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March 2, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:22
March 2, 2016, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day, Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchor man, and truth detector, and Doctor of Democracy.
And we are here at a one and only excellence in Broadcasting Network.
I am 800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program.
Okay, Cookie went back and found the uh the things that I saw today.
Apparently the Van Jones Jeffrey Lord segment uh originally happened last night.
I didn't see that.
I saw 20 minutes of it this morning, and it went from 845 to about 910.
I finally forgot it.
They went through top of the hour breaks, and they delayed the beginning of their nine o'clock show for this thing to continue.
It was it was it was hot.
Um I'm I'm just telling you, there's no way we can play the whole thing here.
We've got two sound bites, and these will give you a flavor for it.
But just again to set it up, um, Jeffrey Lloyd is there as a conservative analyst of the news, the quote unquote Republican strategist.
You know, people that have never been involved in a strategy session in their lives are called strategists on cable news networks.
Because they might strategize at Starbucks with their friends.
But Jeffrey actually is, he is a political director, Reagan uh administration, rice now at the American spectator and newsbusters.
And he's a Trumpist.
And he was there to answer the charge that Trump continues to avoid disavowing the Klan and the uh David Duke.
Which is preposterous.
Trump has disavowed for years, David Duke and the Klan.
He left the reform party because they were in it.
But he didn't on Jake Tapper's precious CNN Sunday morning show.
And so as far as CNN's concerned, he has not disavowed.
If he won't disavow on their Sunday show, then he hasn't disavowed.
And he brought in Van Jones, a well-known admitted communist from the ri uh from the uh from the uh first Obama administration, and he's now a strategist and commentator in CNN.
And he and Jeffrey went at it with uh uh Chris Cuomo and Alison Camarata actually acting as therapists to bring these two together to get them to listen to each other.
So here are two sound bites as a flavor for it.
Cuomo, Chris Cuomo says, with the benefit of time, Van Jones, does the perspective of don't forget who these guys were, the KKK, and what it means to your party, does it make more sense to you in the analysis of what it means today with Donald Trump?
I don't understand why the right wing is so obsessed with trying to point out that the Ku Klux Klan, you know, 50, 60, 70 years ago was a part of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party in that time was a racist party, and there were violent elements.
That's true, because obviously the Republicans at that time were the party of Lincoln, who ended slavery.
But we've had a reversal over this past 50 years.
My entire lifetime, I was born in 68, there's been that reversal.
So I think for African Americans, when we try and speak about the pain of the lynchings, we try to speak about the fear that we are having around every African American dinner table, kitchen table, about what does Trump mean?
People go, well, 50 years ago they were Democrats.
To us, it feels dismissive.
Right.
Well, what there hasn't been a reversal.
This is the whole point.
The reversal is a marketing maneuver.
What reversal?
The Republicans haven't lynched anybody.
That all happened.
Slavery, lynchings, those were Democrats that did it.
The list of names.
Again, Lester Maddox, George Wallace, uh Strom Thurman back in those days was uh was a Democrat.
Um J. William Fulbright from Arkansas, he was Bill Clinton's mentor.
Ernest Hollings.
How how about Human Talmage, a doja?
I mean, this the list of these guys, Robert C. Byrd, nicknamed Sheets, was a grand freaking Cleague, which meant he was a recruiter and he achieved the exalted Cyclops level of the Ku Klux Klan.
Whatever it is, he was one.
I always thought of a Cyclops as a one-eyed monster in the Sinbad movies.
So I've never understood what a cyclops is in the Klan.
But you notice how easy this.
Yeah, he admits, and this is new.
You won't have a Democrat admitting that they were Democrats.
Klan was Democrats.
Racist party, violent elements, that's true.
But we've had a reversal over these paths.
What reversal?
What lynchings is he talking about?
What what what is what is this?
When did the Klan join the Republican Party?
When did the Klan there isn't a single Republican that's ever been a member of the Klan?
Not like the Democrats can boast.
Robert C. Byrd.
Anyway, here was uh Lord's answer, Camarata, Alison Cameron asked, Jeffrey, were you using a diversionary tactic to go back 50, 60, 70 years rather than back two days ago to what Donald Trump said, where he did not give any sort of aggressive disavowal with Jake Tapper of the KKK.
Why not just focus on today and the race today that we're talking about instead of all his time 50 years ago?
What I was trying to do was give historical context.
My point is that race fuels the progressive movement and has always fueled the progressive movement, whether it was slavery, segregation, lynching the Ku Klux Klan to today's racial quotas, illegal immigration by skin color, you know, groups like La Raza, the Black Panthers, Black Lives Matter, et cetera.
It's always about let's divide people by race, and then here's the progressive agenda that we want to enact.
That's the connection to me.
And it's a constant throughout 200 some odd years of history.
The Klan being just one of them.
And by the way, not long ago when Occupy Wall Street was a big thing going, David Duke was a big supporter of Occupy Wall Street.
Exactly.
But this thing uh ended up with them shouting at each other back and forth, talking over each other was difficult to hear for me anyway, what they were saying and camarada and Cuomo had to go in there and and uh and and referee it.
It ended fine.
There were no fisticuffs or any of that.
It's just that you never see this perspective, hardly anywhere, but certainly not on CNN.
But this reminds me of something.
Um Brian just reminded me of this last night.
You know, after the uh candidates had made their speeches, their victory or whatever other speeches after the elections last night, when they were sitting down and doing interviews with the various networks.
Uh I guess this is where I'm I'm gonna give my analysis of what candidates in my mind are doing that they could do better.
And this is risky to do.
This is really risky because I run the risk of offending supporters of these people.
But at the same time, I can't sit here and just uh stand mute when, as uh Rob said from San Antonio that I may be responsible for all this.
You know, so I can't pretend I've got nothing to do with it.
And look in the case of Rubio, it is clear that that Rubio had some success in the tactics that he chose to switch to in the last debate.
Going after uh Trump and making fun of him and mocking him and uh calling con man in lines around the state and Trump University and all this.
And he he won some accolades from uh establishment types, and he is convinced that it helped him in Virginia.
He is convinced that it it helped him get votes in in other states on Super Tuesday that that he still lost them, but he's convinced that it helped his performance.
So in his interviews last night, he doubled down on all of this.
Every other word about Trump was con man.
And then he joined in on this business of Trump not disavowing the KKK and David Duke.
And Brian mentioned to me, as some other people have mentioned to me as well, that it started to degrade on, make them nervous and create even some sympathy for Trump because everybody in the world knows he has disavowed.
And not just once.
Now, this situation, you know, what happened on the CNN show, who knows?
Everybody has their theories for what that was about.
But you cannot credibly say that Donald Trump supports the KKK.
You cannot credibly say that Donald Trump is sympathetic to them or to David Duke.
You cannot credibly say that.
And so to try to is not going to help you, in my humble estimation, and Rubio kept throwing out last night that Trump will not disavow the KKK, and we can't have anybody in the Republican Party doing this.
And I think that's going to backfire, because the one thing that Republican voters, conservative voters all over this country are fed up with is this phony charge of racism that the Democrats make.
And if a Republican starts making those same charges about a fellow Republican, it isn't going to work, if you ask me.
It's going to backfire.
Con man, it's one thing if you if you want to you want to continue with that strategy thinking that it's uh helpful.
Uh in other words, turn Trump's tactics around on him, make fun of people, bully people, laugh at them, mock them, and so forth.
But this KKK thing and uh David Duke, there's no question that Trump is disavowed.
There's no question Trump's want no part wants no part of that, and never has.
You know, if you're gonna accuse somebody of something, there has to be some small grain somewhere of accuracy.
It's you it's gotta be something that's believable.
You can't the media can do, you can't manufacture a charge out of nothing and have it stick.
Uh I know you're shouting, well, Harry Reid did it with Romney.
Well, part you know, the reason one of the reasons that worked was the way Romney handled that, too.
Let's not forget.
I mean, the Republican reaction to any of this stuff is basically to ignore it, thinking nobody's going to believe it.
And that doesn't, that doesn't work.
So I I thought that was for Rubio a little bit perhaps counterproductive, and I. And I'm very nervous, though, because it's not my job to advise them, and they know their business better than I do.
But I would dial that back.
I don't think that's uh well, that's another, you mean all these allegations of Trump, how the Democrat Democrats cataloging this stuff and uh using it in the general.
And even Marco Rubio, a Republican, even Rubio knew that Trump is a con man.
Listen what Marco Rubio said about Donald Trump.
And they play a soundbite from yeah.
Well, nobody's thinking about that right now.
Nobody ever does think about that, Snarly.
Nobody thinks about the general.
That's that's way down there.
You deal with that when you get there.
Right now, these guys are all thinking they've got to do what they have to do to win this.
And they'll deal with whatever messes are created now later.
And the same thing with Hillary and and and Crazy Bernie.
I mean, we're getting our share of sound bites to use against them too.
So that it's a two-way street.
Now, I mentioned earlier that I that I think I detected a flaw in the cruise strategy last night.
And again, I gotta be very, very careful about this, uh folks, because I'm uh none of this is offered in criticism.
I'm not offering this from the standpoint of, you know, these guys don't know what doing what they're doing.
Well, they gotta do that that that's not the attitude that I bring to this.
In all of these things, I'm trying to be genuinely helpful.
And what I finally saw, there's Cruz didn't do anything different last night than he's been doing.
It's not it's not that.
It's that something clicked for me that hadn't up until now.
Because a lot of conservatives are are really puzzled why Cruz isn't doing better.
He is the ideal conservative candidate.
Um he is the modern incarnation of Ronaldus Magnus.
And prior to Trump getting in, there were a lot of people who thought this was really going to be the chance to re-stake the Reagan claim uh in the Republican Party and in the country for the express purpose of fixing things and improving things for everybody.
So when Trump runs around and talks about Cruz as a liar, he's not a liar, and he's not a nasty guy.
He's not.
And this thing with Ben Carson, you know, I've got so much peak about that P-I-Q-UE over the childish way this is being dealt with by everybody.
And of course, right in the middle of it, you have CNN, which did air a tweet from one of their reporters that Carson was leaving the race to go home to Florida and so forth.
And Rubio did exactly what Cruz did, but nobody is lumping Rubio in with this supposed attempt to sabotage poor Ben Carson and his votes and his uh and his voters.
But this liar thing has stuck for some reason.
And it just flies in the face for me because Ted Cruz is, at least with this current crop of people, is the epitome of integrity.
And so the idea that he's your average ordinary political huckster and liar really does not compute with me.
But that's not the point.
That's just another observation.
As I was watching Cruz's acceptance speech last night, as I say is nothing different, it's just something clicked last night.
I remembered while watching it last night what Cruz's strategy is and what it was prior to the campaign even beginning, and that means prior to Trump getting in.
I see, I got the clock.
Okay, look, I can't finish this before I take the break, so I'm gonna take the break and I'll do the whole thing in its entirety when we get back.
Robert Costa at the Washington Post and others are reporting now that Ben Carson's told his supporters he does not see a path forward and will not attend the Republican debate in Detroit tomorrow night.
That means it'll be Cruz, Rubio, Trump, and Kasich.
So essentially Ben Carson not appearing at the debate tomorrow night as since they're getting out of the race.
I wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump asks for a moment of silence in the debate tomorrow night for Ben Carson and the votes Ted Cruz stole from him.
Wouldn't surprise me at all if Cruz asked if if Trump asked for a moment of silence to blame Cruz for the fact that this nice guy Ben Carson, he didn't do anything to anybody, he had to get out of the race because Ted Cruz played a dirty trick on him in Iowa and stole his votes.
Don't be surprised.
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
Now Ted Cruz's strategy was very simple.
He looked at the 2012 returns and saw four to five million Republicans didn't vote.
The assumption that they were movement conservatives, unhappy with Romney, perhaps many of them evangelicals.
Cruz believes, and his strategy was that if he could get all four to five million of those with the others that voted for Romney, that he could beat Hillary or anybody else.
So I think the Cruz strategy has been to speak in language that appeals to movement conservatives and really, really committed ideological conservatives using their terms, uh using their language, voicing their objectives.
It's not just saying he's going to repeal Obamacare, but the way he talks about doing it, it's it's got a direct appeal.
It's as though Cruz's Strategy is based and rooted in a belief that if he can attract every conservative Republican and get them to vote, that that will be enough.
And I think that that has limited his appeal.
He clearly can appeal to a much broader base of voters than just movement conservatives.
There's nothing wrong with trying to get them.
But his his acceptance last night was uh pretty not word for word, but in the key issues that he was mentioning uh that that we need repealing Obama against the Supreme Court nominations, all of it.
It's language that is a second language to conservatives, but could be a foreign language that's somewhat scary to people who are not movement conservatives.
Anyway, hang on.
Now let me let me be helpful to some of you people.
Whatever you're doing out there, do not retweet the Ben Carson statement as reported by Robert Costa.
Do not retweet, otherwise you will be accused of sabotaging the Carson campaign.
I'm just trying to be helpful.
This is what happened at Ted Cruz.
CNN runs a story that Carson's leaving the campaign and returning to Florida.
Cruz goes out and tweets it and tells voters looks like Carson's leaving.
You might want to vote for us in the caucus.
And we all know what happened after that.
So I'm just suggesting to you.
Do not retweet any of this.
Do not tweet it out there.
Otherwise, you, a common ordinary, invisible, everyday American citizen could be accused of sabotaging the Carson campaign.
But wait, Rush, but wait.
He says he's leaving the campaign.
I know.
I know.
But if you retweet it.
See, that's the point.
He didn't say he's leaving.
There's no path forward.
He just said he's not going to the debate.
Here's the statement.
I have it here, my formerly nicotine sting.
Um I've decided not to attend the Fox News Republican presidential debate tomorrow night in Detroit, even though I will be in my hometown of Detroit on Thursday.
Uh no, wait.
I have decided not to attend the Fox News Republican presidential debate tomorrow night in Detroit, even though I will not be in my hometown of Detroit Thursday.
I do remain deeply committed to my home nation, America.
I don't see a political path forward in light of last evening's Super Tuesday primary results.
However, the grassroots movement on behalf of We the People will continue.
Along with millions of patriots who have uh supported my campaign for president, I remain committed to saving America for future generations.
We must not depart from our goals to restore what God and our founders intended for this exceptional nation.
I appreciate the support, financial and otherwise, from all corners of America.
Gratefully, my campaign decisions are not constrained by finances, rather by what is in the best interests of the American people.
So you're right, Snerdley doesn't say he's leaving the campaign.
Maybe he's trying to suck cruising and doing it all over again here.
Here's Gregory in Livermore, California.
Hey Gregory, I'm glad you waited.
It's great to have you with us on the program.
Hello.
Yes, good afternoon, Rush.
It's great to be on the program.
So let me um let me tell you my thoughts over the last few weeks.
I'm a lifelong conservative, life lifelong conservative activist.
Opposed Hillary ideologically and given who she is opposed to viscerally.
But over the last week I came to the conclusion a little over a week ago that if it comes to a choice between her and Trump, she is the lesser of two evils for the country and for the conservative movement.
Uh let me explain basic foundation for that thought.
Uh so having holding a presidency.
Holding a presidency for the party has risks to begin with.
Cataclysmic things can happen, ask George W. Bush, you know, uh the mortgage crisis happened on his watch.
We know that at some point the dead bubble will burst.
We don't know when.
So when you take a risk by putting your guy in the Oval Office, you need upside.
You need hope that real things will be done to help this country.
With Walker, Jindal, Cruz, Rubio, there would be real upside.
There would be real hope for real change.
With Trump, there is zero chance of that.
So we take the downside risk with no hope of upside, and for me that's not good enough.
I will definitely definitely stay out of this race.
Can't force myself to vote for Hillary, but for the first time in my life, will stay out of this race.
Majority of my uh friends who were activists from our college days, you know, took our lumps as conservative activists.
Uh overwhelming majority of them have come to the same conclusion.
Uh maybe in different little different paths and a little different language, but essentially the same conclusion.
So that's uh that's where I stand.
I can you detail for me your thinking on Trump being an abject total failure in the scenario that you well, to to achieve things, you actually have to believe in some things.
Name one conservative um aspect of public policy that he actually uh internalizes, that he actually believes to be true.
He doesn't believe in lower regulation, doesn't believe in lower taxes, he doesn't believe in uh you know in in judicial restrictions.
He did last night in his press conference tout his tax plan and claimed that no less than Larry Cudlow, who is a Reagan conservative, has praised it to the hilt.
Yes, but I I know that.
But he also that he takes positions, this is Trump yesterday.
The Trump who was yelling how he he's gonna raise the taxes on hedge funds is also the same Donald Trump.
So I mean uh yeah, if you if you put out five positions on every issue, anybody is bound to find something they like because yeah, obviously you take you say five different things, one of them one of those things is gonna be to somebody's liking.
But he never I mean, come on, he he he woke up at the age of nearly seventy and became a Reagan conservative.
It doesn't happen that way.
He never displayed any of those kinds of uh uh beliefs earlier in life.
Uh I mean if if any he's uh I mean he's not a radical leftist, but he's your basic New York liberal.
I mean he has been all that, and you know, to expect that all of a sudden he'll become uh a Reagan once he is in the White House.
Let me play the devil's advocate with you here.
Yeah.
Um not gonna argue with you about uh conservative uh bona fides.
Uh although Trump last night was also what he's not even claimed that he's very conservative on immigration.
Very conservative on trade.
He's very conservative on America winning.
Actually, on trade, on trade is his definition of conservative.
His definition of conservative on trade is protectionism.
This is actually okay.
If if I can expound on that point because it's important.
Well, feel free to expound on the point, yes.
Yes, he is he's selling uh he he he I mean he's a conman.
What he's selling, the w one of the big reasons people are for him is because he says, you know what, I know you're hurting on jobs, you know, high wage manufacturing jobs are all in China and Mexico, I'm gonna fix it, they're gonna be back here.
It's crock on two point.
One's uh the manufacturing jobs in China and and Mexico are not high paying jobs, they are they pay about as much as uh fast food workers in America, and they're not coming back here.
And secondly, the jobs are not increasing anywhere, including China and Mexico.
Jobs are being taken over, both manufacturing and service jobs are being taken over by automation, and Trump's uh and uh you know, Trump's claim that he's gonna create uh, you know, monstrous amounts of jobs by his protectionist politics.
Okay, let's let's leave ideology after a second.
Let's get to his specific claim that he is going to revitalize this country and make it great again.
Now, before you answer, I want the reason that's resonating is because the people who support him and a lot of others think that the people that run this country, the special people have ruined it.
They have taken a college education and taken it in from a step up to a millstone around people's necks.
They have destroyed the credit markets, they have destroyed the housing market, they have destroyed everything they're touching, they're doing fine.
Trump comes along and basically the message he's saying, he's not he's not extolling a conservative message.
He says, I'm gonna fix this.
I'm gonna put it back to where you and I are in charge of what happens to this country.
This the greatness of this country is gonna be defined by how good it is for us.
That's what people are reacting to.
They're not reacting to him because he's conservative.
Yes, Rush.
But you know, that thing will make America great again is a slogan, just like hope and change.
What is different?
Yeah, but it's much more specific than hope and change.
Uh I I don't find I don't find specific so how exactly is he going to create those jobs?
Well, hope and change, you fill in the blanks.
Make America great, that's pretty uh simple to understand.
Uh uh no, not really.
I don't know what great means in his in his language, you know, because it could be uh, you know, if the things are gonna be great, I'm going to fix it.
Fix what?
I already told you why it's on the way people are interpreting it, we're gonna become the superpower again that dominates the world with our goodness.
In what in in what way?
In in what way is that gonna happen?
And how is that any more specifically?
Because he's going to stop the people who are ruining the country from doing what they're doing.
And what are they doing?
What are those people doing, Rush?
How is he going to stop them and what are they doing?
He's been part of I mean again, it's like with uh y you you you keep saying that, you know, uh r Democrats pretend that, you know, they were uh they were in Guamal this year or something that they're not controlling the White House.
I mean, he's been part of this establishment for decades.
He's been he's a crony capitalist, he's been friends with these people for years.
All of a sudden he's going to, you know, put them all under house arrest.
I mean he doesn't know Okay, so then would you would you believe if somebody said that he actually may be their agent.
It's no, I don't believe that he's their agent.
I don't go into conspiracies.
Agent means that it's a plot.
Agent means that there is a meeting somewhere where they say you go out and you pretend that you're against us, and then we'll divide the goodies.
There was never any such meeting.
What I'm saying is that he doesn't know any life other than crony capitalism.
How is he going to fight something which he internalizes completely?
I mean, from he doesn't know he doesn't know.
The only thing that I'm telling you, and I'm I'm I'm playing devil's advocate with you.
I look at him, I'm I'm getting blue in the face trying to explain why this is happening.
And I'm sure you've heard me go through all of this, and I I don't have the moments, the minutes here to do it again.
Uh but I can explain for every one of these objections you raise, I can give you a substantive reason why people think that he's going why they're investing in him.
Now, whether they're right or wrong, you know, time will tell.
But they have had it with the people running the show now.
They've had it for the last 30, 40 years.
They've had it with being aced out, they've had it with being sneered at.
They've had it with being mocked and and laughed at uh and not listened to.
Uh they've had it with being asked for money to promote causes and the causes never get promoted.
Um to grant you something.
He said something last night that cannot happen, folks, and I've just I've got to try he's he said uh he's gonna make Apple bring this iPhone manufacturing back to the United States.
There's no reason Apple can't make that's folks, that will not happen.
It can't happen.
Uh we don't have the setup for it.
The factories that make iPhones in China employ five hundred thousand people.
They make two hundred and some odd thirty, forty million iPhones a year.
We don't have factories that big.
We don't we don't have that many people that that would do those jobs.
But even if we did, the iPhone that you buy today for a hundred and ninety-nine dollars on contract, sign your two year deal with your carrier, would cost twenty five hundred dollars if manufactured in America.
It's that's just not that that couldn't that's not something could be changed overnight uh and still have the product be affordable.
That's not a criticism of America.
It's just the way things were just 500,000 people in one factory.
The factories have hospitals.
The factories are entire cities, the little cities.
And there's multiple of these factories.
They don't make just iPhones.
They make everything Apple makes.
And they make everything Samsung makes.
And they make everything just it's um and all of the suppliers are just down the street.
So that's that's a slogan, but that that isn't going to happen.
And to that extent, I don't know how many of his supporters actually think that specific kind of thing is going to happen.
This is what we don't know.
But anyway, Gregory, I appreciate the call.
Thanks to your patience here and uh uh explaining yourself as well as you did.
We'll take a break and be back after this.
Don't go.
Say, folks, there's another angle to this ongoing news story between Apple and the FBI over security.
And that's something I sadly intended to get to today, but didn't.
But Apple won that yesterday, the hearing that they had with the uh congressional hearing with uh Bruce Sewell, who is their corporate counsel, the FBI, Apple won that on seven to five, seven to five points-wise.
They and they may have won the slam dunk uh portion of it.
This all involves the all writs act.
And I'll save it, give you details tomorrow, but because what this is really about is the encryption on your phone.
That's what they want.
It's not about breaking into this phone.
This is just designed to get everybody thinking that we gotta do anything we can to get what's on a terrace phone.
But what the FBI wants, the government wants is to be able to decrypt the data on a phone.
The software that Apple wrote and and installed in certain phones sold, in this case to the County of San Bernardino, includes state-of-the-art protocols that protect the content of the phone on much of the software, like iMessages, the texting uh program.
Encryption is the process where really smart computer programmers write software to protect the content that's in computer files so that you you you need the key, the combination to the lock to be able to decrypt and be able to read it.
Yeah, I saw that.
George Stephanopoulos was uh interviewing Cruz.
See this?
And Chris said, Well, you know, Hillary Clinton's your former boss, George.
This is that that kind of stuff is just great.
You know, break the code, head on in there.
See you tomorrow here, folks.
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