Some people think that he went, telling me they think that he went after Bush simply because Bush is showing up today to campaign for Jeb, and that that offends Trump.
Okay, I got a guy coming in here who's going to be ripping me.
I got a guy coming in here this Saturday night, Trump's frame of mind.
I got a guy showing up, ex-president, to support this lackey.
I got a guy, his brother coming in because this guy can't handle it himself.
Jeb can't get above five points on his own, so he's got to bring in big brother.
Well, hell with that.
If Bush is coming in here not supporting me, I'm going to make him pay for it.
That's what some people have told me.
This is the way Trump's mind works.
If you're not supporting him, if you're coming in to try to get him, he's going to preempt you, head you off at the pass, and butch Cassidy and Sundance to kid you and everybody ask and have everybody, who are those guys?
And just keep coming.
It's Trump.
So there's all kinds of theories that are all over the board, but there's no question in my mind now that he did not lose control.
Wrong way to say it.
There's no question in my mind that he meant to say what he said.
Maybe he didn't mean to say it as he said it, the emotional incontinence.
But he intended to do it.
There's no question he made a play for crossovers.
He's got a hardcore bunch of supporters.
There's no doubt it's the biggest group of hardcore supporters any candidate has out there.
But in South Carolina, it may not be enough.
We just won't know, folks.
The thing that George Will and others Think that, okay, this may be critical mass, not the straw that broke the back, critical mass.
This may be the one time too much where Trump has gone off, this time on a revered Republican.
And this is going to cause Trump supporters to waver.
I don't think that's the case.
And if I'm right, and if they don't waver, if Trump doesn't lose anything because of this, it's going to be the explanation is it's a testament to how deep the rage is toward the Republican establishment.
So we shall see as the week progresses, but it's clear that Trump is targeting Cruz.
It's clear that some people are noticing that Cruz in every one of these things is outperforming his polling numbers, even winning Iowa.
It's clear that nobody's reporting this or talking about it.
It's happening totally under the radar.
And the reason nobody's reporting it is because they don't want to see it.
Remember, the establishment may hate Cruz more than they hate Trump.
Even after Saturday night, their hatred for Cruz is institutional.
Their hatred for Trump is situational.
Big difference.
Be right back.
Don't go away.
Back to the phones where we go to Oldsmar, Florida.
This is Ann.
It's great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Thank you very much for taking my call.
You bet.
It's great to have you with us.
Are you still there?
I am.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
Welcome.
You're on the air.
It's your big show biz break.
Good.
Thank you.
I have two comments regarding the appointment of the judge.
First of all, I don't believe that our senators, and particularly our candidates, need to announce to everybody that they are going to filibuster.
I think that's a closed hand.
They should do what they know is right, but not advertise it.
Right now, why ire the voters?
We have the high ground in this election.
Let's keep it.
Their response should be that they are going to do the right thing for the country, period.
My other comment is: I do believe that senators ought to take and postpone their winter recess, and they are the stewards of this country, and they need to stay in Washington to make sure that there are no more executive orders until the White House keys are turned over.
Well, that, wait, no, no, just a second.
Two things.
I know you're also headed down the line here on recess appointments.
You can keep the Senate in session with the dog catcher in there.
There's any number of procedural ways to keep the Senate in session without keeping everybody in town.
And the Democrats have done it.
Look, Dingy Harry has shown in every which way possible how to bend, break, and shape the rules.
Now, the Republicans didn't do anything to stop him when he did it.
There's no doubt that Denji Harry will call McConnell on whatever maneuvers he tries to make.
As to executive orders, that's not going to stop Obama.
As long as the Senate can't agree to anything, he can say, well, you know what?
There's nothing going on there.
And I told my voters, if they don't do it, I'm going to do it.
I'm going to do it.
Why should he not?
He has been promised that his agenda will not be opposed this year.
Don't tell me you have forgotten that.
Why, that was just a mere three weeks ago.
Mitch McConnell, weighing in on the presidential campaign, said it would not be wise to oppose or obstruct the president's agenda this year, because that might reflect poorly on the Republican presidential campaign and portray us as obstructionists and so forth when the voters want us to work with the Democrats, when the voters want us to make Washington work.
You better hope and pray, folks, that that does not become operative on this Supreme Court choice.
Well, you can sit there and shake your head, Snerdy, and say, no way it would.
You realize what does experience tell us?
What has been happening the past six years?
And you're going to say that, well, but a Supreme Court nomination is a different thing, Rush.
They'll pull their pants up on this one, Brush, and they'll hang it.
Well, we'll hope.
We hope it would be one of the few times.
Anyway, and thank you.
Bill Moocho.
I got him.
They're coming up.
Okay, Trump called a press conference a few minutes ago.
The press conference is underway.
And he is basically reiterating his debate points from Saturday night.
He is just tearing into Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz is the biggest liar Trump's ever known.
He's not qualified to be president.
Ted Cruz is a fraud.
He may not even be legitimately an American because he was born in Canada.
He just really laid it on.
He is now back on the Middle East.
We shouldn't be taking people from Syria.
He's doing his greatest hits.
He hit Bush on Iraq yet again.
He's basically restating what were the controversial statements of the performance on Saturday night in the debate with the additional Ted Cruz stuff.
That tells me and my highly tuned antenna that Cruz is moving.
That there is internal polling data somewhere that somebody has that shows Cruz moving up.
Now, the right scoop has a story that internal bush-polling is showing this.
Just so you know, I'm not making it up out of, well, I don't make anything up, but I mean, I'm just speculating here.
The right scoop has a story that internal bush-polling is showing Cruz making a serious move in South Carolina, serious move.
And apparently, Trump and his team believe it because this was an all-out hit job just now on Cruz.
I'm sure Cookie is rolling.
And hopefully, we'll have some sound bites of this before the program ends.
It's been going on, actually, before I knew it was a press conference.
We could have gipped some of it.
I thought it was a taped interview.
But it's actually the presser.
He's in Hannah, South Carolina.
And he's reliving his Middle East and how he prognosticated that.
He talked about bin Laden being a bad guy, that we should have killed Bin Laden.
Oh, that's not.
He blamed Bush for not killing bin Laden.
That's Clinton, folks.
And Rubio got that right.
Now, Bush has arrived in South Carolina and he's signing books and making appearances for Jeb, which no doubt, I know I'm right about this.
This doesn't sit right with Trump.
And so he's, there are all kinds of explanations for this that are political.
My point to you is: Trump is not insane.
And he is, John Pedoritz wrote a column on Sunday in the New York Post saying that Trump was out of control.
And I know it looked like it, but I don't think Trump's out of control.
I think it's strategic.
I think the booing that he received from people he thought were a stacked deck, Jeb donors and Rubio donors might have caused him to get angrier than he intended to be.
And I know you can be saying, well, hey, you know, Russia got to get used to that.
I mean, presidents have to be able to control their temperament.
You know what I would say to that?
I'm telling you, his supporters want more of this.
His supporters are dying to say to the establishment what Trump is saying to them.
Do not doubt me on this.
They've got seven years of being ticked off, and maybe even more than that, but seven years of no pushback on Obama.
Our people think that Obama's destroying this country, destroying the future for their kids and grandkids, and they can't get the Republican Party's ear on this.
The Republican Party will not hear them.
Republican Party will not react that way.
The Republican Party doesn't act like it has anything to defend.
And these people are frustrated beyond their ability to express it.
Their anger is palpable and it's real.
And that's why Trump is not, I don't think, in serious danger of losing his supporters.
I don't know how to say it any differently than I have.
I think this intense, it's a combination of emotions, too.
It's anger, it's fear, it's rage over what Obama and the Democrats have been doing to this country with no pushback.
And Trump has become the vessel for that outrage.
I mean I can sit here and say to you that Ted Cruz would be just as legitimate a candidate to support Trump.
And Cruz are pretty equal on the – I mean the establishment hates Cruz more than they hate Trump.
And that should tell you something.
They genuinely fear what Cruz is going to do in terms of rewinding and stopping and stopping the transformation and doing things the establishment doesn't want to do.
So it's a fascinating thing to watch go on here because I've never seen a Republican candidate make this direct and broad appeal to Democrats by really ripping into what is assumed to be a revered former Republican president, George W. Bush, and in South Carolina he is.
Now, I mentioned earlier that half of the sound bites today are about me, despite all that's happened over the weekend.
Half of these things are about me.
And you know me, folks, I never want to make this show about me.
Snurdley keeps saying, where are the soundbites on you?
I'll give you an example of what's here.
We will start audio soundbite number one.
We're going to skip, by the way, Mike, we're going to skip four and five.
Here is Fareed Zakaria GPS.
Fareed Zakaria Global Positioning Satellite on his Fareed's Tank Commentary on Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday morning on CNN.
The charge that President Obama is attempting to change America fundamentally is a staple of right-wing talk shows.
Rush Limbaugh and others routinely assert that Obama's policies are intentionally designed to transform America and dull its distinctive edge.
This rhetoric does raise an important question.
What makes America exceptional?
Now wait, wait, here's the second part of it.
America is a nation created on the basis of diversity, of race.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
And there are efforts to change America.
There are plans for religious and ethnic tests to bar immigrants and even visitors and also to track immigrants and visitors when they are in the U.S. There have been calls to deport people, even American citizens.
There are proposals to monitor houses of worship.
These ideas would fundamentally change America, tearing at its founding DNA.
Who is proposing these changes?
Last time I checked, it was not Barack Obama.
As Fareed Zakaria GPS is in the tank for Obama.
Now, this is absurd.
This is totally absurd.
Who in the world?
Obama has said he wants to transform America.
And here comes Fareed Zakaria GPS to deny that it's happening.
It's fundamentally a staple of right-wing talk shows.
Rush Limbaugh routinely asserts Obama's policies are intentionally designed to ransom.
He said so, Fareed.
He has said so.
Can there be any doubt?
All you got to do is look at what he's doing.
And then the Pies de Résistance.
America is a nation created on the basis of diversity of race, religion, national origin.
The hell it is.
It's a nation created uniquely on the basis of individual liberty and freedom.
It's not based on diversity.
It's not based on quotas.
It wasn't put together based on the color of people's skin.
It wasn't put together on the basis of their sexual orientation.
It wasn't assembled and put together on the basis of their gender.
None of that.
This is classic example of these clowns and their pollution and corruption of the Constitution as a living, breathing document.
America is a nation created the base of diversity of race, religion, national origin, and their efforts to change America plans.
Religious freedom is being blown to smithereens in the name of socialism and liberalism.
That's not how this country was created.
Now, I can blame Fareed Zakaria for not knowing it.
He's not from here.
He's on a global positioning satellite.
But this is just dead wrong.
And to come along here and try to save Obama by discrediting me and I guess alternatively Rubio, this is classic, folks.
This is exactly how this country is being corrupted and bastardized as to say that it was put together.
It's crazy wacko leftist liberals that look at the world this way.
America was colorblind.
America was, well, the intention was colorblind.
The whole slavery thing is a black mark.
There's no question, can't erase it.
But it was our own constitution which established the basis for eliminating it.
And we became the first country in the history of the world to abolish it.
But no credit's given.
As far as these clowns are concerned, we're still in slavery.
And it's not just blacks that are in slavery.
Women are in slavery.
Gays are enslaved.
LGBT people are enslaved.
That's what they believe.
And the Constitution and the country was assembled so that they wouldn't be slaves.
And their objective here is to free everybody from the stupid shackles they live in when nobody's in shackles.
Moving on.
Jacob Weisberg at slate.com was on C-SPAN's book TV Saturday night.
And they played a talk by him.
He's got a book called Ronald Reagan, the American President Series, the 40th President, 81 to 89.
If you really want to get a sense of how Reagan thought, these transcripts of his radio commentaries from the late 70s are the most interesting thing.
And they're really good, and they're written out in longhand with very few scratch-outs.
And they're good.
They're cogent.
They're somewhat different.
They're pretty far out there sometimes.
But they were original and interesting.
And it has that quality, you know, a little bit, the Rush Limbaugh quality.
You may violently disagree with it, but it's kind of compelling.
You kind of want to keep listening or keep reading.
There you have it.
So the Reagan commentaries, my station where I worked at in the 60s, played those Reagan commentaries.
I remember them.
So now I'll take that.
I mean, I've been lumped in there with the commentaries were limbaugh-like, limbbaugh quality.
I would say that that's kind of a, it's the other way around.
I am Reagan-like.
A brief, brief, brief timeout.
Frank Luntz also agrees with me on the Ted Cruz office space ad that's coming up and more, so sit tight, don't go.
Yeah, and here it is in even more detail.
An internal poll for the Jeb Bush campaign supporting the super PAC right to rise shows that Trump is in first place, 26%, and Cruz is at 24.
So margin of error, Cruz has moved into a tie with Trump in South Carolina.
It's an internal poll of the Bush campaign.
It's reported at redstate.com.
It's reported at therightscoop.com.
And so this would explain a lot of what happened on Saturday night and what happened today.
And we will have the Trump soundbites from the presser, from his press conference tomorrow.
Here, this will give you a flavor.
We have excerpt, one bite from the Trump press conference this afternoon in Hannahan, South Carolina, talking about Ted Cruz.
He just comes out and boom, boom, boom.
Absolute lies.
Now, he'll apologize, but I don't want an apology after the election.
If he doesn't, I'm going to bring a lawsuit because in my opinion, based on what I've learned over the last two, three days from very top lawyers, he doesn't even have the right to serve as president or even run as president.
So we will bring a lawsuit if he doesn't straighten his act out.
He's a lying guy, a really lying guy.
Some people misrepresent.
This guy's just a plain outlier.
So that was a prime focus of Trump's presser today.
He focused on other items as well.
And just to repeat, internal Bush polling has Trump at 26 and Cruz at 24 in South Carolina.
Have a wonderful rest of the day.
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