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Feb. 16, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:06
February 16, 2016, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
And let me ask you all another question.
How many of you believe that George W. Bush campaigning in South Carolina yesterday for Jeb Bush is going to help Jeb Bush?
How many of you believe that George W. Bush going in and explaining on television last night with Jeb, the campaign trail talking about the Iraq war, weapons and mass destruction, uh responding to some of the allegations that were made in the debate.
How many of you think that's going to help Jeb?
Show of hands.
How many people in your audience out there?
How many, how many in the audience?
How many think it's going to help?
Greetings and welcome back.
Great to have you.
800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
Email address, illrushball at EIVNet.com.
Mike, grab number 26 first before we start with the numbers I gave you.
This is Trump this morning on Fox Business Network Mornings with Maria, the money honey.
The infamous Maria Barcheromo.
She played a clip of Trump saying that the pledge he signed not to run third party not being honored by the RNC, he's mad.
He's mad at a donors showing up with all the seats at the debate and booing him.
By the way, the RNC says that isn't true.
The RNC says the candidates are getting the lion share of the ticket.
So they're pushing back on that.
We heard from them yesterday, in fact.
We hear from everybody.
You know, during an election year, nobody's happy.
During an election year, I'm letting down somebody every day.
Disappointing somebody every day.
You know how hard it is to deal with that.
Anyway, I'm not complaining, folks.
I never do it.
I never whine and moan to you.
I never complain about this job, period.
Because, well, host of reasons, but just don't do it.
Anyway, Trump is, you know, he was saying, I'm going to run third party.
I'm going to run third party.
These people are mistreating me.
They're not respecting me.
And I signed that pledge, but they signed it too.
And they're going back on it.
Now Trump is saying that he's not going to run third party.
Maria Barcheromo said, Mr. Trump, can you explain this for us?
Does this mean you are again considering a third party run?
No, it's just that I'm very upset with the RNC because every single time we have a debate, they have it stacked with special interest and donors and lobbyists, and the rooms are all stacked.
I'm self-funding my campaign.
I'm not taking special interest money.
I'm not taking lobbyist money.
I'm not taking any of that money.
And the room was stacked with those people.
Now let me expand on that for you know if you remember when Trump said that that he's financing his own campaign and he's not getting any credit for it.
You know what he really means by that?
It's all wrapped up here.
I'm not taking any special interest money.
I'm self-funding my campaign.
I'm not taking lobbyist money.
I'm not taking any of that money.
He brings this up not to whine about it, but to be repetitive over and over again to let people know he's paying for this himself because he thinks there's value in people understanding that.
He's paying for it, and everybody's upset with all the money in politics, and he's trying to ram it home that he's not, and when people don't notice it, his feelings are hurt.
And he tells you when his feelings are hurt.
Most people don't.
When people don't re when it doesn't register, when they don't appreciate it, he's gonna whine about it until people do.
And it is that kind of thing that's always been thought to be deadly, but for him it isn't.
It just it just seems to, if not hurt him, it seems actually to help him in some cases.
Now I want to go back, uh, ladies and gentlemen to Hillary Clinton, who was recently campaign appearance of Reno, and in the campaign appearance, she remembered a radio commercial that she had heard in rural Arkansas.
And I will bet you that Hillary Clinton remembers every damn second that she spent in rural Arkansas, because I will bet you she hated it.
And she resented whatever took her there, and it would have been her husband's campaign.
I guarantee you not the Rose Law firm.
Her husband's campaign would take her into the sticks of Arkansas.
And as a Northeastern elite academic, having to go, I mean, it just demeaning as it could be.
So she remembers this radio commercial in rural Arkansas where somebody in the ad there was a dog that barked every time some advertiser or some sponsor, whatever told a lie.
She said, You know what?
We didn't want a dog like that.
We need a dog like that for the Republicans when they start talking about the banking system.
And in the middle of her remarks, this is what she did.
Started barking like a dog.
It's on video.
She's holding a microphone.
Now, you know, ever since Chelsea was in the White House, dog jokes have been forbotten.
And here comes Hillary now, acting like a dog on the campaign trail and on the stage in Reno, Nevada.
So we thought we would add this to our ongoing montage of Hillary Clinton sounds that she emits regularly.
I don't feel no ways tired.
I come too far.
We are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.
Again?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
There you have it, Hillary Clinton's campaign reduced to 29 seconds.
We have some Hillary Clinton soundbites.
Where are they?
Oh, here they are.
She was uh in in hooks at New Hampshire last Tuesday night, Clinton campaign headquarters, and she was speaking to supporters after losing the New Hampshire primary.
When children anywhere in our country go to bed hungry, or are denied a quality education, or who face abuse or abandonment, that diminishes all of us.
That's why I did start my career at the children's defense fund.
That's why I went undercover in Alabama to expose racism in schools.
That's why I worked to reform juvenile justice in South Carolina.
And that is why I went to Flint, Michigan on Sunday.
When people anywhere in America are held back by injustice, that demands action.
And Gwen Ifill then asked her a question.
This was in Milwaukee PBS, a Democrat debate.
She asked Hillary if if white Americans don't have a right to be resentful right now.
I'm going to do everything I can to address distressed communities, whether they are communities of color, whether they are white communities, whether they are in any part of our country.
I particularly appreciate the proposal that Congressman Jim Clyburn has, the 10-20-30 proposal, to try to spend more federal dollars in communities with persistent generational poverty.
And you know what?
If you look at the numbers, there are actually as many, if not more, white communities in the country.
All right, that are truly being left behind and left out.
And that's why, as president, I will look at communities that need special help and try to deliver that.
We are going to have that dog barking at every lie Hillary tells, which is pretty much after every sentence.
And remember, she started it.
Okay.
Now let's move to audio soundbite number two.
This is Carl Rove.
And I realize many of you, when you hear the name Carl Rove, think that I am showing Dracula the Cross.
But Carl Rove had some comments about Trump and expectations for Trump in the South Carolina primary.
Now, I'm going to preface this by reminding you what I said yesterday that Trump's performance on Saturday, it was obviously it's been confirmed now, by the way, that he was reaching out to moderates and Democrats to expand his voter base for a host of reasons.
Ted Cruz is gaining serious ground.
Trump may think that he is maxed out in terms of the number of conservatives that make up his coalition.
South Carolina's an open state.
He needs to gain ground.
He needs to defend off Ted Cruz, Or from his standpoint, it could be that he wants such a sweeping victory that it makes it look like nobody has a chance, basically hammer the final nail in the coffin this Saturday in the South Carolina primary.
Whatever the strategy is, and there is a strategy, whatever it was that led him to do it.
Carl Rove now says that because of this, Trump has raised his own expectations that he's got a win so big now to avoid being seen as a loser.
It was on America's newsroom, Bill Hemer speaking when we say, hey, Carl, if Trump wins on Saturday, is he then in a position to run the table, do you think?
It depends on uh if he gets in a new poll, he was at 42 percent.
That would be awfully strong.
But if we see a New Hampshire like result, that is to say, in the uh low 30s or high twenties, he's not begun to consolidate.
Not a single person who's withdrawn has supported Donald Trump by saying and doing the things that he's doing.
Do you think the Cruz people, if Cruz loses, uh are going to be excited about joining Trump, do you think the Rubio people, do you think the Jeb people, all of these people that he goes out and just takes a flamethrower and burns them to a crisp.
So Carl is saying he's taking the people Christie's bombed out, left the race, Carly Fiorina, they're not sending their voters to Trump.
So Rove's point is that if Trump doesn't get 38, 40 percent after all of this, with a bunch of Republicans dropping out now, Christie and Fiorina are gone.
Uh Ben Carson, for all intents and purposes, although he's not officially said he's out, but his percentage is pretty small.
But regardless, Rove's point is that none of these Republicans leaving are endorsing Trump and they're not sending their voters to Trump.
So Trump's got to get him somewhere else.
And if he doesn't pick up additional voters, if these other people go to Cruz and they go to Rubio, then Trump's margin of victory with other voters, moderates and Democrats and independents, had better be big, or the story is gonna be Trump is losing.
Now you have to, this is pretty clever.
Grove out there now is try trying to establish expectations that are pretty pretty high.
Trump better get 40 or more, or it's gonna look like he's losing.
And what are the odds he's gonna get 40?
So Trump is trying to establish a narrative here, not just for the Republican Party, but for the media as well.
Quick timeout.
We come back with more after this.
Don't go away.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
Rushlin boy, your guiding light.
Happily so.
Yesterday afternoon, Hannahan, South Carolina, Donald Trump held a press conference.
This is the press conference that was going on as our program was taking place, and we didn't have a chance to get to any of the sound from it.
But here is one of the attacks that he leveled on Senator Cruz.
I've never seen anybody that lied as much as Ted Cruz.
And he goes around saying he's a Christian.
I don't know, you're gonna have to really study that.
I think he's an unstable person.
I watch him, I see him, and I always say he's a good debater, but he can't talk.
I don't even think he's a good debater.
I mean, I heard he's a good debater.
I don't personally see he's a very good debater.
He is a very unstable person.
That's just my opinion.
He's a nasty guy.
He's not even an American.
He's born in Canada, you've heard the drill.
All this means is that Cruz is gaining some ground here.
Trump has seen polls where where Cruz is gaining ground.
He's going back and forth on whether or not he's gonna sue Cruz.
Uh today he said he doesn't think he will.
He hasn't made up his mind, but that Cruz is a liar.
That's the new theme.
Cruz is a liar, he's he's a thief.
He stole poor old Ben Carson's votes.
He says he apologizes and fine, that's after the fact.
If I'd have been Ben Carson, I'd have done something about it, Trump says.
So Ted Cruz was on the Christian Broadcast Network uh website last night, Brody file yesterday, and the uh during the interview, uh the discussion about Christianity, which Trump just said, well, I, you know, I Trump Cruz a Christian, I never seen anybody lie as much as he does.
Christian, I guess you have to look it up.
I don't know.
Really study that.
Here's what Cruz had to say about Christianity.
For far too long, Christians have been staying home, have been ceding the public square to non-believers.
And when we look at the state of the country, when our heart weeps at what's happening to the country, and we wonder why is it that the federal government is waging war on life, was waging war on marriage, is waging war on religious liberty.
Is it any wonder when 54 million evangelical Christians stayed home in 2012 did not vote?
If we allow our leaders to be selected by non-believers, we shouldn't be surprised when our leaders don't share our values.
Wait, is it 54 million evangelicals stayed home?
I didn't know the total number was that high.
I thought the number was four million, largely evangelicals, Christians have stayed home.
But maybe it's just his point is that with the government waging, and make no mistake, but he's right about this.
The Democrat Party is waging an all-out war on Christianity.
What do you think that the institutions and traditions that define this country's greatness?
Where do you think it came from?
You all you need to do, the left can't stand when you do this.
All you need to do is go back and read George Washington's first Thanksgiving proclamation.
Read his farewell address, read any official government proclamation back in the early days of founding every other word is giving thanks to God for the fact that the nation made it.
These clowns run around saying that this was not a Christian nation.
It's like this idiot Fareed Zakaria said, America was founded on the principles of diversity and ethnic.
B.S. it was only to the extent that liberty were all created equal.
But we didn't put this country together on the basis of skin color and sexual orientation.
We didn't put this country together.
It wasn't founded on the premise that these different groups were suffering grievances out there.
The people of America were suffering a grievance.
They were living in tyranny.
They were being deprived their liberty.
This country was a revolution of freedom and liberty.
And even the left has bastardized that.
And they're trying to redefine what the American founding was all about so to make themselves look like they are the modern heirs.
That offends me.
These people have got to be defeated.
This silly idea that America was founded to protect the minority status of favored Democrat voters today.
What an absolute insult and crock.
So here comes Cruz pointing out look, this is a country founded on these particular religious beliefs, and it's undeniable.
It's where our morality comes from.
That's the left hates that, by the way.
They despise that truth.
Another reason why they want to blow this country up and and transform it into something that it was not founded to be.
And his point is that if you're going to sit out elections, if you're going to sit out there and not vote and and complain what's done to the country, is it any wonder that presidents and elected leaders chosen by non-religious people, not even true believers, just non-religious people.
Is it any wonder they're going to govern the way they do?
So you sit home and protest, don't be surprised when your values are not shared by the people who win elections if you sit home and don't participate.
So Cruz was making a direct appeal to the evangelical vote.
That's something Trump can't do.
Well, he's got Jerry Falwell Jr., but he's got it, he's got to go broader than that.
In an attempt here to expand and broaden his base.
He was with Gail King, the BFF of the Oprah.
And she said, Have you ever thought about Jeb maybe just ignoring Trump?
You maybe try that tack.
I've thought that.
Then I get back to thinking, you know what?
He's hijacked my party.
I've been a conservative all my adult life.
And uh someone has to take a stand.
Right.
So no.
Uh he's I've thought about it, but no, he's hijacked my party.
I got to defend it.
I gotta go after him.
Last night, uh, forget the montage.
Too long to set it up, don't have enough time here to do it.
Uh here's a little George W. Bush.
Last night, North Charleston, audio soundbite number eleven, first of two, we'll try to squeeze in here.
These are tough times.
And I understand that Americans are angry and frustrated.
But we do not need someone in the Oval Office who mirrors and inflames our anger and frustration.
We need someone who can fix the problems that cause our anger and frustration, and that's Jeb Bush.
So here we're we're back to this now.
People's anger, and we need somebody to be able to fix the problems that cause the anger.
I'm looking.
We would not be here.
Well, we would be there'd be a campaign, but it would be much different looking had the Republican Party spent the last seven years trying to fix this.
It all comes down to that.
It always is, it's it's all gonna come back to that.
The anger that's out here today is not petulant, it's not childlike, it's it's not temper tantrums by children.
It's real because the Republican Party has not tried to stop the Democrat Party and a destruction.
It's no more complicated than that.
I just got an email from a very close friend.
You sound really frustrated today.
But you've done a great job explaining yourself.
Uh and he goes on to analyze what he's uh what he's heard on the program.
Uh, you know, folks, I I uh should have pointed one thing out in the last hour when we were into the real heavy and intense discussion of this.
And I've mentioned this before.
In primaries, I have never endorsed candidates for a whole host of reasons.
But at the top of the whole host of reasons is I do not control what these candidates think or say or do or put in advertising day to day, and to go out and endorse one is without any control.
That's the I I I want no part of that.
I wouldn't want people going out and and supporting somebody sim in in a in a crowd like this because I've suggested it, and then down the road the candidate slips up and does something people get in, and they blame me for not seeing it and leading them astray.
And you want to know how easy it is to happen.
How about Ronald Reagan voting for amnesty?
I don't care.
You can say, yeah, he got fooled.
You can say, yeah, they promised him they were gonna close the borders.
Yeah, but he still voted for it.
If if if at the time this kind of thing is going, Reagan raised taxes.
He did cut them more than anybody else, but he raised taxes too.
That's my point about nobody being pure and nobody being perfect.
Reagan, you know, th the the marine barracks.
He should have hit Hezbollah.
Instead, we pulled out of there.
There's any number of things that even the best candidates do that are going to disappoint the people that vote for them.
It's guaranteed it is a lock.
That is why I have always instead of going for candidates, gone for ideas.
That is why I have always invested in ideas as the host of this program.
And concepts and objectives.
Rather than throwing all of that into the basket that is a particular candidate, again, who I don't control, who the nature of politics being they're all gonna it's gonna happen.
They're all gonna disappoint us at one point or another.
Some major ways, some it's gonna be it's gonna be small.
But it's always gonna happen.
And I don't want to have to answer for something a candidate does.
I don't want to sit here being, you told us, you told us that so and so was never gonna, and we just did I know you're right.
I'm sorry, I didn't see it.
I got fooled.
What can I tell you?
Now you get into the general election, and you've got party versus party, and it's no it's a no-brainer.
I mean, that's not anywhere near a similar circumstance.
Here's Robert in Southampton in New York.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hi.
Thank you, Rush.
Thank you for taking my call.
You better long time listener since I'm a since I'm a little kid.
And what I think you see playing out right now with Trump and the GOP and all that is there's two competing versions of what conservatism is going to be going forward.
And I don't know that the anti-Trump guys even know what they're selling anymore.
And by that I mean if if not being a perfect conservatism, well, being a perfect conservative was enough to sink Trump, he would already be sunk.
It's not that we don't know that he's not a conservative.
It's that we don't care that he's not a conservative.
And the things that he's conservative on are they important enough and they're so such of an overriding nature that they can't.
I mean, no one going to a Trump rally, I don't think, cares about his position on tax cuts.
You know, I don't think they're they really believe in their heart of hearts that he's pro-life, for example.
But what he is conservative on are two issues that going forward, probably for the next 50 years are going to be really hot-button issues are identity and immigration.
And I the rise of the alternative right and the more nationalistic right and the rise of Trump seem to have been hand in glove.
I don't know whether he's leading them.
I don't know if if we're if we're leading him.
I love this.
The relationship is definitely there.
It's growing.
And I would just say this, and I think you touched on it last week.
Yes.
Nationalism is a a little bit more, has a little bit more curb appeal right now than standard issue Republican conservatism.
And that is because, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes.
I don't want to be the skunk that's.
No, no, wait, don't don't wait a minute.
Don't miss what I asked the question.
I was doing what I always I ask people to think here.
You know, I really I love thinking myself.
I think it's been very productive for me.
I love causing people to think.
I asked, has nationalism and populism overtaken conservatism in the eyes of people supporting Trump or in the general population?
I asked people to think about it.
Now, I was misquoted as having proclaimed it in a lot of places to irritate uh rank and file straight down the middle conservatives who did get mad at me because they were misquoted.
I did not claim it.
I did not, I merely asked if it's the case.
And I was using a column that was written back in 1996 about Buchanan, how it foretold what's going on with Trump, uh, in which nationalism and populism were advocated back then by a guy supporting Buchanan.
I simply asked the question.
Now you think, did you just say that you think the alt-right might in fact have predated Trump and might be propping up Trump rather than Trump bringing the alt-right along with him.
Did I just hear a click?
Did he just hang up out there?
We just lost the call.
Was he on a cellular?
Yeah, okay.
Uh well, darn it, I wanted to ask uh well anyway, folks, he said something key there.
Um he said the two issues that define the future, immigration and what is an American.
Something like that.
Identity.
And I'm gonna tell you that is so right on the money.
And uh that is something that all of these people, I I grow tired of calling them the elites and the ruling classes.
I don't know what else to the establishment, I'm telling whoever you, whatever you call them, they do not get that.
They that doesn't register at all.
The con particularly the ones on the left.
In fact, bully for that, if anything is causing America not to be American, then that's great with them.
They think America's the big problem in the world.
But that basically is a comment on assimilation.
You know, we didn't get to it today, but there's another story.
Do you know what Obama's doing?
The number of miners, unaccompanied minors storming the country's southern border from Central America is still at a record high.
And it's not being reported this year, like it was last year.
And what Obama is doing is opening military bases, primarily Air Force bases to house them.
And the people in the military and the Air Force are quietly talking to the media about how outraged they are at this, that the military bases should not never were designed to be orphanages.
But Obama is putting them there until the government figures out what else to do with them.
But nobody is stopping them.
And you couple that with all of the other immigration, illegal or otherwise that's going on, if there's no assimilation, if these people are not coming here to be Americans, and the Democrats don't want them to become Americans.
That's the point.
The Democrats are trying to undo this country fabric by fabric, door jam by door jam every day.
And part and parcel of their effort is to bring in people who are not interested in becoming Americans.
It's terrible what the Democrat Party is doing.
It is unconscionable what they're doing.
And I don't think it is a small number of people out there who know it and are aware of it and don't want it to happen.
There are a whole bunch of really great people out there who want to hold on to America as it was founded and recapture it and grow it for all the goodness that it is.
We'll be back in a sec.
Don't go away.
Yeah, that was Farid Zakaria GPS, who's who said on CNN Sunday that Obama never said he wanted to transform America.
He did say it.
He said it back in 2008.
He said it a number of times.
And for read to carry a GPS on C, and it was complaining I didn't know what I was talking about.
But not only is Obama said that he wanted to transform America, he is transforming America.
It was also for Reed Zucaria GPS, who is not from America, but he may be a citizen, I know, but he's not from here.
He said that America was founded on the principles of diversity, an ethnic uh diversity, and racial diversity, whatever the hell else he said.
It's a crock.
These clowns are even out there trying to redefine the founding.
To make it look like this country was founded.
In their corrupt view of things.
It's despicable.
You want to talk about what ticks me off.
The Democrat Party is what ticks me off, folks.
I mean, I can't.
And the you want to put frustration, the fact that I think I'm the only one as mad at the Democrats.
Everybody else is mad at the Republicans.
I get that.
The Democrats are where you need to focus.
They're just the most destructive force in this country right now.
It's one thing for a bunch of people to not try to stop them, but they're the people actually doing all this.
That's destructive.
Anyway, now that we've shared our mutual anger, we can close the day as one.
Well, hopefully.
Hopefully, I won't oversleep tomorrow and throw all my rhythms out of whack.
It's really strange arriving to work an hour and a half later than usual.
Everything gets compressed.
Anyway, have a great rest of the day, folks, and we will be back tomorrow, revved and ready.
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