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April 11, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:22
April 11, 2016, Monday, Hour #2
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All right, look, it really doesn't matter whether I think Cruz is cheating or not.
Some of you do.
And that's as far as it goes.
You don't.
But I'm going to try to explain this to you because it's I think it's very important that everybody understand this.
And I just said, closing out the previous hour, apparently something very provocative.
And my email is blowing up.
Greetings and welcome back, Rushlin Boy, EIB Network, 800-282-2882, and the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
I'm thinking ahead down the road.
I'm asking myself, you know, what happens here if the establishment succeeds in beating Trump?
And for this discussion, it doesn't matter whether they do it legitimately or quote-unquote cheat.
That's not, I'm just the end of this.
If Trump doesn't get the nomination after all of this, then what's next?
Now, Pat Buchanan has written that he thinks it doesn't really matter because Trump has ignited a new nationalistic populist movement, which will not be denied.
And that if they don't get there this year, this movement now has found out how powerful it is and how many people are in it, that in certain polling senses, they are a majority.
A number of people oppose immigration, want a wall, trade deal opposition.
And so Buchanan says that, and by the way, he's not hoping for this, but if Trump doesn't get the nomination, that that doesn't matter because this group of people, the Trumpists, the people supporting Trump, Buchanan believes are actually supporting more than Trump.
They are supporting a set of ideas and principles that will survive Trump.
And that a new movement has been born.
Genie's out of the bottle that the establishment will not be able to put back in the bottle.
Doug Schoen, who's a Democrat pollster and strategist, who also appears on the evil and dreaded Fox News channel, where he does analysis, usually sitting next to, I think, Monica Crowley or whoever they put him with, just to balance it out, you know, fair and balanced, you decide.
And Doug has a piece here.
It's at Fox News.
And the headline, Donald Trump saw what politicians ignored, and then he disrupted American politics.
And his theme is this.
In future elections, we may not have somebody as outlandish as Trump, but his legacy will surely have paved the way for leaders who may not know anything about governing, but know a lot about how people are feeling.
Now, I gather from this is a headline, Trump saw what politicians ignored, and then he disrupted American politics.
And he quite correctly notes the genuine depth of anger that a majority of Americans feel.
And he thinks, I guess, along the lines with Buchanan, that a new movement has begun here.
And I don't deny that.
I mean, I don't deny that the people who think what they think are going to stop thinking it.
And I don't doubt that there's a lot of them.
But my only point is this.
This is how serious it is.
If the establishment succeeds, or if Ted Cruz, and those are two different entities, by the way, Ted Cruz is not the establishment right now.
So you've got two entities working against Trump.
You've got Cruz from the campaign angle.
You've got the establishment from their own angle.
If either or both succeed in stopping Trump, where does this movement go?
I have no doubt they might abandon the Republican Party.
But my instincts tell me that, I mean, what's the objective here?
If you're a Trumpist, what's the objective?
After winning, besides winning, what's the objective?
It's to abolish this insider club, right?
It's to abolish this establishment.
It's to get rid of it once and for all.
Realizing you're only going to be able to do that on the Republican side, the Democrats are not going to let anybody come in and kick them out of it.
And I don't think the Republicans are either.
Let's say that that's the ultimate objective is to just get rid of this club, just to get rid of all this insider stuff, all the favoritism, all the back scratching, all the cronyism, all the unfairness, you know, all the greasing skids for everybody's kids so that all they have to do is grow up and their automatic successes and all this is get rid of it, blow it up, and turn it back over to a merit-based.
I'm here to tell you that if the establishment beats back this effort, nobody's going to come along and take it away from them again.
Why are you shaking your head in there?
Do you doubt my premise?
Well, I'm just, my only point here is if the objective is to, if the problem is perceived to be the establishment, which it is, and Trump is the vehicle for victory, overwhelming, overcoming the establishment, what happens if Trump doesn't win?
The establishment holds on.
If Trump doesn't win, no matter if the Trumpists represent one half of the voters of the Republican Party, and then if every one of them stops voting Republican, that is not going to end the Republican establishment.
And furthermore, the Republican establishment won't care.
That's the problem.
They won't care as long as they hold on to their fiefdom, as long as there is a Republican Party, and as long as the people who run it continue to run it, then beating back this latest insurgency, they will consider to be a victory, not whether they win the White House or not.
Their first order of business right now is to beat back the insurgency.
The rabble-rousers, the peasants with the pitchforks.
That's their first objective right now.
And if they have to roll up their sleeves and work with Ted Cruz for a couple of months to do it, they'll do it.
But then Cruz is going to be their next target.
Don't doubt me.
Don't shake your heads in there.
Don't doubt me on this.
This is these are people hanging on for dear life.
These are people in a car that has gone over the cliff.
It's sinking to the bottom of the lake.
They're struggling to get the windows open and swim out of that car, and they're going to do everything they can to live.
They're not going to allow Trump to push that car over the cliff with the doors and windows locked.
Or Cruz, for that matter.
So my only point is this.
If Trump, as a candidate, ends up being defeated, and if he doesn't get to 1237, do you see him winning on a second or third ballot, given what you've seen happen this weekend?
Well, some people don't, but then you've got to realize something.
If everybody's out there buying delegates, don't forget, Trump has mar-a-lago.
I mean, if you're going to whine and dine delegates, Trump's got Trump Force One.
I mean, Trump's, there you go, insulting delegates think they can be bought off with, well, could I give you some names?
No, folks, I'm just trying.
Look, the anti-establishment movement is real.
It's a lot of people, but if it doesn't succeed in making great, great inroads in the establishment this time around, it's going to be a long time before it happens again.
The establishment's going to be well-girded, well-protected.
And this is for keeps.
That's why, I'm sorry, all of this is precisely why the focus on Hillary and Obama and the Democrats have been lost.
Because right now, people are in a life and death struggle over their identity, their self-worth, and any number of other things.
Let's go back to the audio soundbites here as we continue with what happened over the weekend.
Back to Fox and friends.
Steve Doocy said to Donald Trump, you know, these people of the Boston Globe that did this fake news story on you, this fake issue of the talk about how rotten things are going to be one year from now if you're elected.
They say they wanted to start a conversation.
But, Donald, we've had the conversation.
The Americans want our border secured, right?
I won Massachusetts with almost 50% of the vote.
It just shows you the power that paper has because they were just vehemently against.
You know, it just shows you here's a paper that was sold for $1 a little while ago, $1, and that's what it's worth.
But sad for the paper.
You know, it used to be considered a major paper, and now it's like a supermarket throwout.
Grab sound by 21.
We have a soundbite here from the editor, Kathleen Kingsbury.
She was on CNN today speaking with Carol Costello, who laughs at everything.
And Costello said, why use satire?
You're a paper of record.
You know, why?
You cover the news.
You don't make the news.
Why risk your reputation?
Why?
We were very clear with readers.
We included an editor's note.
But really, we were hoping that people would read our editorial, which came on the next page, which, yes, this is political satire, but it's also political commentary.
It's not a joke.
It's serious.
We want the GOP to pause and to reflect and consider whether or not this is the direction it wants to move in for our country.
We actually have endorsed John Kasich in the Republican primary this season, but we just don't see John Kasich making it to the end of this.
So we're hoping that the GOP's natural leaders, including Romney and Ryan, will step up.
Why, how damn.
How about that?
The Boston Globe wants to pick our nominee.
And they say that's what their little edition was about.
Yeah, they don't like Trump and they don't like Cruz.
They really like Kasich, but they don't see a way they can get him there.
So they're really hoping the GOP will nominate a guy who's already lost to the Democrat and somebody who hasn't even tried yet, which would be Paul Ryan.
It wasn't satire.
It was news.
It was, we were trying to warn people of what would happen.
Did the Boston Globe back in 2008 or in 2020, did they ever do a satire piece demanding the Democrat Party stop Obama?
Did anybody, did any newspaper do a parody front section or editorial page section on why the Democrats must stop Obama?
I'm sorry as I continue to compare Trump, Cruz, whoever might end up being nominated by the GOP.
Not the problem by any stretch, not compared.
We've got seven years of evidence that we are living.
We are in the midst of a conceived and executed plan to transform this country politically, socially, culturally, and essentially turn it upside down and essentially take every element responsible for this country's greatness and diminish it.
If you want to boil Obama down to his essence, that's it.
Take every instance, every aspect of what makes and has made America great and ruin it and replace it with the people Obama thinks have been the victims of all of this whatever he thinks it is.
Unfairness, bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, trickle-down economics, world's policemen, whatever the hell it is.
But I can tell you it's practically everything.
Everything that has made this country great from our founding on, every institution, every tradition has been under assault for seven years.
It continues to be under assault.
Now, the rule of law is clearly in Obama's crosshairs over this whole Hillary Clinton incident, not to mention the IRS being used as a political agent by this administration to harm the prospects of political opponents.
IET Party 501c3.
There is an all-out assault on the things that have made this country great.
We are being invaded across our borders.
We don't have immigration going on here.
There is an invasion that's happening.
And it has one purpose.
To undermine the foundations of this country's greatness.
Under this flawed premise that what's made America great is diversity.
I'm taking back.
What will make America great is diversity?
We haven't had enough diversity, you see.
We've had too much bigotry and racism, prejudice, and whatever.
And there hasn't been enough diversity.
There hasn't been enough multiculturalism.
Well, that's not going to change.
They are changing it.
And I know that there are people who oppose Obama.
There have been people who oppose Obama, the Democrats last seven years, but I haven't seen one half the energy in trying to stop that that is engaged in trying to stop Trump.
And when you get to the GOP, I haven't seen any energy to stop Obama or the Democrat Party.
Very little compared to the image energy that they are using to try to stop Trump.
Something is out of proportion here.
One more Trump before we go to the break.
He was in Rochester, New York on Sunday at a campaign event, really laying into the RNC.
We've got a corrupt system.
It's not right.
We're supposed to be a democracy.
We're supposed to be you vote and the vote means something.
And I want to tell you, it's a corrupt deal going on in this country, and it's not good.
It's not good.
And it's not fair.
And it's not fair to you people.
They're taking your vote away.
They're disenfranchising people that want to see America be great again.
And politicians will never do it.
They don't want to do it.
They can't do it because their lobbyists and special interests are saying, we're not going to let you do it.
It's no good.
And we've got to change the system.
And it's got to change fast.
We got to take a break.
We'll do that and be back and continue after this.
There's just as much trouble on the Democrat side, too.
The Huffing and Puffington Post has a piece here: 10-point plan that the Democrats are flawlessly executing, designed to lose the presidency in 2016.
This is a piece detailing the 10 things that Democrats are screwing up, guaranteed to lose to the Republicans in 2016.
I'll get to that in due course.
But first, here's Rich in White Plains, New York.
Great that you waited, sir.
Hello.
Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
Yeah.
Donald Trump is a whining, sniveling, excuse-making crybaby who, by the way, says he's going to surround himself with all these experts that are going to solve all of this country's problems.
But it appears that Trump and his good brain wasn't smart enough to hire anybody who knows the election process.
And I guarantee you, if this process were working in Trump's favor, you know he'd be saying, well, the rules are the rules.
So Trump has adopted the Limbaugh theorem.
Nothing is ever his fault.
He's every bit the self-absorbed narcissist Obama is.
And like Obama, he has a generic slogan and the media behind him.
So you think that if why do you think this has happened to Trump?
Why do you think that he appears to have been so caught off guard or flat-footed in the delegate selection process that's been going on the past weekend?
There's a lot of conspiracy theories out there that says he didn't want to win to begin with.
But here's another thing, Rush.
Trump says the system is corrupt.
If it wasn't for the system, he wouldn't have as many delegates as he does now.
If there were only three candidates from the beginning, more voters would have gravitated to Cruz instead of diluting the vote between all the other candidates.
And no one brings that up.
Actually, you know, you may be, you may have a point in a related way.
NBC News has a story.
I know, I know, NBC News, but their headline is this.
Despite complaints, delegate system has given Trump a 22% bonus.
And their point here is that Trump leads with 756 delegates or 45% of all delegates awarded, yet he's won 37% of all votes, meaning Trump's delegate support is greater than his actual support from voters.
As a matter of Republican Party math, Trump has been awarded a delegate bonus 22% above his raw support from voters.
So their point here is, and even if you apply the same thinking to Cruz, you still end up with Trump has been awarded 8% more delegates than Cruz for the same rate of voter support.
And they say Trump's not factoring this in.
And they list the reasons why Trump has had a delegate bonus, if you will.
Some of it benefits from crossover voters in open primary states.
But their point here at NBC News, I know it's NBC News, is that Trump really's got nothing to complain about because he has benefited from some of these very rules that have garnered him more delegates than the vote totals he's amassed have actually earned him back in a second.
Look, here's what you have to know here, if you want to be able to read this NBC story and understand it.
You have to understand that the Republican Party, the GOP, the RNC, whoever, they structured, and they do it every year.
They change the primary process.
They change a number of things about it based on what went wrong the previous year.
And the previous year is four years ago.
And they wrote rules four years ago to stop somebody like Ron Paul.
Okay, so those rules are still in place.
And they're going to change those rules.
Some of those rules have to be voted on by the convention.
Some of those rules can't change until a convention opens.
But one of the things in play right now is that the GOP, because remember, the GOP has always thought that it was going to be in control of who wins these primaries.
What do you mean, Rush?
How do they know who's going to vote for?
It's money, folks.
They arrange for the donors.
They go out.
Even if somebody doesn't want to run, they might implore them to run like Jeb and get them in, and they get this whole network going.
Is there any doubt that the GOP wanted Jeb Bush?
Is there any doubt whatsoever?
Jeb may never have actually wanted it.
I mean, I'm just based on energy levels, so forth, but it's beside the point.
The party is never going to write themselves out of control of this process.
So when that happens, oh, panic sets in.
So the reason that Trump ends up here with essentially a 22% bonus in delegates is because the Republican Party set it up so that the frontrunner gets bonuses for being the frontrunner.
Because they thought they were going to be in charge of who the frontrunner ended up being.
They wire it or try to in a lot of ways.
Their problem is they're working four years in advance and they're always basing rules on what went wrong the last time.
So their rules are rooted in the past and things they lost control of.
So they say, okay, we don't want that happening again.
They come up with a new rule.
But then four years later, the process begins, things they didn't anticipate happen, and they get caught short, which is where they are now.
But the point is that while Trump is out blasting what happened in Colorado, some of these other states, the fact of the matter is, as NBC News is reporting, Trump basically has been awarded a delegate bonus of 22% above his raw support from voters.
And that, without getting into the arcane details, it's a frontrunner bonus.
It's just the way the rules are written.
So they're dealing with that.
Now, Colorado comes along, and last August, after, I'm sure they did this because of Trump.
They'll never say so.
Last August, Colorado changed its procedure and decided that they weren't going to have a straw poll or a primary.
And in fact, instead, we're going to choose the nominee at the party convention.
They were going to choose the delegates there, and the delegates would determine.
And there would still be a primary, but the results wouldn't mean anything.
Now, this didn't happen two nights ago or a week ago.
It wasn't decided recently.
It was decided back in August.
Now, in my humble estimation, I am sure it happened because of Trump way back in August.
Remember the panic levels.
This is after we've had the first debate, and everybody's outraged over what Trump has been saying about Mexicans and immigrants and John McCain and Megan Kelly's orifices and stuff.
And everybody's just having a cow.
And so these Republicans in Colorado decided to change their whole procedure to give them control over it over their state.
And Cruz knew it.
Anybody could have known it.
It was not done under cover of darkness.
The rules were not kept in a secret black book housed in the crypt of some former great Republican who perished back in the days of the Civil War.
It was right out in the open.
Anybody could go read the rules.
Now, it's fascinating.
You know what fascinates me about this?
Many things, but in this whole process of the primaries, there have been various leakages from the GOP and from the establishment about their supposed concerns.
And so we've gotten all the news about Rule 40 and how that might come into play.
And we've had leaks about efforts that are going to get made maybe to put this candidate in who hasn't run.
They had all kinds of things offered up as distractions.
And yet what happened this weekend at party conventions and delegate selection, nobody ever said a word publicly about it coming up.
Nobody in the establishment ever said, essentially, don't worry, we're going to stop Trump at our party conventions.
They all said, we're going to stop Trump on the Florida convention.
We're going to see to it that he doesn't get 1237.
Then we're going to go brokered.
Then we're going to do a contested.
Everybody talking about that while nobody had a heads up about what they were planning to do this weekend at the party convention.
They didn't leak that.
They didn't brag about that.
They didn't give any indication whatsoever it was going to happen because they didn't want anybody knowing because they didn't want it undermined.
And as far as the Trump campaign, it apparently worked.
Nobody there knew what was going on.
Interestingly, the Cruz campaign was upspeed on all of it.
The Cruz campaign has not closed their state offices.
As state primaries come and go and end, the Cruz campaign has kept them open.
The Trump campaign offices, there weren't very many of them, closed.
Do you know that Obama's 2008 offices in North Carolina are still open?
And he's not running for anything against the email.
Why, Rush?
Because those state offices of Obama's are used to stop and influence state politics in North Carolina.
It's true of every state where things might be happening that Obama doesn't want to happen.
Things about Obamacare, things about gay marriage, things about whatever he cares about.
Keep some of his offices open.
He's fundraising left and right for what?
The party, right?
Okay, so these offices are used by the party to stop Republicans at the state level from doing what they can do to undermine the Obama agenda.
Trump closed his.
Trump's using his own money.
He does not a bottomless pit.
He's making a big deal out of it.
So he's got to focus his funds and expenditures, which come out of his pocket for the most part, on the task at hand at present.
But Cruz has been raising money left and right.
Nobody's been talking about it, but he's been raising money left and right, just as crazy Bernie has.
And crazy Bernie's money, he can go back to his donors over and over again because the most they give at one time is 27 bucks.
So Bernie's donors can donate 10 times before they're shut out.
And he just keeps going back to them.
And Hillary doesn't know what hit her.
And Cruz, much the same way, can go back to his donors and keep his offices open and keep working these states where delegates are chosen.
And by the way, even after every state primary, the delegates in many cases have not even been chosen, the actual people.
And that's another thing that's been going on.
The Cruz people have been in there trying to determine their guys end up being chosen or selected or elected as delegates at these state conventions for the second and third ballots at the convention.
Trump has not been doing that.
I'm sure that, well, I can only guess, but I'm sure that Trump looked at his massive lead in national polls, his massive lead in all these primaries that he's won, and has just assumed that the sheer power and force of that was going to sweep him through 1237 before we got to the convention.
And that all this stuff that's happening now was not even going to be necessary because he was going to win this outright.
And it's clear, and it has been clear for a while, the objective is to make sure he doesn't.
And in this, the Cruz team and the GOP team are working as a united front against Trump with Kasich over here.
Apparently, Kasich is doing what he can to help Trump by trying to block Cruz at various spots in these primaries.
So you have a situation where it appears that Cruz and the GOP are united in their efforts to stop Trump.
Because if Trump doesn't get to 1237, what the GOP and Cruz are hell-bent on making happen right now is that Trump can never get to 1237.
He can't get there on the first ballot with pledged, bound delegates.
And then once we go to second and third ballots, he can't get there.
He can't, because that's being wired right now.
By wired, I mean that's being, they're getting pledges from these delegates, the Cruz Camp and the GOP.
Now, second ballot, if nobody gets 1237, that's where the GOP and Cruz forces will split apart, and Cruz will find out what it's like to be Trump right now.
That would be on the third ballot.
Because make no mistake, the Republican powers that be do not want Trump, and they don't want Cruz.
They did want Jeb.
They wouldn't mind Kasich.
They are drooling over Paul Ryan, and they would take Romney again.
So that's the immediate universe of people that they might be thinking could be their salvation.
Brief time out.
We will continue while you ponder all of that and come back shortly.
Let me give you the numbers here very quickly.
Just to put this in perspective, this is the latest that I have been able to put together.
Ted Cruz won Utah with 69% of the vote.
He got all 40 delegates.
This is in recent weeks here.
Ted Cruz won delegates out of Louisiana that were available that had not been bound or pledged at the primary.
Ted Cruz won the delegate race in North Dakota, 18 out of 25.
Trump only got one delegate, North Dakota.
Now, you might be, North Dakota, North Deshmott, doesn't matter.
All these things add up now, folks.
Remember, the conventional wisdom was Trump was going to sweep everything.
And all of this was going to have been over either by now or by the end of April.
Ted Cruz won Wisconsin, everybody remembers, got half of the vote, almost half of the vote there, and 36 of the 42 delegates.
He did it by winning most of the congressional districts.
The delegates in Wisconsin were apportioned by CD, congressional district.
And Cruz went into Wisconsin and didn't work the popular vote.
He worked districts.
So he got 30.
He ended up winning the popular vote by a big number.
36 out of 42 delegates.
Trump gets six.
And remember, Wisconsin was the beginning of the 100-day plan, all of that in capital letters, the GOP to stop Trump, a 100-day plan.
It began April 5th, Wisconsin primary.
Colorado.
Ted Cruz won the Colorado delegate selection process.
It didn't happen with the Colorado primary.
And that has been known since last August.
Ted Cruz won all of the delegate races in the Colorado delegate selection process.
And he ends up either with delegates that are bound to Cruz or they are unbound leaning to Cruz.
Some are committed, some are not, but they're leaning.
It's a total of 34 delegates.
And this is the event over the weekend that Trump is basically upset about, claiming that people have been disenfranchised because there's going to be a straw poll.
There's going to be a Colorado primary.
It isn't going to matter.
And Cruz is saying this is not democracy.
Trump's saying it's not democracy.
It's disenfranchisement.
People's votes are being stolen.
But states can do it however they want.
The delegate selection process, the party controls it, not the voters.
Cruz has been winning the other category as well in the race for actual delegates.
He's even picked up some delegates that were supposedly bound to Trump in places like Georgia, South Carolina, Massachusetts, and Tennessee.
So here are the totals.
And the Colorado win now, that gives, by the way, that's a crucial thing for Cruz.
The win in Colorado gives him the eighth state in which he has a majority of delegates.
That means, according to Rule 40B, he can win the nomination on a second and third ballot.
Rule 40B, until they change it, nobody can be nominated unless they amass at least 50% of the delegates in eight states.
And Colorado is Cruz's eighth state of securing a majority of delegates.
So the way that worked out, here are the final numbers.
758 Trump, as we stand now, as close as anybody can get to it.
758 Trump, 533 Cruz, 732 available via upcoming primaries waiting to be bound.
That means they will be bound by whoever wins in the remaining primaries.
There are 77 unpledged delegates out there waiting to be nabbed as a result.
So basically 700 and what would that be?
809, essentially 809 delegates that are available.
Now, Trump needs 65% of those remaining, let's say 732.
He needs 65% of those to get to 1237.
So far, he's gotten 45%.
Up to now, Trump has secured 45% of all delegates.
If Trump got 50% of the remaining delegates, his total would be 1,120 delegates after June 7th.
And the number needed is 1237.
So then the argument would begin.
Well, is 1,120, is that close enough to just call it for Trump?
And the Cruz gang, oh, no, there's no such thing as close.
The rule says 1237, and we've never modified that rule, and we've never changed that rule.
If nobody gets a 1237, it's hello, contested convention.
And that would be correct.
But the Trumpists are going to be working hard, and they're going to be reminding everybody of all the tricks and chicanery that's been pulled against them.
So, in a sense, it's just now heating up, folks.
We have a caller coming up who thinks that because Ted Cruz won in Colorado, it means he's never going to be president because he's created so much anger that people won't put up with it.
And I know some Cruz people are afraid of that interpretation because of the way the media is presenting what happened out there.
We'll be back.
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