All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 25, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:15
February 25, 2016, Thursday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
Rush Limbaugh here behind a golden EIB microphone.
I am America's real anchor man, a doctor of democracy.
And America's truth detector here at 800-282-2882.
And if you want to send an email, that is L Rushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
I don't know, folks.
I'm I'm I'm still having.
There's part of me, like somebody just asked me, are you scared of any of this Russians?
I'm scared to death with it.
I haven't gotten the point I'm scared.
I'm in dismay of all of it.
There's a lot of the stuff I'm sorry I can't stop laughing at.
Are you kidding me?
You're gonna send Mitt Romney.
You're gonna send Mitt Romney out to start hammering Trump over taxes.
A guy who you could credibly say did not recover from his own tax allegations as launched by Dingy Harry in 2012.
And then you're gonna send Mitt Romney out to start questioning Trump's wealth as not being as much as he would like you to believe it is.
When you, Mitt Romney, were practically destroyed because you're so rich you didn't care about an employee's wife dying from cancer.
No, no, that's what they said.
I'm not saying that Romney didn't care.
I'm saying of all the people to send out there with this charge, and then how the how does Trump respond to it?
Well, here comes Mitt Romney, a total loser, uh trying to act like a tough guy now.
So Trump has posted a picture on on Instagram.
Do you remember when Ronald Reagan during a State of the Union speech brought out a five-foot-high stack of paper to represent the budget?
Well, Trump has a five-foot stack of paper, and he's signing one page, it's his tax return.
And the caption is, I have a store that's worth more than Mitt Romney.
That's the We're talking about the presidential campaign here.
And I feel like I'm watching, or I'm in the movie Idiocracy.
There's there's a portion of every day, almost every day, where I feel like I'm I'm in that movie.
Or like we are watching it.
And I ha I have the same chuckles on the Democrat side, but but I don't want anybody to get confused.
I'm if if there's anything that scares me, and look, I've been serious enough over the course of this campaign, you have to understand we all need breaks from it.
And sometimes all you can do is laugh.
But I have not I the real destructive force in this country is a Democrat Party.
I did, I spent 30 minutes of a monologue two days ago in the last half hour of this program, really, really digging down deep into what all this is about to me.
And I don't I would love to repeat it actually, and I could, even though I don't have it written in front of me.
I didn't have it written then.
It came from uh from my mind and from my heart.
That it was all about this woman who called and said that we need somebody can unify us.
And I that just set me off for some reason.
Because unity isn't what this is about.
And to me it never has been.
I'm I'm not I'm not of the belief that getting along with these people is the route to the solution of our problems.
Defeating them is.
They don't want to get along with us.
And this this whole idea that we've got to have a candidate that can bring us all together isn't gonna happen.
That was that was Obama.
That's as close as we're ever gonna have to a candidate that people think can bring us together.
When you had Republicans thinking a vote for Obama would end racism, you had Democrats thinking a vote for Obama would whatever dream they wanted to hatch.
And it just gotten worse and worse and worse.
And the frustrating thing for me is I talked about the the caller also brought up uh Ronald Reagan.
I had unified everybody.
Reagan didn't unify everybody.
He ended up getting 49-state landslide in in two elections.
But we weren't unified.
In fact, I mean the press and the Democrats despised Reagan.
You had Ted Kennedy trying to sabotage Reagan, making trips to the Soviet Union.
The Democrat Party was making alliances with the Soviet Union and client states in Grenada and Nicaragua.
The efforts to undermine Reagan were ongoing and never ending.
From Tip O'Neill, I don't care who you were.
The media didn't end.
It was vicious.
It was mean-spirited.
It was personal disgust and hatred.
And despite all that, Ronald Reagan put together two terms that produced an economic boom, the likes of which this country had not seen in 30 years, or maybe 40.
And all of the monsters that were going to slay us were tamed.
The deficit, unemployment, interest rates, they were all erased as problems.
There was more individual wealth created in those eight years and the subsequent eight after Reagan left office.
The pie, the economy continued to grow.
More and more people got jobs, they got valuable careers, college educations meant something.
And it's really frustrating.
Why don't we still have that?
Why, how did that get torn down?
Eight years of that, and then include the four to ten years afterwards.
I mean, the Clinton economic boom is just the tail into the Reagan boom.
Clinton wouldn't have happened if the Reagan 80s hadn't.
And I can't tell you how frustrating that is for because people lived it.
We didn't have to tell them how great it was gonna be.
It was able to buy homes, interest rates came down, unemployment came down, individual wealth went up, wages went up, everything was positive.
People lived it.
And it didn't take long for him to be talked out of it.
Didn't take long, the media, the Democrat Party to convince everybody that was not true.
It was disingenuous, it was fake, it was phony or what have you.
We had a big party that we didn't have any desire or any right to have.
We ran up all this mythical debt, and it came time to pay the bill, which meant higher taxes, and and everybody signs on to it and falls for it.
Is that that's to me it was evidence that you never win.
You have to keep winning.
It's never final.
Republicans then they come back and they win the House in 1994, and assumed mistakenly that that meant the country had finally again moved conservative, and they stopped teaching it, and they stopped explaining why they were doing what they were doing, and that allowed the Democrats once again to come in and defame everybody.
I don't want to unify with these people.
They have to be defeated.
Defeating the Democrat Party is paramount.
If that doesn't happen, the Democrat Party is the agent of transformation of this country, and by that I mean I don't, folks, this is serious stuff.
You've heard all about from the 90s on, you heard the term the culture war.
Well, there's been one.
And overturning the culture of this country as established in our founding has been the objective of the Democrat Party for the past since the 60s.
The Democrat Party became its radical left-wing self following the Kennedy assassination.
I've gone to great lengths explaining how that happened on previous programs, so I'm not going to go into it again, but the main reason was that the left of that era could not let it stand that a communist fanatic had killed their beloved president.
They had to make it look like a crazed right-wing bunch of people in Texas had done it.
And so Lee Harvey Oswald, a defector, an angry, deranged lunatic communist of Soviet Union and Cuba fame, did assassinate Kennedy.
There is no question, I don't whatever else went on.
Lee Harvey Oswald pull a trigger, he killed Kennedy.
He was a deranged leftist communist.
The New York Times leftists and the Washington Post, leftists of the day could not let that stand.
Beginning the day after JFK was assassinated, go look it up.
Front page, New York Times op-ed pieces on the dangered crazies of the right wing in Texas, who killed our beloved president.
And so it began.
The modern era of the Democrat Party thinking America sucks began the day following the JFK assassination.
And they haven't stopped and they haven't let up.
And their transformation of America is to simply take away the culture that has been established since the founding of this country that was established by Democratic majorities on the basis of those Democratic majorities illegitimate, unfair, immoral.
And that era, the era of dominant American culture is under attack, and some might say it's over.
Those who've given up.
But that's what's at stake here.
That's why the Democrat Party has to be defeated.
Not unified with, not gotten along with, not compromised with.
They have to be stopped.
If you value the institutions, the traditions, the liberty, freedom, principles of the founding and our declaration, then you have to defeat them.
You have to be for defeating them.
On an ongoing basis.
One election doesn't mean diddly squat.
Where we are right now, no matter where you go, our think tanks, our media, every day, myself included, because this is where we are, are devoted to stopping.
We're trying to reach the American people, the low information crowd, those that are not devoted, interested, paying attention on a data basis, daily basis.
We're not going to make connection to them by simply shouting, stop!
You can't do that, stop, stop.
Appears anti-progress, it appears uh anti-everything.
But that's what we're doing.
We don't have any choice.
I mean, we've got to stop the march of the left.
But when that's your message, the Democrats' message isn't stopping anything.
What do they think they're doing?
They're telling people that they're modernizing, they're growing, they are accommodating, civil rights are expanding, human rights are expanding.
Um the old groups of people responsible for this mess are being defeated, they're having their lunch handed to them, all this good stuff, positive action, moving forward.
Our whole message is stop them here, stop them there, stop them.
But that's what we have to do first.
They've got to be stopped.
And they're stopped by losing elections.
And the frustrating thing, we have succeeded in defeating them in 2010, 2014, in the midterms.
They have suffered huge, huge defeats.
But when it comes to the National Republican Party, there hasn't been any commensurate action, no joining of the fight.
You know the drill after that.
That sets up the circumstance in which we find ourselves now.
It always comes down to messaging.
Um, after we say we want to stop this and stop that, we come back, so for limited government.
What does that mean to people when governments become Santa Claus?
Um balance the budget.
Big whoof.
Who cares about balancing the budget?
I'm talking about messaging now, not reality.
So these are the things that interest me, focus my attention each and every day, and that's the this is the basis on which I'm informed each day, and it's in these circumstances that I analyze, judge, the events of the day and how they're playing out, so forth.
So you look at the Republican primaries and this debate coming up tonight, and it's it's clear that whatever strategies Rubio and Cruz have tried have not moved.
Voters in their direction.
So they and they have to know this.
There has been a reluctance by both to go after Trump, like there's a reluctance on the part of everybody to go after Trump, because people go after Trump end up catching hell.
Going after Trump, it hasn't worked on anybody who's tried it.
And you can look how Trump is succeeding in making fun of Romney today.
But hey, that was kind of expected.
If you're going to send Romney out, this this would be like sending Mitt Romney out to start talking about people to mistreat their animals.
I mean he didn't mistreat his animal, but they they tarred and feathered him as somebody who did.
The public perception is and sending Lindsay Gramnesty out.
It's not it's not gonna it's not gonna help.
But these two guys are gonna have to find a way, either together or separately to go after Trump at some point, and with Super Tuesday next Tuesday, it looks like tonight may be tonight.
So people are eagerly anticipating this, thinking there's going to be some fireworks.
There better be some changes in strategy and behavior because what's gone on up to now hasn't moved the needles for anybody.
Even Trump.
I mean, Trump's pretty steady.
So we'll see.
See how it plays out.
As we always do.
I have to take a brief time out, my friends.
I do have some sound bites I want to get to here.
I am in a couple again today, and they're somewhat funny, so we'll get to those and continue with your phone calls all next when we get back.
Okay, get this.
The former president of Meiko, Vicente Fox, has just said we are not paying for any effing wall.
Former president of Mexico.
We're not paying for any effing wall.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
El Rushboat to Stockton, California.
This is Adrian.
It's great to have you on the program.
Hi.
How are you doing, Russ?
Just fine, sir.
Thank you very much.
I just wanted to if you'll just give me a chance to uh explain why you know my point of view just before you cut me off, please.
I don't cut anybody off.
Okay, I'm sorry that uh but anyway, uh uh, you know, uh when I realized that Ted Cruz was a was a rare and a genuine honest man that just loved the country.
Right, it hit me.
I said, you know, I was telling my wife, I said, if he wins, now's gonna be the time when every other person that is like that has really got to step up and help him.
Yeah.
And and but now it's dawning on me that that's you know, because of the way things are going, that that's if he wins, you know, which I I hope he does.
I was telling my wife, I said everybody needs to get on board, and so one of the reasons why I'm calling you if you could say my gripe is and please just hear me out, is not is not what you say but what you don't say, because on uh uh there was a there's an opinion poll that I had saw, and I was trying to look it up again so I could tell you what it was, but it you know, who did the poll, but it was saying that a lot of people are believing now that Cruz is a is dishonest.
And so w one of the things that I think that has influenced that is you know how we're lazy by nature when it comes to uh finding out exactly what's going on.
So the easiest way people form an opinion or a vote is there there's three areas.
There's one when the pony when the pundits, the actual candidates get up there and speak, and then another one is the TV media, and then the third one is the talk radio.
Right.
And and the first two, the pundits and the media, a good r uh uh almost a constant reoccurring theme.
I think I know what's slander is is that that Ted Cruz is a lion.
It comes from the two other Republicans, mainly that Ted Cruz is a liar.
And so I believe that's influenced that, you know, which brings me to my third point, which is kind of my gripe, and that is the talk radio.
Because whenever I need to hear that because it's there's a weird bent to us that we're more easy to believe uh an accusation from against an honest man, and at the same time, we'll we're more easy to think positively of a dishonest man if they're saying other things that we like to hear.
You know?
And so when it comes, you know, there's a saying, you know, that a lie goes farther than the truth.
And so if there's a constant theme of a lie, you know, that he's a liar, he's a liar, he's a liar, you know, people will go, well, man, is he lying?
Yeah, is what Trump's saying is is he is that true what he said about Cruz?
Is what Rubio saying is true what he said about Cruz?
And so you go to other sources.
Well, mostly we're gonna go to the radio, you know.
And so I I hardly ever Hear from you.
I mean, the only time I hear that from you that he's not a liar or that you defend him in any way is when somebody calls.
And please just finish.
Let me know.
Well, I don't expect you to be able to uh actually I do.
I expect you to listen to every moment of this program.
I'm here every day doing it every moment.
I expect you to be listening to it.
I'm not here to be speaking to empty vessels out there.
So if I'm here speaking, you should be listening.
And if you have been, you would have heard from the first moment Trump got on this business that Cruz is a nasty guy.
I have been saying he's not a nasty guy, and I have been pointing out he's not a liar.
But your complaint, I know what your complaint is.
Trump's getting all the media coverage, and Cruz isn't getting any, or Rubio isn't getting as much.
And you you you want to know why that is, uh, and I can answer it for you in any number of ways, and talking about other people, you have to understand that the people opposing Trump oppose Cruz even more.
When we're talking about the Republican establishment, and that's where your media is, uh outside of talk radio, there is a a huge fear and opposition to Ted Cruz, more so than there is for Donald Trump.
But it is a it's it's a constant battle.
You know, George Bush never responded to any of these allegations about him.
And if the targets don't go out and do a bunch of responding and response to themselves, then there isn't any news to comment upon made in that regard.
Okay, let me just get it on the record again.
Let me just remind everybody of it.
For weeks, not days, for weeks, I have been telling everybody in this audience that Donald Trump was attacking Ted Cruz as a liar because Cruz was creeping up in the polls.
We had the internal polls of the Bush campaign going into South Carolina.
We had heard that the internals had Cruz two points behind.
Donald Trump.
Trump ratchets up the Cruz is a liar, Cruz is a nasty guy.
I pointed out that that's why Trump was saying these things.
Cruz is not a liar, he's not this or that.
This whole thing with Ben Carson.
I don't if I've said it once, I've said it I don't know how many times.
The frustration I have over this is this is childish for Ben Carson to run around and he didn't lose a single vote over that.
CNN put that news out.
And Ben Carson did leave the campaign for crying out loud.
That whole thing reminded me to watching frickin' rapper room.
This is a political campaign.
And to me, to sit here and spend a whole lot of time nuking that wasn't necessary.
A couple times, but I did.
Nevertheless.
But they didn't let go of it.
And then Ted kept apologizing for it, so what am I gonna do?
There's only some look, and then for every time Ted's called a liar, I don't know how many times he doesn't respond, but when he doesn't respond, there's no news made.
And to sit here and say, well, Donald Trump's done it again, call Cruz a liar, but I know he's not a liar.
That's what you want me to do.
I can do it, but I that isn't that's not gonna be enough to get it done.
As much as we all wish it were the case.
This show is not the campaign.
I would love it if it were.
It'd be over.
If this show were the campaign, but this show is not the campaign.
I have tried to spell out the specifics of the accusations, such as the details around that, the Carson dropping out business that I just mentioned.
I'm not Ted Cruz's lawyer.
I'm not his mother, I'm not his father Raphael Cruz, I'm not his campaign spokesman.
Uh and I'm I'm not whining or complaining about it in that sense.
But I do, when I am attacked, fairly or unfairly here, I do react to it when it comes from one of you.
Now, I I don't pay attention to what they say about me in the media anymore because I don't, I just don't.
And there's probably a lot of you frustrated.
I Don't respond to some of that, but I guarantee you now most of it I don't even know because I don't pay attention to it anymore.
To me, it's just it's just part of the game, and maybe Cruz looks at it that way too.
Maybe Bush looked at it that way.
Maybe everybody in politics says, you know what, being criticized, being defamed, being destroyed, part of the game, you gotta be prepared to put up with it if you get into it.
Uh, and so forth, and you can't spend all your life defending it.
In fact, you can't defend it very much, or else that will count as a mark against you.
Well, you can't take it.
Well, somebody calls you a name you can't take what are you big baby, so it's a very, very dealt with even this aspect of it, too.
I have shared with you over the years what a challenge it is to respond to criticism.
And how for every bit of criticism, there's thousands of people telling you how to respond to it.
This way, that way.
And I've spent a lot of time.
Well well, the Clinton, the Clintons had a war room, but it's here's the point.
Everybody knows Hillary Clinton's dishonest as a day is long, and nobody cares.
With the Clintons, they expect it.
It's uh it it's it's part of the package.
I think this is just me.
I think Trump's allegations that that Cruz is a liar and nasty, they're so over the top that to me they're instantly questionable anyway.
They seem to be purely and totally political.
They're so over the top.
Nobody, nobody could be as nasty a human being as Trump portrays Cruz to be.
It's not possible.
Some point you have to realize this, but maybe I assume that people uh realize uh insincerity uh more than than I'm aware that they do.
You know, I want to go back to the sound bites here because this kind of dovetails in a way.
I mean, tell me what to do with this.
Let's do a little exercise.
Greta Van Susteren last night speaking, Boston Globe national political reporter Annie Linsky about me and my criticism of the Republican Party on yesterday's show.
Now, to set things up, Van Susterin introduces and plays a clip of me talking about anger in the Republican base.
Conservative talk show host and the star of all radio, Rush Limbaugh, ripping the GOP establishment and sending a strong message.
In the case of the anger on the Republican side propelling this primary season, everybody is saying it's irrational, it's kooky, it's irresponsible, it's insane.
Nobody is saying, hey, why are they mad?
What did we do to make them so mad?
Maybe we need a seminar or two over here at some lobbyist's office to figure out why they're so mad at us.
Why don't you people take a little time out instead of mischaracterizing the anger?
Why don't you follow your own guidelines and try to learn from it?
Why don't you try to ask yourself, what have you done that made everybody so mad?
Now, this woman hadn't she had no idea what I was talking about.
That clip, and it's not really her fault.
Uh you can't.
That's why I say it takes six weeks listing this program.
You cannot hear what was this.
You cannot hear a 35-second sound bite from this program most of the time and understand what it's really about.
Do you remember what that that's what that's about?
The monologue was this.
We're told that the Republican anger is childish and it is uh unnecessary and it's uh destructive and it's petulant and it's childlike and it's irrational, and there shouldn't be any.
From the same people, when the World Trade Center gets blown up, the same people looking at the militant Islamists who did it, why are they so mad?
We're told we have to study their rage.
We're told we have to study their anger.
We have to find out why they're mad, and not just them, any protest group in the country, whoever the protest group is, we can't just react.
We must dig deep.
We must understand the rage, and we must understand why we are responsible for it.
I mean, how many times have I said, Pentagon, State Department, seminars After 9-11, conducted on the premise, what did we do to make them mad?
As though it was our fault.
It was our fault.
The World Trade Center came down.
Our fault they hit the Pentagon.
What do we do to make them mad?
Okay, we have anger here out in population.
Republican base is mad.
Why is nobody saying we need to study that rage?
We need to find out why they're mad.
In other words, militant Islamist anger justified.
Republican anger not justified.
That was the point I was making yesterday.
Now, this Boston Globe reporter, I don't think has a chance because she doesn't understand the context.
So after Greta plays her that comment, she then says, now that's gonna hit a nerve what Rush said.
Rush Limbaugh is saying listen to the people.
And here's this woman, her name is Ann Linsky again.
It is a little ironic for Rush Limbaugh to be talking about somebody who has stoked anger in the population.
And you know, I listen to his show, I have to say, especially when I've driven around.
And a lot of what he talks about is the raw anger without the solutions.
And I do wonder if he would spend a little bit more time expressing that anger, sure, but looking for solutions too.
This entire program is nothing but a solution.
And if you don't understand that, listening to this program.
Now, folks, that's the way I would defend this.
Is there anybody?
I mean, you people get mad at me because there's not enough defense of Ted Cruz here, or there's not enough defense of Marco Rubio.
How much defense of me is there out there anywhere when any of this stuff happens?
There is Zilch Zero Nada.
And I don't point is not I'm not complaining about it.
It's just the way it is.
But in answering Ms. Linsky here, this whole program is a solution.
This program is a solution to liberalism.
It's a solution to what's going wrong in this country.
It is a solution to preventing it from happening further.
Everything on this program is oriented toward informing people why the things that make them unhappy exist and who's responsible for it and how to fix it.
This entire program, every day is a solution.
But what is she here driving around?
She hears me angry.
I know she can't listen to this program as much as she claims to, if she thinks all I do here is stoke anger and then never offer solutions.
This whole program is a solution.
And the solution is stop liberalism.
Stop the Democrats.
That's the solution.
But even in this case, I'm not stoking any anger.
I'm explaining the anger that other people feel.
And she was unable to get that.
So what am I supposed to do?
Start running around whining that Annie Linsky at the Boston Globe misunderstands she's not getting me.
It doesn't work that way.
Here's how Greta dealt with it.
Greta came back after after Linsky had said that wonder if Limbaugh would spend a little bit more time expressing that anger, sure, but looking for solutions too.
He's essentially saying to the Republican Party, are you going out listening to these people?
Maybe you wouldn't be so baffled why this is happening.
Just go talk to them.
I think that's right, but I do also think that you need leaders who are gonna do a little bit more than just demagogue.
And I think that is what um a number of people on talk radio do.
So there you have conventional wisdom.
I don't think she has the slightest idea what she's talking about, specifically related to this program.
I'm on talk radio, I'm a demagogue.
I get mad, I shout anger, I have no solutions, I'm a talk radio.
So there's all kinds of people who have cliched beliefs about talk radio, and they're all wrong.
But I'm sorry, I'm not gonna spend all day whining about it.
It's not the way to deal with it anyway.
Anyway, we're gonna take a break here, folks.
We're up against it on time.
Sit tight, don't go away, huh?
We actually have the audio of the ex-presidente Meiko, Vicente Fox on Fusion TV with none other than the beloved Jorge Ramos, who says, please respond to Republican candidate Donald Trump saying he plans to build a wall on the U.S. Mexico border.
I'm not gonna pay for that wall.
He should pay for it.
He's got the money.
Are you afraid that he's gonna be the next president of the United States?
What would not allow me to do?
Democracy cannot take us to crazy people that doesn't know what's going on in the world today.
It worries me this last Caucas in Nevada.
He won 44% of the Hispanic.
44% of Hispanics.
I like to know who those Hispanics are because they're followers of a false prophet.
Oh wow, Vicente Fox mad at the Hispanics in Nevada for going for Trump.
He's uh not gonna pay for that.
And he said it.
They had to bleep it out there, but he said effing wall.
And he wasn't through.
He's loaded for bear here at the Hispanics in Nevada.
Please, you Hispanics, Latins in US, open your eyes.
It's not to defend our race.
It's not to defend our creed.
It's to defend this very same nation that is hosting you.
This nation is going to fail if it goes into the hands of a crazy guy.
What is Trump?
He's not a Republican.
Absolutely not.
Those are not the Republican principles.
He is not a Democrat.
He's just himself.
He's egocentric.
I don't know, folks.
I uh uh this is one of these things I can't help laughing.
I I know a lot of people uh get loaded for bear, this kind of stuff, but I get it.
I get it.
Here's the former president of Meiko.
Uh worried America, our host nation.
Stop and think of that.
Our host nation is going to fail if it gets into the hands of a crazy guy.
What is Trump?
He's not the Republican.
No, he's not the Democrat.
He's an egotist.
He's himself.
That, by the way, for any of you doubt the the Mexicans obviously believe Trump's gonna build a wall.
And the Mexicans obviously believe that Trump is gonna be doing some deporting.
I mean, that's the takeaway from that bite, folks.
This Vicente Fox believes it.
Well, that's it.
Uh my friends, another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence in the can.
And it's big Republican debate tonight in Houston.
And it ought to be different than what we've seen heretofore in terms of uh substance content and strategy on the part of those in uh second, third, fourth, and fifth places.
So uh whatever happens, we will be here tomorrow to help explain it, unravel it, have it all make sense, in addition to it being open line Friday.
▲
Export Selection