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March 4, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:44
March 4, 2016, Friday, Hour #2
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The views expressed by the host on this program, documented to be almost always right 99.8% of the time.
It's going to be a while before it moves up, folks.
You've got to be right and then right.
And you'll be right for a long, long time at this baseline.
So it doesn't mean anything's wrong that it's staying where it is.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
Yes, sir.
Open Line Friday, 800-282-2882.
This is where callers get to determine what we talk about.
That doesn't happen Monday through Thursday.
That's why it's such a great career risk.
Turning over content portion of programming we go to the phones to rank amateurs.
Lovable rank amateurs, and they have been great lately, by the way.
Yesterday was a stupendous caller day, in fact.
Here's the number, 800-282-2882, and the email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
Do you remember after George W. Bush was reelected in 2004?
Some of you may not remember this, but we found out down in Boca and in Fort Lauderdale and areas south that troubled leftists were going for counseling.
Couldn't deal with the fact that Bush had won, and a number of therapists set up specific counseling sessions for Democrats who were near suicidal over the fact that Bush won.
It was an offshoot of what had happened after the Florida recount in 2000.
Well, the Washington Post has a story.
Trump anxiety?
Just ask the Shrinks and Massage Therapist by Paul Schwartzmann.
To the catalog of anxieties her patients explored during therapy, marriage, children, careers, psychologist Allison Howard is now listening to a new source of stress, the political rise of Donald Trump.
In recent days, at least two patients have invoked the Republican frontrunner, including one patient who spoke at length about being disturbed that Trump can be so divisive and popular at the same time, said Howard.
So we've got two people who've gone to see a shrink in their inability to deal with Trump, and it makes a huge, this is a huge story in the Washington Post.
And make no mistake about something, in Washington, the Washington Post is the Bible, not the New York Times.
The Washington Post is what they all read.
The Washington Post is what they all react to.
The Washington Post is where they want praise.
The Washington Post is where they don't want to be ripped or criticized for people who live and work in Washington.
So back to the stories.
Two patients have invoked Trump, including one patient who spoke at length about being disturbed that Trump can be so divisive and popular at the same time, said Howard, Allison Howard, who practices in the district.
What had happened to Trump during his childhood, the patient wanted to know, to make him such a bad person.
Well, he stirred people up, the shrink said.
We've been told our whole lives not to say bad things about people, not to be bullies, to not ostracize people based on their skin color.
We have these social mores, and he breaks all of them, and he's successful, and people are wondering how he gets away with it.
A recent Washington Post ABC News poll showed that 69% of Americans said the idea of President Trump made them anxious.
For some, Trump's diatribes against undocumented immigrants, Mexicans, and Muslims evoke unpleasant flashbacks of dictators.
For others, his raw-toned insults conjure memories of high school bullies.
You kidding me?
Two people have shown up with these complaints to a shrink, and somehow the shrink lets the Washington Post know, and there is a big story about this.
You want me to explain this?
Well, no, I will explain to them what they're asking their shrink.
Here you have a bunch of people who have enforced touchy, feely political correctness on everybody.
And what did they emphasize?
No competition.
To these people, competition is the root of all bad behavior.
Competition is the root of unfairness and inequality because one person wins and everybody else loses.
Or one team wins and every other team loses.
It is the epitome of unfairness, competition.
And then you add to it saying bad things about your opponent and so forth.
And I'm here to tell you, this is another thing, that these people in Washington and New York or wherever you find pockets of people who are essentially liberal.
I believe what Trump's candidacy is illustrating in this regard is that there is a sizable number of people in this country who are fed up with this.
They are fed up with touchy-feely, no competition, no winners, no losers, forced equality, engineered outcomes.
It stands in the way of the very definition of the country.
It blows up the whole concept of rugged individualism.
It brings in, ushers in the idea that some central authority made up of touchy-feely wimps is going to determine who wins and who loses under the precept that nobody's going to lose.
When the fact is, everybody loses and they win.
People who set the rules.
So here comes Trump.
And Trump is no more than an average guy.
This is Trump speaking in ways that men today still speak when they're not hounded by the modern eclipse of feminism and its supporters.
Men speak this way to each other.
They crack jokes this way to each other.
It does not make them bad people.
And I think there's a yearning for it among a whole segment of the population.
Women, men, they want this kind of gruff, fearless, tell-it-like it is persona.
They don't think it's destructive.
They don't think it says anything bad about the country.
They don't think it says anything bad about the people who speak it.
The proof of this is that debate last night, that debate last night was the second debate in a row where we actually had the subject of penis length discussed in a presidential debate related to the size of a candidate's hands.
And it was discussed as something to be proud of.
Now, you might think that's above board.
You might think that's going a bit too far.
And I'm hearing all kinds of people.
I couldn't have my children listen to this.
Well, the reason, and it may be over the top, I don't, but the reason it's happening is because there have been so many invisible shackles put on.
People are walking around on eggshells in this country for the last 30 years, afraid to be themselves, afraid to say what they really think, be who they really are, for fear they're going to get fired, for fear that somebody's going to lodge a complaint against them and be called before some tribunal to explain themselves when there's nothing wrong with them.
So here comes Trump.
And he's basically doing a you to everybody.
And he's just, he's discombobulating them and they're wringing their hands and they don't know how to deal with it.
And he's even being applauded because of that.
But again, the reason that he gets away with it is substantive.
Whether his supporters are right or wrong, his supporters believe that he is going to fix what they think is wrong.
And they don't care what kind of personality he's.
In fact, the more in your face and the more abrasive he is to people who tell him he can't get it done, the prouder of him they are.
They don't have the freedom or the ability to behave this way in their lives because somebody's going to come down on them.
Somebody's going to fire them.
Somebody's going to call them before some tribunal at the company.
Give them a bad recommendation or something.
No, I'm just trying to explain how it is happening and why.
I'm not endorsing any of it, folks.
I'm just, I'm sitting here.
Everybody's here, grab soundbite number eight.
Bernie Goldberg on the Fox News channel.
He was on with O'Reilly last night, and they played a video of Trump saying he doesn't have small hands and what that means in relationship to penis size.
Well, these guys are getting the vapors out there.
And here's what Bernie Goldberg said.
Imagine if a family is watching this debate with their 12-year-old daughter, and she said, What did he mean by that about size?
And there's no pro is there anything, anything that would embarrass his supporters, mainly his supporters on conservative television and radio, who have fallen madly in love with Donald Trump and who slobber over him in just the same way as liberals in the media slobbered over Barack Obama.
Apparently not.
Now, we won't know.
Folks, this debate last night, we won't know until the next set of primary.
We're going to learn a lot in these next set because four of the primaries on Saturday are closed.
And I want to remind you again, that means that no crossovers are permitted.
The only people who can vote in these upcoming four this weekend are Republicans.
And there have been a couple of those so far.
Trump's lost both of those.
Oklahoma was a closed primary, Republicans only, and Cruz won that.
But we won't know.
They're worried about some of this stuff.
This is a legitimate question that Goldberg has.
Well, now, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, look, it's nerdily a show.
But the moderator brought it up.
Yeah, I know the moderator brought it up.
But what Goldberg thinks should happen is that the candidates ought to put their hands up, say, stop.
Control this thing.
Don't let the moderators get away with taking this debate to the sewer if that's where you think it went.
Don't let the moderators get away with dumbing it down.
Don't let the moderators get away, stand up for and deny this kind of thing.
And he's up to that they don't, that they go ahead and talk about it.
I really think, folks, that what we're witnessing here is a pent up, it may be over the top, I think it's a pent up reaction to the censorship that has gone on in this country for 30 years, that it's rooted in political correctness.
Now, I'm not saying that from the standpoint that a Trump attribute is that he blows it to smithereens.
He does, but that's not, I'm not saying this as a means of supporting Trump.
I think this is bigger than Trump in this sense, that this stuff is happening in a presidential debate and not being condemned.
I think there are people that you can't understand, and at least people can't, who have been fed up for the longest time since the modern era of feminism hit.
People will never understand this unless somebody takes time to explain it to them.
The modern era of feminism was one of the most transformative for the worst eruptions in our society that has happened in my lifetime.
It totally, totally attempted to obliterate human nature.
It took a bunch of central authoritarians using the power of government to enforce speech codes, behavioral codes that were in direct violation of human nature.
What was standard, ordinary, just good back and forth between men and women ended up becoming criminalized.
Fathers became known as predators.
They were not allowed to even see their children in many cases.
They were never granted custody.
All kinds of horrible, rotten things happened with just the advent, the modern era of feminism.
And with all of these things, like feminism and the other things that came along with it, political correctness attached, and that was censorship.
And people had to shut up.
They had to stop thinking the way they think.
They had to certainly couldn't speak the way they could.
And all this is, is a long, this is like a champagne cork popping after years and years and years of being shaken up with all kinds of pressure building up and no outlet for it.
There is more anger and frustration subdued, contained over what the left has done to this country, to this culture, to our society, and it's just blowing.
And the reason it's such a surprise to everybody is that the architects of this political correctness all think that A, it's wonderful and great.
All this multiculturalism, all of this attack on what has been known as traditional Americanism, and the people who believe this has been a good thing think that they've persuaded everybody to agree with them that the way America used to be was rotten and mean spirited and all these other things.
And the people who have been silenced and are not, actually have been forced into shutting up and behaving in restrained ways have never thought it was good, have never thought that all these things the left has imposed on people, like no scores in softball games or football games in high school.
And this is one example, but there are countless zillions of others.
There has never been unanimous support for this.
The people who oppose it have been bullied, threatened, blackmailed into shutting up and accepting it.
And all it's taken is one guy running for president to blow it to smithereens.
And it's providing an outlet for a lot of people.
And that's what, and the Republican establishment is scared to death at all this.
There's racism out there.
Look at all this bigotry.
It's nothing of the sort.
And because that's been attached to it, those allegations have been, that's made people mad.
People who are not racist have been called racist.
People who are not bigots have been called bigots.
People who are not homophobes who have been called homophobes.
People who have deeply held religious beliefs have been attacked as the problem in this country when they are not.
They are the solution to the cultural rot taking place.
There's a whole bunch of people from all these different groups that are finally erupting here.
For whatever reason, it may not even be Trump.
It was going to blow at some point.
It was going to blow at some point.
Seven years of Obama could well be enough to make it blow.
I got to take a break.
I promise your phone calls are coming up, folks.
Don't go away.
One more thing about this.
The people who are wringing their hands over all of this depravity and cultural rotten these debates, they don't say a thing about it when it happens on a television show.
I mean, I listen to people on the radio routinely use words I will not use, the P word to talk about being angry.
And the A word that describes the dairy era.
These are common words now, and nobody condemns it.
When you have this kind of vulgarity expressed in television shows or movies or music, it's applauded.
It's said to be cultural expansion, art.
It's exploration of our deeper selves and so forth.
But what happens here in a Republican debate.
Oh, no, we can't have this.
This is horrible.
Well, why is it horrible here and not there?
The very people that promote it and defend it are the ones wringing their hands and acting like, oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
What's happening to our country?
What's happening to our politics?
You don't think people are fed up with having to go to sensitivity training seminars at work?
Sensitivity training for race, sensitivity training for sex, sensitivity training for sexual harassment.
You don't think people are boiling over this?
And all of it's done because the employers need to protect themselves against lawsuits that come down the pike?
Thanks to the plaintiff's bar, which is owned entirely by the Democrat Party?
There are reasons all this stuff is happening.
Okay, to the phones.
I got to go to the phone.
If I don't, I'll never will.
Harry Aurora, Illinois.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
How are you?
Good afternoon.
Thank you, sir.
Great to talk to you.
I'm very honored to talk to you.
I've been listening to you since about 1994.
The reason I called, I'll try to make this quick for you.
I had heard you ask Mr. Sturdley if he could describe the debate in one word.
And I immediately had a word that came to my head, and that was uneasy.
And the reason it was uneasy was because I had heard Romney earlier in the day, and I had gone into that debate with a feeling of unease ever since I had heard him talk about Trump that day.
And it kind of set the tone for the entire debate for me.
I had this uneasiness.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
What set the tone?
Romney's speech?
Yes.
And I really was, I was kind of, I was disgusted with Romney after that.
You know, I remember back to the election when that last month, just like Trump has been saying, that last month of the election, you know, I had thought that he had it in the bag.
And then that entire last month, he just threw it to the wind.
Especially the second debate, second or third debate with the Candy Crowley debate.
There was no pushback.
There was no fight back.
Yep.
Yep.
You're not alone in that assessment.
Peggy Noonan is distressed out there, ladies and gentlemen.
And I will tell you why just a minute, but I have to make one other observation because I just got an email bouncing off the things I said in the last two segments.
And the email, Rush, do you really think Trump knows he's doing all of this?
Is this what his game plan is?
I said, no, no, no, no.
It's a good question.
Trump's not aware of he's doing any of this.
Trump's not doing this for any of the reasons that I just cited here to explain what's happening.
Let me share this.
Maybe to help you understand this.
Camille Paglia at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia is one of the greatest social critics of our era.
And I will never forget all of the ways, the articles, the TV appearances and so forth that she has produced in analyzing Madonna.
She analyzed Madonna in depth, in deep ways that would never occur to me, just a consumer of pop music back in the 80s, 90s, and so forth.
And after I got to know her, I made a point of asking her, do you think Madonna's aware of all of this that you're assigning to her?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, Madonna's just performing.
Madonna's, no artist is really, really aware.
Many of the artists will tell you they are really not telling you the truth.
They're just stopping their craft.
That's what makes them great artists.
They're not studying to try to do anything.
It's just the nature of their existence has that kind of power to reshape things.
But that's not what they're saying.
Madonna just wanted to be a success singing and dancing.
She wasn't not to change this or change that.
She just wanted to forge her way.
And in the process, in Camille Paglia's view, massively important artistic things happen.
And she says, that's why it's important for critics to analyze this.
Critics that are not performers, stand aside and observe it and have the sensibilities to understand what it all means to people who are interested in that.
Well, the same token, every bit of analysis I've offered you in the last 20 minutes about to explain the shaking champagne bottle and this explosion of people anti-political correctness fed up with having to go to sensitivity training seminars in the modern era feminine, all that.
No, Trump is not aware.
He's doing any of that.
He's just running for president.
I'm not assigning any motive to Trump.
He's just being who he is.
But who he is at this point in time, at this particular confluence of events, you throw a presidential campaign in the middle of it, which of course is going to add additional attention and weight to it.
But no, I'm not, don't misunderstand.
I'm just observing the scene and commenting on it and trying to explain it.
People sending me emails.
Why are we talking about things like this in the presidential debate?
I can't believe it.
I'm trying to answer it.
But Trump didn't get into this to eventually be able to blow up political correctness.
He's got his own motivations for wanting to do this.
He may be now.
I mean, that becomes aware of how he has reacted to and how his campaign is attracting supporters.
But I don't think Trump had any grand scheme here other than to win, to become president.
And who knows what his original purpose is.
Maybe it wasn't that when he started, and maybe he figured it didn't take long.
He figured he can.
I have no idea.
But I don't believe that every bit of this intricate analysis that I have given you is the result of a brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed strategy.
It's just a guy being who he is that has come out of nowhere, even though everybody knows who he is.
Who he is in the context of a presidential campaign has unleashed all kinds of things that have been pent up out there, I contend, for decades.
And in many ways, it's all natural.
Now, Peggy Noonan, this is interesting.
Peggy Noonan says, stop Trump or unite around Trump.
It's all the same.
Things will never be the same.
So I have to stop for a moment.
What does this mean?
Stop Trump or unite around Trump?
It's all the same.
Nothing will ever be the same.
What is nothing will ever be the same?
And I am guessing that in Peggy Noonan's world, nothing is the Republican Party.
And so it means the Republican Party will never be the same after all of this.
And she's not happy about it.
I'm gathering.
I could be wrong about that, but maybe she's not happy that it won't be the same because it's been blown up here.
Without getting her on the phone and asking her, I'm going to guess that what she thinks is that whether Trump wins this thing or whether there's a coalition that aligns to stop Trump, the party is finished as we knew it.
Because you might be saying, well, what would the party change if somebody unites and stops Trump?
Well, because if that happens, the party has blown off a huge number of voters.
Don't forget that as we sit here now, a huge majority of people, both at the polls and in polling data, are expressing a preference for Trump.
And if there is a maneuver to take a couple candidates to unite and deny Trump this, that's going to tick off all these Trumpists.
And they're not going to be happy campers.
And they're not going to say, well, you know what?
We gave it our best shot and we lost this fair and square.
They're going to think that the party played another trick and used power and hidden strength to once again thwart the will of the average little guy out there.
And that's going to be it.
And they're going to drift away.
And the Republican Party is going to lose its base.
I think that's probably what she's afraid of and never, ever be the same.
And the same token, if Trump wins, well, that really means the party is never going to be the same.
So to her, this is a seminal, seminal moment, and we've already reached it, regardless of the outcome here.
Back to the phones, Albert in Austin, Texas.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hey, Rush.
Longtime listener, and since early 90s, and first time call.
Great to have you here, sir.
Thank you.
Okay.
Listen, for 33 years, I've never voted for anything but a Republican.
And, you know, I describe myself as a social conservative, a fiscal, maybe right a center.
But now I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, holy cow, I must have been way right a center because Trump is not a conservative.
He's not a Republican.
I get all the talk about he's voicing outrage over the right topics.
I'll agree with that.
And even where I agree with him, I agree with him on immigration.
I agree with him on trade in China.
Have you did you watch the debate last night?
I refuse to.
Well, because Ted Cruz essentially said all this last night.
And I guess that's my point.
I can literally, I voted for Cruz.
I'm not a Cruz supporter, but I could have supported any one of the candidates.
But Trump is not, he's just not, he is not anything that the Republican Party represents.
Run down the list.
Tort reform.
Imminent domain.
Let's put his sister on the Supreme Court.
Entitlements off the table?
This guy's not a Republican.
Well, you see, but see, Albert, that's the point.
That's why he is being propped up and supported because the people doing so blame the Republican Party for allowing the Democrats to get away with everything they have that has resulted in us being where we are.
The Republican Party is ultimately held responsible here for their inaction, their lack of opposition.
So when you say Trump's not a Republican, his supporters are going, damn right, damn right.
And the fact that he's running in the Republican primary is an added bonus because that's another sign that he's taking it to him.
And the establishment is clueless on this.
They still think that Trump has, by giant trickery, gone out and run a scam on loyal Republican voters.
The concept that their base is fit to be tied and through with them, I guess, has not hit them.
They're in such a state of denial that they don't realize that.
Now, I would say, Albert, thanks for the call.
I would say that things are not nearly so dire as Peggy Noonan says, or thinks.
I really don't.
I think there is a solution out there staring everybody in the face that would grow the Republican Party, solidify the Republican Party, keep the base within the Republican Party.
And that is embrace conservatism.
Embrace the principles of the founding of this country.
Become proud of them once again.
Articulate them.
Spor them, implement them.
Go out and simply provide a contrast and do the distinctive difference between that and what Obama and the Democrats stand for.
And the party can survive.
It can thrive, and it can become a majority party.
But they won't do it because conservatism is what they think is the problem.
It's the most amazing conservatism is the salvation of the Republican Party.
But since they refuse, since the base refuses to embrace it, since the base, in fact, they not only refuse to embrace it, they mock it and they make fun of it.
Is it any wonder that somebody like Trump, who many people say is not a conservative, can come in and capture 35, 40% of it?
It all makes total sense to me, no matter how you look at it.
Human behavioral, human psychology, actual events that have happened over recent years in the political arena in Washington.
None of this is a mystery.
That's why it's still flabbergasting that the GOP establishment can't figure this out.
No, no, it's going to be very interesting to see if the Trump flip-flops on the H-1B visas last night will do him any damage.
And we won't know this.
We won't know until there are actual primary votes taking place.
And then we won't know if it's specifically a factor.
If there is, if Trump does not do as well in these upcoming primaries, we have to trust exit poll entrance poll data as to why.
But he did, he did, in many people's view, Byron York has a piece in the Washington Examiner.
Confusion follows Trump flip-flop on key immigration issue.
Now, Trump will tell you that the H-1B visa thing is not an immigration issue.
It had nothing to do with the southern border and the wall or any of that.
But see, this, I'll tell you what happened here last night.
This is when I said the top of the program, and I think Ted Cruz is in a different league last night.
Ted Cruz was an IQ factor of 85 ahead of everybody on that stage last night.
This H-1B visa thing came up.
And it was, you know, Trump's got it on his website that he thinks that we need to have more people being allowed to stay in the country because we need good workers.
Tillikin Valley needs good workers.
We're educating these people to get educated and we kick them out.
We need them to stay here.
What's been pointed out, no, no, no, no, Mr. Trump.
What's happening is that these H-1B visa people are staying here and they are getting jobs currently done by Americans.
Americans are being forced to train these H-1B visa students and then they're being fired after they train them and the H-1B visa students are being hired at much less than the Americans who are being fired were being paid.
And the most recent example of this was a guy at Disney who went public with it.
Well, it was Ted Cruz that pointed all this out.
Well, everybody's flailing away over the apparent flip-flop.
It was Cruz that explained to everybody what's really going on with the H-1B visa.
And at another point in the debate, after Cruz had answered a question, they went to Trump because something Cruz had said could have been construed.
I mean, it wasn't.
It could have been construed as an attack on Trump, which means he gets 30 seconds to reply.
And I think it was Chris Wallace or Megan Kelly said, Mr. Trump, would you care to reply?
No, no, no, I agree with everything Ted said.
Everything he just said.
I agree with it.
So it was, there was a flip-flop.
What's on Trump's website is not what he ended up saying last night, or vice versa.
I had to delve in it, delve into it to understand it myself, because it went by so fast.
And I'm at a disadvantage in a way.
I have to rely on close captioning of these debates.
And the captioning is always a couple sentences behind.
So I'm trying to mix things I can understand with a word or two I missed and wait for the caption to pick up and go back to live.
And it's a challenge for me.
So that's why I need to read transcripts later the next day.
But the Daily Caller here has a story.
Trump campaign rushes to clarify immigration position following debate.
Trump appeared to indicate a major change in his immigration platform at the debate by implying he wants to expand the H-1B visa program.
But his campaign released a statement shortly after the event saying that that wasn't true, claiming that the question posed to Trump by Megan Kelly related to high-skill immigration solely.
The Trump statement says the H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration.
These are temporary foreign workers imported from abroad for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay.
But that only happened on Trump's website after Ted Cruz pointed it out last night.
Now, Rubio also knows that he has said it on previous occasions.
But in the debate last night, it was Cruz who properly characterized what is happening in the program.
The H-1B visas allow U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations.
And the regulations define a specialty occupation as requiring theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor, including but not limited to biotech, chemistry, architecture, engineering, math, physical sciences, social sciences, medicine, health, education, blah, blah.
But Trump's point seemed to be that the H-1B requirements are being ignored by some companies for some of their foreign workers.
So he covered the H-1B visa, what, controversy or discussion on both sides of it.
But the reason for the flip-flop was that the latest iteration in the H-1B visa story, he didn't appear to know last night.
I say didn't appear to know.
I don't think he doesn't know.
I just think pressure, everybody gunning for you, who knows what.
But it was Cruz that put it all in perspective for everybody on a number of things, by the way, last night.
Okay, hang tight, folks.
We'll be right back.
No, still am.
Still am.
Going to be on Fox News Sunday.
This Sunday with Chris Wallace.
As it stands now, I'm in the second segment.
Rejected my idea to put me on the panel analyzing what I said.
I still think that would be great, unique thing to do, but they rejected the idea.
So I'll mention it again so that people don't forget.
One big exciting broadcast hour remains open line Friday.
Don't miss it.
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