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April 8, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:15
April 8, 2016, Friday, Hour #3
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Graham documented to be almost always right, 99.8% of the time.
CNN is reporting that the two men suspected of doing the attack in the Brussels airport have been captured alive.
In Brussels, one of the men, Mohammed Abrini, thought to be the guy in the white coat and a blue hat that we've seen in that tape from the day of the attack.
And one of these guys arrested had come to Europe via Greece, the Ellis Island of Europe now, and stayed in a refugee camp.
It is Friday.
Let's hit it.
Did you hear that?
Stayed in a refugee camp.
And we had this big ceremony yesterday where Obama settled the first Syrian refugees in America.
With a pledge and a promise for many more.
It's not good.
It's great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh, serving humanity simply by showing up.
Okay.
It's open line Friday.
It is also our annual Curathon where we do what we can to cure the blood cancers, leukemia and lymphoma, non-Hodgkins and Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Myeloma.
All of them.
The telephone number for you to contribute.
877-379-8888.
You can also donate online very easily.
It's set up at RushLimbaugh.com at uh Facebook.com slash Rush Limbaugh, and even on our Twitter page.
If you would prefer to donate that way, you uh you can.
We've made it easy for you.
We have a list of premiums that we are offering.
They are pictured at RushLimbod.com.
75 to 99, the t-shirt, athletic gray t-shirt, EIB logo, one size fits all.
We add a cap, an EIB cap to that for 100 to 384 one size fits all t-shirt.
And the uh the cap is good.
I mean it's uh it's the EIB signature logo 2016 on it.
And $385 and up, a polo shirt that is sized, and we've gone gray.
We've gray color scheme this year.
Uh black EIB logo, the hat is black with gray and white logo, the shirts come in all sizes on the polo, and an EIB hat cap decorated with the official EIB signature logo 2016.
In it's embroidered on there.
It's not just, you know, hand stamped on there, like some cheap thing you'd find at a knockoff store.
It's actually embroidered and it's one size fits all.
So this is it.
This is our final hour.
Actually, uh I've been told that the number will be active throughout the weekend, which is a good thing, because there are replays of this program.
This program ended up being used the best of or segments of it over the weekend.
Uh and it'll also be part of the weekend review, which uh which we do, and uh so the people will be hearing about this uh throughout the weekend, and it'd be silly for the phone number to be dead.
Uh and online will still be working at least through the weekend as well, and this is simply an accommodation that you want to make not everybody can uh respond during these three hours.
Even if you're hearing about it, you might not be able to, but there's plenty of time to uh to do so.
I wanted to tell you who I who our last caller was.
You know, we're sitting here, and Snerdley puts up a guy's name is Ethan.
Where was he calling from?
Yeah, somewhere in New Hampshire.
Ethan from New Hampshire said, hey, you know, and he told a story.
I just want to thank you.
You're doing great things here, and he told his personal story that he had uh won the Survivor series one season on CBS, and he had needed uh a couple of stem cell transplants from his brother, rare form of blood cancer.
And I'm listening to this, and he's going on and on and this is incredible.
This is, I mean, it's he's a young guy, athletic, he's been involved in soccer and so forth.
So we went looked him up, and his name is Ethan Zon, Z-O-H-N.
And I have a story here from 2013 from the CBS News.com site.
Just a few months ago, Ethan Zon couldn't leave his New York apartment unless he was going to a doctor's appointment.
The reality TV star was facing his battle with Hodgkin's lymphoma head on for a second time, undergoing treatment and getting rest while his body battled the disease.
Again, this is 2013.
Ethan Zahn told CBS News, I am in remission.
Today is a special day.
One year ago, today, I received my brother's stem cells.
My brother was a match.
They wiped out my body.
They infused my brother's stem cells into my body.
So if you take my DNA sample, it's like my brother.
Season three, Survivor Champ, feeling a lot better these days, training for the Boston Marathon, gearing up for the cycle for survival in New York.
It's a national indoor team cycle event held at various equinox gyms to raise money to fight rare cancers by funding research led by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, which is where our beloved Kit Carson was treated.
This was his event too.
You know, he was he personified this event.
He was here from day one, and he was the organizational energy and brains behind it.
For the entire time he was here with the program, and it was you should have seen people get in gear when uh he was diagnosed.
And he went through remission for a while.
This disease has so many ups and downs.
So you can't, those of you who have experienced it know, but the treatment has gotten so promising that there are a lot of great signs, positive signs that sometimes there's relapse.
And in the case of Ethan Zahn, he had uh he beat it twice.
And we thought HR had beat it.
And then and he was just trucking along just fine for months and months, and then one day you could just tell.
Um it was it well, yeah, you could just tell.
It was sad.
But it's really been when you go through these ups and downs and you think that you've beaten it, and then it comes back, and you just never know.
This is why it is so important to support the ongoing research, just try to stay ahead of the disease.
Ethan Zahn's experience is like a dream come true.
What's what's missing in this story, I'm sure is how hard he worked.
It it takes a toll on the patient.
In these stories, uh, survivor winner Ethan Zahn, I'm feeling good.
Well, he went five years of hell.
And I'm sure his family did too.
Five years for the payoff.
There's always this lingering in your mind that it can happen again.
His case with the stem cell transplant and the basic sweeping of his DNA and the replacement, uh, there might be less concern.
But the reason it says here in this story that he was so focused on his efforts in the cause was quote, the drug that I was on was literally passed by the FDA two months before I needed it.
I was diagnosed in 2009.
The drug wasn't available, and I relapsed, and then the drug was available.
So in in those 20 months, I was in remission.
The drug came to fruition and was able to be used, and it helped save my life.
He was also a contestant on the amazing race on CBS in 2011.
He said, actually getting the diagnosis is almost a little bit of a relief because with my symptoms leading up to it, I was going crazy.
I had itchy skin, I couldn't sleep.
What was more difficult was when I realized getting the news that the cancer returned, that was deflating.
I felt like I had failed, he said.
So I went public.
My choice was a cathartic way to deal with My situation.
I helped create, and the media helped nurture this vision of hope and this source of strength and survival.
And then the cancer came back, and I felt like I'd let people down.
I felt a little embarrassed.
Try to imagine that.
And the reason I can understand it, he's been the beneficiary of all kinds of people donating things, including their time.
And so people go to I don't want to call it trouble, but I mean they they agree to participate in transplants and testing to see if the transplants work.
They go through the emotional ups and downs with you as a family member.
Remission happens, and you feel like a failure, and you feel like you've wasted everybody's time, and you're worried that they're going to think the same thing.
Of course, nobody ever looks at it that way, but this is just what the disease does to you.
And I'll tell you the backstop for all of this is exactly what he says here.
The leukemia lymphoma society.
My choice was a cathartic way to deal with my situation.
I helped create the media helped nurture this vision of hope.
It's leukemia lymphoma society doing that.
Now, a lot of people do not have the ability to go public as Ethan Zon did.
He was a known individual as a reality TV star and athletic champion.
And he was able to engage in public sharing of his work on this, and was able to get feedback, was able to get encouragement.
A lot of people do this within the confines of total anonymity.
They're not celebrities, and they're not wealthy.
And that's the thing about the disease.
It doesn't know any of that.
It can't.
It doesn't choose.
It does not discriminate, as they say.
And so you hear you hear stories like Ethan's on, you realize what's possible, you realize the kind of things that make it possible, and you realize the joy and the happiness that awaits with success.
And you know at the same time of the sadness when it doesn't.
But just this idea that he felt guilty, like he had let people down.
That's fascinating to me.
That's how personal it is.
That's everybody who contracts this disease, I think becomes aware of all the people helping.
And you don't want to let them down.
But they never are, is the point.
They're all just hoping everything turns out well for everybody.
That's what this is ultimately all about.
So this is our final hour, folks, to hit it intensely.
It's 877-379-888, and that number will be active for a while.
And the website as well, rushlimbaugh.com, with details of all of the premiums are giving away and all the other details involving advances that the Leukemia Lymphoma Society has made in research.
That we don't have time to get into great detail here.
We touch on it, but it's all there at rushlimbaugh.com.
We'll take a brief time out and come back and continue with Open Line Friday, right after this.
To the phones we return as Abraham in Toronto, Ontario.
Abraham is 14 years old.
Abraham, how are you, sir?
It's great to have you on the program today.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
It's great to be here.
Thank you, sir.
I'm a big fan of your show, and I listen anytime I can.
I was wondering, is there any way that Ted Cruz could possibly win the nomination?
And if he does, can he beat Hillary?
You know, it's interesting.
We had another 14-year-old call here a couple weeks ago asking the same question, the 14-year-old in Texas.
And I'm going to tell you exactly what I told him.
I think it's entirely possible.
It looks like a long shot to win 1,237 delegates before the convention.
It looks like that may be a long shot for anybody.
So when you go to a contested Convention, it becomes wide open.
And Abraham, I have to tell you, the political establishment of both parties is right now dazzled and amazed and a little bit frightened of how well the Ted Cruz ground game is being waged.
Cruz, it turns out, has kept a lot of his offices in various states and districts open.
And he is out, his people are now actively whining and dining, if you will, working on people who are going to be delegates.
Because it'll be a second ballot win if Cruz is to win this.
Now, you've probably heard that the establishment doesn't want Cruz, and once they get to the second ballot, or maybe even the third, that they'll try and put in their own candidate who maybe has not even been part of the primaries.
And I wouldn't put that past him.
I hear all these people say, no, they'll never do that.
Rush, they'll never do that.
It's gonna be Cruz, it's gonna be Trump, it can't be anybody else.
The Republican Party wouldn't be so silly as to simply disenfranchise millions of people who have voted in these primaries, 70% of whom have voted for either Cruz or Trump, the party would never tell those people that the whole process here didn't matter.
And I say to myself, they sure as heck would.
If it meant holding on to what they have personally, I mean, why wouldn't they?
These are the people out there saying that they would vote Hillary before they would vote Trump, that they would vote Hillary before they would vote Cruz, because they're afraid either Trump or Cruz is going to blow up the existing order.
And there are ways that can happen.
We've maybe next week should spend just a few minutes of me explaining how that could happen.
But one of the ways, if you are a powerful lobbyist on K Street and you earn five, six hundred thousand dollars a year, and the reason you're paid that is because you have an inn with certain members of whatever party, Republican or Democrat, either in the Senate or on Capitol Hill, and you're able to manipulate them and get them to vote the way people paying you want them to.
Well, if somebody is elected president, whose purpose is to eliminate that kind of functioning.
In other words, we're going to pass legislation, we're going to propose legislation based on principles and based on ideas.
We're not going to propose legislation based on what my donors want.
Well, that throws the whole donor structure in a set of panic.
And it means that lobbyists making five or six hundred thousand dollars, if he can't find an in-road to whoever is close to President Trump or President Cruz, then he might be thinking I've lost my game, I've lost my power, I've lost my inside, I've lost my connections.
And you know, I really don't want to lose those.
And I'll hold on to those as long as the Republican Party stays as it is, even if it loses, I'll still have my connections to people in the party.
That's just one example.
I think it's what Cruz and Trump are up against.
I wouldn't for a minute think.
I wouldn't buy for a minute this idea to Republicans, whoa, no, Rush, they'd never put somebody in there.
It hadn't been campaigned, and there's no way to disenfranchise.
But they haven't been listening to their voters since uh 2009.
Why start now?
That could be one cynical view.
So, yes, Abraham, I think it I think anything's possible still.
I think as as each day goes on, and there are more surprises that occur as news is made.
Uh I think it is.
What if there were a Trump Cruz, shall we say, union.
I know it doesn't look like it has any pus.
I know how do you get past the Lion Ted?
Lion Ted!
Lion Teddy, he holds the Bible up, and what is it he liked?
I know how do you get past that and all the other stuff.
Well, somebody there was a line the other day that that would set a Cruz Trump ticket or some such thing would set some of the world or something on fire.
And I'm not sure that they meant it positively.
Would burn down that both sides would try to burn down the other.
I don't know.
But it isn't over.
It might be unbeatable when you combine the two voting blocks if you could.
But anyway, uh you just hang in there, Abraham, because yes, uh anything's still possible here with Trump and uh and Cruz.
And we gotta go.
We'll be right back.
And welcome back.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have the Rush Limbaugh program.
Looks like we are on the way.
Another record setting pace.
And it's all due to you.
Our curaton for leukemia and lymphoma is underway.
877 379-8888 is the uh number to call, and you can also donate at Rushlimbaugh.com.
There's other things going on too.
You uh uh there's so many things I don't have time to get into in detail here on air, but there's all kinds of additional things to learn about this at Rushlimbaugh.com.
For example, more than 16,000 U.S. employers have a matching gift program whereby they will match or maybe double even charitable donations made by their employees.
You should look.
You're maybe maybe your employer has such a program, and if so, you could consider having your donation to the Curathon matched at work.
You probably know if your employer has such a program, but if you don't, it might be uh worth looking into.
This past year, the Leukemia Lymphoma Society spent more than 50 million dollars to help 44,000 patients afford their treatment.
Now, this is another aspect that goes on.
Not only is there you know, you've heard Ronald McDonald and the Fisher homes, Fisher houses for families of wounded military people at Walter Reed and so forth, leukemia lymphoma society does the same thing when they can.
They help patients pay for their treatment, they help families deal with expenses when they can.
It's not universal.
Uh there are requirements and guidelines, there have to be because they can't help everybody, but the point is that this past year they have spent more than 50 million dollars of the money donated to help 44,000 patients afford their treatment.
This is called a copay assistance program, and it offers financial support toward the cost of insurance co-payments and even insurance premiums for prescription drugs.
There are more than 60 leukemia lymphoma society chapters that offer support and information for patients and their families.
And I can't again emphasize to you how important that is.
At the moment somebody hears that they or somebody in their family have one of these cancers.
I know that millions of you have experienced this.
You there's there's nothing comparable to it.
Many people think that they're being handed a death sentence, such as the fear of cancer.
And if it's not something you've experienced, consider yourself really, really fortunate.
There is there's no more sobering thing you can hear.
It changes the focus of your life and your reality instantly.
Things that were of great importance become trivial when you hear that you have been diagnosed, or that your child has, or that your spouse.
And in those moments, there isn't there aren't too many people in the world.
There aren't too many people in the country who Do not have financial panic when they hear of this diagnosis.
There's very few people to whom the finances don't matter.
You can count them on one hand, probably, percentage basis.
That's one of the next thoughts you have.
Oh my gosh, there's my insurance covered.
And you'd probably think, no way.
Can't be.
What am I gonna do?
Then you start worrying, my gosh, I I I can't be denied treat because I can't afford it.
That isn't fair.
And it isn't.
Well, that's where the Leukemia Lymphobe Society comes in.
They are a group that does many things, including offer buck-up support, foundational support, sometimes financial.
They're volunteers, and they've been there.
They are steeped in the reality of circumstances.
And so much is done with money donated to this society.
The research, the $50 million to help 44,000 patients afford their treatment, other little incidentals that you would never hear about until you actually encounter the disease, and then you learn all the things that are done.
Plus the moral support and the encouragement.
They've all been there.
They are around it every day.
And that in and of itself is helpful as well.
877-379-8888.
Now, I have withheld the amount of money that Catherine and I are donating this year because I don't want it to be misunderstood, and I don't want it to be a distraction.
So I decided not to mention it in the first hour.
But the point is I never ask people to do something I don't do or wouldn't do in a certain circumstance like this.
So last year we contributed $600,000, and we're going to add 50,000 to us.
Our contribution this year will be $650,000 on top of whatever is collected from all of you.
And it is sizable.
It is phenomenal.
I don't have actual numbers, and we won't have the money, but we're up like 18 to 20%.
And I have to tell you, can I be bluntly honest?
I didn't think that would happen because so many people said they're not listening to the program anymore.
By the way, hello to those of you who aren't.
You'll continue to come through and rise above everything.
And it is the most heartwarming.
Folks, I am one who thinks we are losing the country culturally, politically.
I'm the I'm one who thinks that we're in the middle of a crisis here.
Unlike apparently many who live in Washington who don't see it.
I see the foundational fabric that has kept this country solidly together, the rule of law, the respect, the morality, the traditions, the institutions that have separated our nation from others that has contributed to this thing called American exceptionalism.
It's under assault.
It's under attack by people who resent it, who have never loved it, who have never felt part of it, have deep resentment, and they are succeeding.
There are attacks on one of the fundamental building blocks of this nation that sets it apart from all others, religious freedom.
Religious freedom is under assault like you can't believe.
And the states that are attempting to stand it's nothing new.
It's already in the Constitution, but because the Constitution is not working.
Well, I take that back.
The Constitution always works.
What happens is a bunch of people are ignoring it because they know nobody's gonna hold them to account.
So states are basically passing laws that do nothing but repeat what the Constitution says.
And here come do gooder American corporations threatening economic blackmail.
The latest is Mississippi.
Well, my point in saying all this is I'm one who believes that we have a crisis.
I'm one who believes that we're on the road to A country culturally that will not be what it was when I was growing up.
And it's days like this that encourage me.
It's days like this that convince me that it can be beaten back and that we can win these battles taking place in the culture when there's so much decency and so much goodness, so much selflessness, even in admittedly not the best of economic times.
I'm sure that many of you don't have the spare change that you've been accustomed to having.
Uh the economy being what it is.
Obamacare rules and regs limiting the number of hours, the minimum wage raising, so that that's that's causing people to lose jobs, causing people to never even be hired.
Uh the 40-hour work week is becoming 29 hours because of Obamacare.
College graduates have so much debt that it will be years before that college degree is even worth what it cost them in terms of offsetting income that they've gained and they're earned in their careers.
So 94 million Americans not in the workforce.
Uh that's it's different.
And it's obvious they're just there there's not as much disposable income.
You can even see it in the consumer spending numbers.
And yet here you are every year.
Here you are, outdoing the year before.
I don't know.
We we just greatly profoundly appreciate it.
And then I personally am deeply moved.
I I every year I think it's gonna be the year that we finally have topped out, and we're not gonna be able to beat the previous year.
And I've never been right.
And I'm not a pessimist, probably a realist, as you know, mayor of real.
And you always uh surprise me positively, which is another reason why people how do you stay so optimistic?
How could I not be, given my experience on this program and with you in the audience?
So one more time, 877 379-8888 to cure the blood cancers, rushlinbod.com.
Back after this.
Don't go away.
Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Clinton has been taken to the woodshed.
Bernie Sanders has been taken to the woodshed.
Bernie Sanders earlier today said that he misspoke when he said that Mrs. Clinton was not qualified to be president.
So somebody took him to the woods.
My guess is Hillary got him in the testicle lockbox.
And it turns out the same thing has happened to Bill Clinton now.
Let's set it up by going back to Philadelphia yesterday.
This is Clinton at a campaign event for Hillary.
Unlike when I became president, a lot of things are coming apart around the world now.
We'd like to just think about our economic issues, but you've got to worry about a collapse in Europe dragging back the American economy.
You've got to worry about all these, the largest number of refugees since World War II.
And all this stuff comes home.
Now that was interpreted as a swipe at Obama.
He said, you know, unlike when I became president, a lot of things are coming apart around the world.
When I was president, everything was great.
You know what?
It was just great.
It was fabulous.
I even survived at Lewinsky thing because when I was president, everything was great.
Unemployment, deficit was coming down, and uh making fun of Ken Starlight.
It was great.
It was growing.
But now, after seven years of this guy, I mean, we got refugees all over the place.
It's horrible.
Well, that didn't sit well with a bunch of Democrats.
It seemed to be above and beyond what was necessary to campaign for Hillary.
But it was it was consistent.
Let's just, for example, listen, Hanover, New Hampshire at Dartmouth back on January 7, 2008.
This is a quick one.
This during a Hillary Clinton town hall.
This is uh Bill Clinton talking about the Obama campaign back in 2008.
Give me a break.
This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.
Yeah, they've never been, buds.
I'm telling you, Clintons and the Obamas have never been tight.
And Bill's got, I guarantee he was the first black president do not discount, he was the first black president.
Here comes Obama, stealing a lot of thunder, maybe a little bit more popular.
So Clinton does this thing with Black Lives Matter and does this thing where criticizing Obama for the world falling apart.
But today in Erie Pennsylvania, Bill Clinton asked forgiveness.
So I did something yesterday in Philadelphia.
I almost want to apologize for, but I want to use it as an example of the danger threatening our country.
I rather vigorously defended my wife as I'm wont to do.
And I realized finally I was talking past her the way she was talking past me.
We got to stop that in this country.
What the hell does that mean?
So Clinton goes out, commits a sin, and then says, we have to stop doing that in this country.
This is a classic Clinton trick.
You go out and you have an affair with an intern.
And then you do a speech on how we've got to clean up this country.
This country is a mess, and we got so somebody took him to the woodshed.
Because he I almost won't apologize for what I did yesterday.
I I would I said some horrible things about the old Black Lives Matter people.
I really want to say you know why?
Because I was campaigning past Hillary, and she's campaigning past me.
We have got to stop this kind of stuff in this country.
We have got to stop it.
As though somebody else made it all happen.
Classic.
There it is.
Okay.
So folks, we are down to our last minute and a half here.
And I've I've not I've I didn't want to do a whole giant big finale because you have come through like champions that you are again.
I just want to say thank you again, and I stress from the bottom of my heart.
No, I I talk about the connection Trump has with his crowd.
You know why I know about connections like that?
The only reason I'm analyzing able to analyze why Trump has his supporters is because of the bond that exists here.
And it it just happened.
It it goes back to August 1, 1988, when this program started.
The audience, the size is consistent.
It's it's grown, it's not tapered off at all.
I mean, you're there.
Uh and I've I've done my best to break the bond two or three times, and you will not go away.
I didn't intentionally, don't misunderstand, but I I appreciate it.
I understand it, and I am in awe of it.
And I never take it for granted.
And I know how special it is, which is why I'm able to explain to people uh Trump's support.
I'm not comparing you to Trump people.
I'm talking about the the support, the connection, the bond that exists, and you come through each and every time you're asked, and I can't thank you enough.
Uh you're just the best audience that exists in media.
Now we give you the number one more time, which will be functioning throughout the weekend, as will rushlinbaugh.com is a place for donations.
877-379-8888.
I and everybody at the Le Kemia Lymphoma Society of America, thank you from the bottom of our sizable beating hearts.
Folks, I hope you have a great weekend.
And one more reminder that phone number for leukemia and lymphoma open all weekend.
Uh maybe even through Monday.
Not sure how it works, but it's going to be close to that.
It's 877 379 8888, or use RushlandBod.com.
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