All Episodes
Previous Next
April 4, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:16
April 4, 2016, Monday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Greetings back, my friends, the views expressed by the host on this program, documented to be almost always right 99.7% of the time.
It is the most listened to radio talk show across the fruited plain.
It's the most talked about talk show.
It is the most quoted, the most reported on, discussed.
I host talk shows across the fruited plain.
Here, as an example, grab audio soundbite number eight.
This was Saturday morning C-SPAN Washington Journal.
You remember Jim Warren?
He used to be way, way back.
Yes, you do.
He was on the McLaughlin Report.
Chicago Tribune had the bowl haircut, except it went down to his shoulders.
Remember that guy?
Well, he's now, he's head of the Pointer Institute, P-O-Y-N-T-E, or Poynter Institute for Media Studies, chief correspondent.
He was, I think, also might have been an editor at one time of the Chicago Trib.
And it was either the McLaughlin Group or the CNN version of that show that Robert Novak hosted.
I can't remember which one.
But that's who he is, Jim Warren.
And he was on the C-SPAN Washington Journal on Saturday.
Or as people in my hometown say, Saturday.
He was on there Saturday morning.
And John McCartle was the host of C-SPAN Washington Journal on Saturday morning, talking to Jim Warren about conservative media and Fox News.
And McCartle said, what are your thoughts on the role of Fox News in these media echo chambers that we hear about?
The people who watch Fox.
So he's being asked about Fox News.
You got that.
You understand that.
He's being asked about Fox News and the media echo chamber from Fox News.
Okay, here's Warren's answer.
There is a somewhat unified amalgam of forces out there, and some of it might be traced to the coming of talk radio in the late 80s, and in particular with the astonishing success and impact of Rush Limbaugh and the coming of Fox News, where you did have these forces which were sort of playing on a similar ideological page and have had a huge impact.
But to say that all of America is looking at them, to say that that's their only source of news, to say that they alter the public agenda and legislative agendas all over the country, I think that would be giving them more credit than they deserve.
So basically what he's right, I mean, the whole thing started in 88, this program, then Fox came along in 97, which is about, what, 10 years later.
And of course, there's the blogosphere.
There is conservative websites now.
There's all kinds of other conservative TV and radio programs, of course.
And he's admitting that there've been a huge impact.
He says, he's right about something here.
In a sense, folks, the drive-by media, it's fascinating for me.
Even though this is a, if something happens in the forest, nobody's there, is it making sound?
I'm in the forest.
I mean, I am the forest.
And these guys start talking about me and this conservative media.
And these people in the drive-by media really do think that the audiences here are mind-numbed and are incapable of making their minds up on anything without being told how to think or what to think.
And I have always met from the first day of this program, that was a charge that was made.
You know, people, this program started, they had to find a way to explain it because they couldn't.
It was, you talk about outsider, establishment versus outsider.
I was the original outsider when it comes to media.
I didn't know anybody.
I didn't network.
There was no way I was going to get anywhere near this kind of job in the establishment.
It just didn't, it was never, ever going to happen.
I never spent time getting to know anybody, didn't network, didn't grease skids, didn't develop personal relationships where there are quid pro quos.
I didn't go to the universities, none of that stuff.
And so they had no idea who I was, and they had to try to explain what is this.
And since it was so foreign to them, because they're so uniform, they on the left, you watch CBS, it's the same as NBC, it's the same as ABC every day.
Read the Washington Post, it's the same as the New York Times, for all intents and purposes.
But this was different.
They had to have some way of explaining it.
And just like you have a bunch of conservatives now trying to insult Trump by insulting his voters, same thing happened here.
The audience to this program was routinely maligned and characterized as a bunch of adults who were incapable of making up their own minds.
And it was just the exact opposite.
People glommed onto this show because it was the only show that echoed what they already believed.
This show was a validation.
But the drive-bys don't look at it that way.
And so the drive-bys and everybody else in the establishment media look at this and Fox News, and they think everybody who watches and everybody who listens only does what they're told and is influenced completely by what they hear here, which is why when the Democrats win elections, they start writing celebratory stories about how I have lost my influence.
And by the same token, if Republicans win, there will be stories about how somebody on talk radio is responsible for it.
And I just want you, I do not think either are true.
If I had all the influence they claim, if Fox News had all the influence everybody claims it did, if the alternative media were as omnipotent and powerful, the Democrats would not have won an election the last 25 years.
But of course they have.
What are you, Sterling?
are you doing well well no no it's the way they try to explain it they uh they will they they in We make them nervous.
So anything they can tell themselves to make them think we're not really intruders, we're not really a threat.
So when the Democrats win an election, that's how you'll get a story.
It's talk radio losing its impact.
It's talk radio losing its influence.
It's talk radio on the decline.
It's every election, every election cycle.
And by the same token, when Republicans, like when Eric Cantor loses, here they come.
Oh, no, they get all frightened.
Talk radio did in Eric.
It's predictable.
And in both scenarios, they do something very key.
They insult the intelligence of the audience, which is something I have never done here.
Basically, Warren is in his own way saying that.
He chose to say it in a way that's different from what I have.
But he says, look, you know, to say that Fox and Limbaugh alter the public agenda and the legislative agendas, I mean, they'd be giving them more credit than they deserve.
And it comes from fear.
But it also comes, the people assigning this are people who think they have all this influence themselves.
The people analyzing whatever influence there is or isn't here, they are the people who think they are in charge of public opinion and motivating it and inspiring it to public action.
And that's why they're in panic.
Because they have opposition now.
We've kind of brought them out.
And this competition has made them finally admit to being who they really are, leftist activists.
They're not people who are objective and unbiased and uncaring about the outcome of events.
They're totally invested in it.
So, no, I've always tried to keep everything in perspective in this regard, but he's essentially right about that.
Only to the point where he says that, you know, I think they get more credit than they deserve.
We don't seek that kind of credit, by the way.
Snerdley will tell you, and he gets frustrated every time I do it.
I downplay that kind of credit because if it were true, honestly, the Democrats would never have won an election in the 25 years I've been doing this.
You can't dispute that, right?
I'm not, I'm not, I know, look, I know there are other mitigating factors why Democrats win, like vote fraud and a number of other things, and rotten Republican candidates.
No, no, no.
Snerdley gets worried.
I start diminishing my.
He thinks I'm trying to be falsely humble.
He's trying to make you think that I don't have the bill.
I'm just telling you the truth here.
It's important one does not lose perspective.
At any rate, Jim Warren pretty much, if I give him 90% on his analysis, we have a montage changing gears now.
The drive-bys, not just the drive-a-hill.
The establishment has been hoping.
They have been praying.
Well, they don't pray.
But they've been hoping.
They have been really hoping that Trump would implode.
Right?
They have been expecting it.
They've been hoping that Trump would make a fool of himself and it'd be the end of it.
So we put together a montage from yesterday and this morning from people all over the media landscape.
NBC, Fox News, Fox News, Weekly Standard, ABC, CBS, about Trump and the fact that he admitted he made a mistake and how they are overjoyed by it.
Trump's backing off the war over wives.
Admitting his retweet of this unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz was a mistake.
He did admit that retweeting the unflattering image of Heidi Cruz was a mistake.
Donald Trump admitting some missteps.
This is Donald Trump with flashes of humility.
A possible turning point.
Donald Trump expresses a regret.
A rare show of regret from Donald Trump.
Donald Trump did the unthinkable and unusual.
He expressed regret.
A possible turning point.
Okay, so what they are universally ecstatic over here is that Trump said, yeah, maybe I shouldn't have done the retweet that picture of Heidi Cruz.
Here's Trump admitting the mistake.
It was on Fox News Sunday.
Chris Wallace said, if you had purposely set out to turn off voters, especially women voters, over the last two weeks, I'm not sure you could have done a better job than retweeting that Heidi Cruz picture.
Well, you know, all I can do is do what I do.
Was this my best week?
I guess not.
I could have done without the retweet, et cetera, et cetera.
But I think I'm doing okay.
I'm doing okay.
So from that, they're getting that it's a new Trump Day.
It's more humility.
He's finally admitted a mistake.
Remember that one press conference, George W. Bush, for 45 minutes, they asked him to admit a mistake.
Every reporter, is there not one mistake you've made?
No.
Come on, Mr. President.
There has to be everybody makes mistakes.
Is there not one thing you regret?
I don't look at life that way.
45 minutes.
There's something about media and somebody they cover admitting they made a mistake and they just run with it like it's Christmas morning.
Speaking of Trump, here he is last night on the Fox News channel on the record special town hall with Donald Trump.
Greta Van Susteren was hostetting.
And she said, in 2015, you made the public announcement that you're pro-life.
And in this last week, you're all over at a map on it.
Can you tell me what you're thinking about this?
I'm pro-life.
Ronald Reagan was pro-life.
With the exceptions, okay?
With the three exceptions.
That was Ronald Reagan.
And that's been me.
And it's been me for quite a period of time.
Then when they ask questions about, you know, different things or they ask theoretical questions in theory, in theory, if you did this and if you did that.
And I took that answer and I didn't like it because I think a lot of people didn't understand it.
Women go through a lot.
They go through a tremendous punishment of themselves.
And I didn't like because I wasn't sure people would understand it.
So I clarified it.
But it was just a clarification and I think it was well accepted.
Yeah, it was the best clarification anybody's ever made.
No better clarification ever happened in American politics than Trump's clarification on his abortion statement with Chris Matthews.
And everybody ate it up.
Everybody loved it.
That was the best clarification that it had ever, ever been made.
Here's Trump in West Alice, Wisconsin yesterday, speaking about Ted Cruz.
Lion Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz, the biggest liar I've ever met.
He comes in Bible high.
I'm lying Ted Cruz.
I put the Bible down and then I start to lie.
Remember what he did to Ben Carson?
They should have disqualified Ted Cruz from Iowa.
He's a cheater.
He's a cheater.
He's a dirty, rotten cheat.
Remember that.
Lion did.
I talked to Tara.
Anyway, of course, they conveniently leave out that Trump also referred to Carson as what, a child molester.
Pedophile, that's right, a pedophile.
Trump referred to Ben Carson.
It's a pedophile.
Of course, Lyon did!
He holds up the Bible and does what?
That's right, he lied.
It's all caricature.
Anyway, folks, I'll take a break.
We're going to get back to your phone calls in a jiffy hang in there, beat tough.
Do not go away.
Naples, Florida, back to the phones we go.
This is Mel.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hey, good afternoon, Rush.
It's funny.
You sound like you were reading my mind as you were talking about the drive-by media.
I just saw a couple of things on there, as a matter of fact, and particularly I'm talking about CNN.
I don't know why the GOP continues to go on there and have their debates because CNN has done nothing but assassinate the GOP, the conservative brand, in every which a way.
Particularly the two stories that I'm looking at.
Before you go into that, I have to say there are a lot of people who think that CNN's presidential debates have been a little bit better and more substantive than the others that have been on Fox or MSNBC.
Well, and those people, I don't know.
Are they people from CNN?
Because the bottom line is when you deal with CNN and you look at CNN, they redefine terms.
They fit the liberal template in terms of redefining terms, making everything a civil rights issue, and then they blame it on white Christian conservatives.
Yeah, look, but there's nowhere to go.
There's nowhere to go to avoid that.
If you're going to have anybody from major media other than, I mean, even the Fox people went there.
But you know what?
There's a way you don't, you may not be able to avoid it, but you can set the tone.
For example, I was really surprised during the Republican debate when they brought up the term undocumented work or whatever the heck that is, and none of the GOP candidates corrected them.
The problem with the GOP base under Rance Privus is we have never controlled the terminology in the discussion.
So people will think that, oh, well, you hate women because you hold this position, or you hate minorities because of whatever.
No, that's because the GOP thinks that if he is somehow, it looks bad to defend yourself to fight back.
They believe that allegations like that are forgotten the next day.
Look, they're wrong about that.
What was the point you wanted to make about the two stories of CNN?
The two stories I wanted to make was dealing with just how they redefine terms, where you have, in one case, I don't know if you're familiar about the man who killed his son for being gay.
It was a CNN story about this man in California who killed his son allegedly for being gay.
Now, the real point about the story is the guy was Muslim.
So they wouldn't bring out the fact that the guy was Muslim on the headline.
Now they had another story.
Now, wait, wait, wait.
Did CNN not mention that he was Muslim?
CNN did not mention he was Muslim on the headline.
You had to actually, no, they didn't think he was Muslim at all, but the name.
You can probably decipher this from the name when he was from the Middle East.
No, that's just, you can't do that.
You cannot.
That's discriminatory and that's bigoted.
You can't assume somebody's religion just because of their name.
Don't you know that?
Well, I'm not politically correct enough to know that.
I'm sorry.
But the second story was where you have CNN now.
They say that Muslims were kicked off of a plane in D.C., where if you read the story, it doesn't say any reason that these people were Muslims was a factor in them being kicked off the plane.
I don't know if you're familiar with that story as well.
Look, it's not just CNN.
This kind of, and I don't doubt what you say, but this kind of bias is throughout not just the media.
It permeates this administration.
And frankly, a lot of it was similar in the Bush administration.
For some reason, there is an unwillingness to identify these people when they do what everybody knows they do.
Well, Rush, I mean, the problem for me is, like, I just don't get why the GOP hasn't taken a step up and confronted these people.
For example, CNN is not a news network.
I know it has it in their acronym, but it's not a news network.
They were going to boycott Georgia because by the religious freedom bill, news network is in the position of telling or influencing political decisions.
Because they're afraid.
They're afraid of losing donors.
They're afraid of being criticized by the media.
They're afraid of offending voters.
It's a totally defensive, fearful posture.
No, no, no.
I didn't mean to downplay it.
I didn't have much time left with the caller, and he's another guy that thought, I was very told, but I was a little bit better with him than the other guy.
Sorry, I've seen a guy who's talking like this.
But the point is, he was right.
CNN did not report that the man who shot his son for being gay is Muslim.
And that is rather important.
I think it's really crucially important, but CNN had a decision to make.
Who do we want to indict more?
Who do we want to be unfair to the most?
We want to be unfair to homophobes.
Or do we want to have to tell the truth about Islam?
And they decided to go with most American men are homophobes.
Just had a story last week.
Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, which, for lack of a better headquarters of the two primary mosques of Islam in Mecca, announced a new public policy of public execution for homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders.
I mean, it's all there.
Now, the guy – some reports say that he's not Muslim.
It's in a sense.
CNN didn't report it.
Some people say he is.
Some people say that he is.
He is not, some say he's a Seventh-day Adventist.
The guy on the plane, the guy that the Muslim that was taken off the plane or whatever, that they did not say was Muslim, just used his name, is a different story.
Now I'm being told the guy who shot his son is not a Muslim.
Which is it?
What other places?
Where have you seen it?
CNN says that they didn't even mention it.
Anyway, whichever is the case, I don't think it's a story that bothered CNN much, is the bottom line.
It just, it fits a profile that they have established, even though, I mean, when's the last time you can ever remember anything like that happening?
Whether you're Muslim or not, when's the last time you could remember a father shooting a child because he was gay?
But CNN's out there, they do want to make it look like if it's not a natural occurrence, that it's something we need to be worried about because it might develop into something like this.
There's always this tone with stories like this.
Now, back to the Wisconsin primary.
The Wall Street Journal today has a story headlined this way.
Trump faces great tests against Wisconsin's conservative political network.
And it reminded me, I mentioned this at the top of the program, Scott Walker, the great governor of Wisconsin, faced a number of recall elections plus standard calendar re-elections.
If I'm not mistaken, in most of these elections, most of these campaigns, pre-election polling data made it look very, very bad for Scott Walker, made it look like he was losing.
And it turned out that he ended up winning, and in most of these instances, one big.
And that has been added to the growing evidence that the conservative movement, for lack of a better term in Wisconsin, is big and it is serious and it is motivated.
I mean, Walker won these elections and he won them by a lot.
And the Democrats threw everything they had.
They had national fundraising going on.
They have Hollywood fundraisers.
They tried every dirty trick, every standard trick they could think of.
And so the assumption here is that Cruz wins in a landslide tomorrow because of this massive conservative network that has actually been pro-Cruz.
Walker has endorsed Cruz.
The conservative network movement in Wisconsin is very much behind Cruz, very much opposed to Trump.
There have been a number of polls.
There are two polls that show Cruz up 10.
There is one poll that shows Cruz up by one margin of error, like 36 to 35.
And a new poll out today that shows Trump down by eight, Cruz winning by eight in Wisconsin.
And it's, you know, Wisconsin is the beginning of this, according to the New York Times, 100-day effort by the GOP to take the nomination away from Trump, to deny him from getting it by preventing him from getting to 1,237.
That's what the whole thing depends on.
Now, the Politicos had stories last week and over the weekend that Paul Ryan's the chosen one.
That whenever you hear Republican people talking about fresh face, perhaps coming out of the convention, they're talking about somebody that has not been in the race at all.
Look, I've mentioned this three times, and I'm going to mention it once more because I really think this is what's going on.
They have admitted, the establishment has admitted that they are attempting to get to an open and contested convention.
They have admitted that their preference is for no candidate currently running to get to 1,237 delegates.
If they succeed, if neither candidate does, and by the way, right now, the only one with a breathing chance to do it is Trump.
But he's got to win.
If he doesn't win Wisconsin, then it puts all kinds of pressure on him for New York and Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
You would think those are great states, but Kasich may take a number of states, another delegates rather, in Pennsylvania.
Trump is demanding Kasich get out of the race.
Trump wants the Republicans to kick Kasich out if Kasich won't quit.
Kasich's taking votes from him, not taking them from Cruz.
Kasich have a chance.
What is this?
He's only in there as a spoiler.
He's hanging around to get the nomination contested convention.
It's sour grapes.
The guy didn't have a prayer.
Get him out of there.
Kick him out of there.
He should quit.
That's Trump on Kasich.
Yeah, the Daily Mail is reporting that the dad who shot the kid is a Christian.
That would make more sense for the drive-by media to report something like that than that he's a Muslim.
I would think if the dad is a Muslim who shot a gay kid, you'd have a hell of a time finding that.
But the fact that he's a Christian and shot his kid for being gay, I mean, that wouldn't surprise me.
The drive-bys would be all over that.
At any rate, what the Republican establishment is really aiming at doing is disqualifying Cruz and Trump, and probably Kasich.
If neither of them get to 1237, what is going to be the operating strategy is that none of these candidates can therefore be the nominee because they have already failed to secure the needed support in the Democratic process.
You wait.
I can see this happening.
The establishment is going to say, hey, look, we had a primary.
We had the Democratic process.
We had all of these candidates running and not a single one of them got to 1237.
Therefore, they've already been defeated.
Nobody wants Trump.
Nobody wants Cruz.
And so that's why we're going to choose somebody else.
Well, then they'd have a tough time choosing Jeb.
Because Jeb did run, and Jeb didn't get anywhere near it either.
And there's some in the establishment that would love to see Jeb do it.
Rubio is not letting go of his delegates.
Very, very interesting.
This thing goes open.
This thing goes contested.
You can see Rubio making a move.
There's all kinds of stories about how Cruz is outmaneuvering Trump state by state in delegate selection for the crucial second ballot.
The second ballot is where the action is actually focused right now.
I think there are a lot of people more and more convinced, and it's going to even settle in even deeper if Trump does not win Wisconsin.
The operating theory is then going to be that nobody can get to 1237.
It's just insurmountable.
I'll tell you what else is going to happen.
The next thing that's going to happen, even if Cruz wins tomorrow, let me tell you what's going to happen with him.
They're going to say, because it's already been reported, I think, in one blog, that by the end of April, it will be mathematically impossible for Cruz to get to 1237 unless he wins 100% of the delegates, which nobody can do.
So you're going to see pressure on Cruz to get out.
The end of this month, when there won't be enough delegates left, even if Cruz won them all to get to 1237, you're going to have powerful forces, say, Senator, for the good of the party, it's time to admit that you can't win this and unite behind Trump and go ahead and make this happen to prevent a contested convention.
That's pressure.
I don't know from who, but I know it's going to come from somewhere.
Because at some point it's going to be true.
Now, the Cruz people know that getting at 1237 is a long shot, but some of them think they can still do it if Trump becomes a big enough negative.
They think that's what they've always wanted, is this one-on-one competition.
So don't misunderstand me.
But also, the Cruz people are working very hard on the second ballot right now, which Trump is not doing.
That's why Trump is learning he's losing delegates in Louisiana.
He's losing delegates in other states, Tennessee.
The Cruz people are going in and making arrangements with these delegates.
Told you last week that delegates haven't even been chosen a lot of these states.
It's an honor to be a delegate.
They're chosen in many different ways.
And the candidates are trying to exert whatever power and influence they can over delegate selection.
Because once the second ballot comes, delegates can vote their hearts.
They don't have to vote the way the people of the state voted in the primary.
First ballot they do.
So Trump is now saying, hey, hey, they're taking delegates away from me.
He's threatening suing everybody.
They're taking delegates away from me.
I won those delegates.
He made a big deal with this in his appearance yesterday in Eau Claire.
I won.
I went down a great crowd, great group of people.
Louisiana won the state and Lion Ted Lion Ted.
He holds up the Bible.
Let's he do.
Lion Ted trying to take my delegates.
But that's what's happening.
It's the way it happens.
So this is nowhere near over.
The excitement is going to continue.
The drama is going to continue.
And even Kasich is out there saying that.
Oh, man, a contested convention.
Why, that would be really cool.
Can you imagine all the mail that would have to be delivered at the convention that week?
It would be so exciting.
Dave in Colorado Springs.
Got about one minute, but I wanted to get you in.
Hello.
Oh, my gosh.
Thank you, Zilva.
Thanks so much, Rush.
Hey, you know, I wanted to talk about this Trump and abortion thing, and I agree.
I think it's total baloney, all of that.
Laws all have penalties.
If you break the speed limit, there's a law, you get a fine.
Right now, if you break Obamacare law, you get a fine.
In the future, you're going to be put in jail.
Maybe.
Right, yeah.
I think Trump or Cruz, whoever, I'm a cruiser.
I've been that way from the start.
But I think what they should, we always have to turn it back around on the Democrats because they're the enemy that we want winners.
And we have to turn it around on them.
We have to keep the focus on them.
And Obamacare is, it's not hypothetical.
It's out there, and in the future, people are going to go to jail if they don't have...
You know, that's a good point.
So here's Trump with Chris Matthews.
Hey, hey, so in the future, abortion's illegal.
You can't do it.
It's a crime.
What are you going to police the warning?
What are you going to do?
Chris, what are you worried about?
You know, you can already really get fined and maybe go to jail if you don't have health insurance in America.
Who said that?
Who said it?
It's Obamacare.
No, no, no.
That can't be possible.
We've never got to do it.
Yeah, it's right there in the law.
I see what you're saying.
Turn it around on them and put them on defense, which is absolutely brilliant, great strategy.
It is.
Well, here we go.
Fastest three hours in media.
We're done.
I mean, we're for today.
We're out, but we're never really done.
We have a 21-hour break coming up.
And they get locked, reloaded, revved, and ready to go for whatever happens between now and tomorrow.
We'll have it.
We'll be on top of it.
▲
Export Selection