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April 20, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:40
April 20, 2016, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Greetings and welcome back.
This hour of the Rush Limbaugh program on the EIB network dedicated to all of those of you never listening to the program ever again.
Telephone number if you want to be on the programs 800-282-2882 and the email address is El Rushbo at EIBnet.com.
Let's go back to Eric here in Cornelius, North Carolina, who has been holding on since the latter part of the previous hour.
You're still there, right?
I'm trusting.
Yes.
He's still there.
Tell me specifically here your fear of why a brokered convention, I think you essentially said guarantees the election of Hillary or Bernie, whoever the Democrats nominate.
Why do you think that?
Well, thanks again, Rush.
But the problem here...
I know.
Most hosts would have hung up on you and said thanks and then sent you on your way.
But we held you over because you're a fascinating caller.
I want to hear what you think about this.
I can only say God bless you, man.
I'm crazy nervous here.
But here's the thing, Rush.
There's several layers to this here.
You got different angles for wanting a brokered convention from the Republican establishment, from the Democrats, Cruz even.
And they're very interesting how if you put them all together, they still mean disaster.
Of course, Cruz, especially he's becoming more and more mathematically, it's becoming more and more impossible for him to win the 1237 he need, but he's trying to force this to this convention.
You know, he's proving a certain shortcoming here in that he's thinking that he's being patriotic and that he's the best candidate for the job.
I think he is, and that this is going to be good for the Republican Party.
But he's missing something here.
This isn't going to strengthen this party.
A brokered convention is going to divide it in a violent way.
It is not going to unify.
It's going to divide us.
And this is exactly what the Democrats, Hillary, they're wanting because they want to get in office, of course.
But this here is going to lead to the demise, the hastening of the demise of this country because we as the Republicans or the conservatives, we're not going to get elected because we're going to be pushed out because we're divided.
You know, Lincoln said a house divided.
It won't stand.
It can't stand.
And so this is why I'm pulling for Trump.
He has certain qualities that I like, certain that I don't like.
And as a matter of fact, Rush, real quick, there are certain things that he could do because of his chutzpah that could bring in more black votes than Republicans could have ever imagined.
I've been waiting for you to get there.
That's why my patience was rewarded.
You're an African-American guy.
You called here.
You're a cruiser, which you're really unique.
But you're open to Trump because you think Trump can siphon some African-American votes away from Hillary.
And you also think that the brokered convention would end up showing disunity and would cause disunity and the Democrats would benefit from it.
Let me give you the other side of this.
And by the way, it's a valid point, but there are some other people who think a brokered convention would be beneficial in these ways.
Remember now, Eric, we live in a media world.
Whatever is on TV is what's real, and whatever is on TV is what determines whether people are entertained.
Other than this program on radio, TV is it.
And so a brokered convention, drama, contention, confrontation, arguments, lying, cheating, attempted stealing, and then you'd have above-board honesty and morality at war with all the other.
You would have endless speeches and votes, and people would actually see how the sausage is made.
But as strictly as a televised event, people think that it would draw ravings out the wazoo like no convention ever has, and that the Republican Party desperately needs eyeballs to see who it is and who they are and what they believe in.
And there's no better way to expose that than four or five smack dab days in a row of a convention arguing because part and parcel of brokered convention would be an argument over issues.
You know, why vote Trump over Cruz?
That would be an issue-oriented argument in addition to whatever else it would be.
The establishment would want a brokered convention because the donors to the party want amnesty.
They're going to do whatever they can do to get a nominee that's going to maintain open borders.
So we would have that debate play out.
It's totally unknown.
It could go your way.
It could show a party totally fractured, but it would also, I guarantee you this, a brokered contested convention on TV, gabble-to-gabble, would dispel all kinds of lies and myths that the left has succeeded in attaching to the Republican Party.
Okay, you made a point there, speaking from the way others are speaking.
Before I answer your question, let me ask you a question.
Do you, in your gut of guts, really believe a brokered convention will unify us or fracture us?
I don't know.
You know, the whole thing is unknown to me.
All I can tell you, what my hope and dream is, my hope and dream is that no matter what happens, we end up being unified by a realization that we cannot do for another four years what we've been doing the last seven and a half, that it cannot be Hillary Clinton, that nothing on our side is anywhere near Hillary Clinton, near as bad, near as dangerous, near as tumultuous, that anybody we would nominate would be, well, not it.
I mean, look, the establishment could come up with some people that would be no different than Hillary on key issues like the border and so forth.
Well, think about this.
Well, think about this, Rush.
All right, don't think about it.
This has been the most vicious, vitriolic primary that we have ever seen.
Right, and look at the turnout.
Well, that is true.
But this has been a very, this has been a gut-wrenching thing for me to watch because what's going on here, Rush?
Well, I know.
What you have here is there are people who are being Republicans slash conservatives being literally stupid.
You have Glenn Beck out there calling saying he's not going to vote.
He'd rather vote for someone on the Democratic side rather than Trump.
Talking stupid.
You have Eric Erickson.
You've been very kind and patient to these guys who have been saying the most stupid things.
And I'm going to say what you may be thinking, but you're not wanting to say because you're kind and generous.
Be careful.
Don't put words in my mouth here.
I purposely do not discuss other people that do what I do.
You don't.
There's no way I can win doing that.
Right.
But having said that, the point here is, because these people are saying some of the most outlandish, idiotic things, not realizing that a vote for Hillary is a vote against themselves.
You're making it so hard for me.
He's talking about bringing this stuff up.
I can tell you why that's happening, but I don't dare do it.
Right.
Well, okay, then don't dare, but let me at least say it this way.
Because these people are being so stupid in the way they're reasoning, it's impossible for a brokerage convention to heal that.
Unless they get the guy that they want.
But the point is, the broker convention, people are going to so many polar extremes in the way they live.
A lot of people would agree with you on that.
And look, I know, look, you're a cruiser.
Eric, I know how hard this has been for the devoted Ted Cruz voting bloc, the Ted Cruz support base.
I know how maddening and frustrating this is.
I can voice every frustrating aspect of this.
Starting with, here we have the closest in our lifetimes we've ever been to the most successful Republican president in our lives, Ronald Reagan.
And the party can't unify behind him and instead is unifying behind somebody that's as far away from that, they think, as you can get?
They're frustrated out there was it.
They're people who've been living their entire lives waiting for this moment, believing that this moment would be what would unite the party.
And I've got friends who believe on the other side of this that Donald Trump would be the one to unify the party because finally, they believe somebody has come along on the Republican side who can make the media eat it.
And my friend's belief here, and there's a lot of think that they hate the media.
They think the media is the reason the Republican Party can't get a break.
Republican Party can't get ahead.
The media is the reason the Republican Party is a bunch of cowards.
The media is the reason the Republican Party fails.
The media is to blame for all of it.
And they've always believed that if a Republican come along and make the media eat out of his hand, that would be it, that everybody celebrate and unify.
And that hasn't happened, so they're frustrated.
And so a lot of people who thought this was going to be Nirvana on both sides are finding that it isn't, and they are distressed.
The conservatives, the solid conservatives behind Ted Cruz, cannot believe.
Just cannot believe What is happening here?
They cannot believe people are falling for Trump.
They can't believe people are being duped by Trump.
That's the way they look at it.
They're pulling their hair out.
They're frustrated.
They don't know what to do with it.
The Trump supporters, by the same time, have their own frustrations, but of a different nature, of course.
But it's all got to unify somehow for a potential win over the Democrats.
And I said on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace that I'm hoping that when all of this is ultimately decided, that there will be a party-wide realization that the real opposition here, as it always has been, it should have been the Democrat Party and Hillary Clinton.
That would serve to unify.
But I'll tell you, some of these divides are pretty wide.
And your thoughts on a brokered convention are held by a lot of people, that it would just divide the party further.
There's no way it could unify.
And that people would see this fractured party and so forth.
You know what other people tell you, Eric, is the party's already blown up and we're watching it happen.
Not that it would blow up during a brokered convention or contested, not that it might, that it is blowing up right now and that Trump is manifest evidence of this that the party is blowing up.
For me, I am by nature optimistic on all of this stuff.
I have, and it's, I'm disappointed a lot.
I thought we're going to beat Obama in 2012 and I didn't think it was going to be, well, I think it's going to be close, but I didn't think it was going to be difficult.
I was optimistic about that.
I was optimistic that Clinton would be beaten in 92.
I've been optimistic a lot of times, and I continue to be, but my optimism hasn't been rewarded, but it's not turned me into a pessimist either.
I continue to have hope, but we're down to nitty-gritty time here.
The demographic shifts in the country, the all-out assault on our culture, civilization, way of life is serious and real.
And we're nearing a point where the whole concept of Western civilization is going to become minority thought in the nation that pretty much established it and supported it, went to war to preserve it.
It's scary.
It's scary.
I mean, we're watching our culture, our morality literally rot away before our eyes.
I still remain optimistic that something's going to come along and stop it.
I don't begin to know what or who, how, why.
I just still think we have majority numbers, and at some point people are going to rise up and say enough, stop it, and reassert themselves.
But the assaults on it are not going to stop.
And they now have been further defined as direct assaults on Christianity, the Judeo-Christian ethic, which was one of the foundations of this country's founding.
So we're under assault no matter where you turn.
And the agents of that assault are all found in the Democrat Party.
That's their home.
Every radical leftist, every radical opposed to anything traditionally American is found in the Democrat Party.
And that is why the Democrat Party is home to the most destructive forces in the country today.
And they have to be defeated.
And however it happens is fine with me.
I'm not picky as long as it happens because I think anything's better.
Really, Russia, you think anything can be better?
Well, given the options that we have, yes, I do.
I don't think we can do worse than Hillary Clinton.
I don't think we can do worse than Barack Obama has done.
We can do worse in the sense that we can have more years added onto this so it starts compounding.
But in terms of policy architects, I mean, they are who they are.
And it doesn't get any worse than who they are unless they just become further emboldened, radicalized, which they're in the process of doing.
Eric, I really appreciate your time, my man.
Thank you for calling.
I got a quick timeout.
We'll be back and resume after this.
San Diego next.
San Diego, this is Tom.
It's great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Rush, first and foremost, Rush, I am honored to talk to the hands-down giant of talk radio without a doubt, and I appreciate you taking my call.
I really appreciated your last segment, your last caller, but that's not exactly why I'm calling.
But real quick, to me, the party is all, you know, unification is already impossible thanks to the never, and I call them the never Trump babies.
They have made it virtually impossible.
I personally feel, and I'm a Trump supporter, and this is my opinion, we could crush Hillary with the entire Republican Party and everything else Trump brings in, you know, first-time voters, Democrats, and independents.
We'd crush them.
But I think that is probably it's not going to happen.
But let me move to my point, Rush, that unfortunately, the way I feel about you, I'm seeing a crack in something that bothers me.
I have looked at this election as a monumental exposure of people's true colors.
I appreciate the way you have taken, I'm going to use the analogy of you've set boundaries for yourself when it comes to individual campaigns and candidates you're not going to obviously endorse.
And you try and stay in the middle and just explain things.
And I appreciate that.
But I think you're going off the rails earlier when you were talking about what Cruz is doing with the delegates.
I don't mind having a discussion with people who don't like Trump over specific issues.
But the way you characterize what he's doing as, you know, I believe the word was ultra-professional.
There's no law broken.
And I'm sure technically there isn't a law broken.
It's all above board.
He's killing it and all this.
Let's be honest.
And this is what's turned me off to a lot of other people I used to respect.
Things that we as conservatives and Republicans think that normally bother us, all of a sudden we use those same tactics, those sleazy tactics.
Wait, wait, wait.
Let's stay focused.
Tell me what it is that Cruz is doing.
Here we go.
Here we go.
I'm going to tell you exactly what it is.
And I'm going to do it with a series of questions.
Do you believe big donors buy political influence?
To me, of course they do.
And I think I know the answer that you would say, yes, they do.
Okay.
Is it legal?
Technically, that's bribery.
And technically, it's not legal.
But does it happen?
Absolutely.
All right.
And let's not kid around and say it doesn't.
To me, that delegate.
Wait, nobody ever has said that it doesn't.
Okay.
But I equate that train of thought to your train of thought about the delegate process.
Do you believe there's any delegates out there that have been bought and paid for?
It's against the law.
You're not seeing it.
Okay, yeah, of course it is.
I know that.
Is that what you think?
I'm just trying to get to the nubby.
You think Cruz is going in and whining and dining these delegates and purchasing their loyalty?
According to you, if Trump gets within 100, he can fly 100 of them on his plane.
The same thing, but you won't see it.
It's a joke.
It's a joke.
He technically is not allowed to do that.
And I am not suggesting that Cruz is going in there and buying loyalty from the delegates.
I have suggested none of the sort.
He's going in there and trying to win their support with the power of his personality and the issues.
How?
How do you win support, Rush, in politics?
You thinking you buy it.
Are you telling me that it has to be bought?
That's the only way people.
Okay, case in point, Colorado GOP Twitter account.
We did it.
Never Trump.
He's just staying on the entire process.
I saw that.
And guess what?
And guess what their answer was?
Something that we laugh at when the left says it.
Somebody hacked in.
We're investigating.
Yeah, right.
Okay.
Do you really think that M. See, the problem is, I don't mind you saying Cruz is playing the game, but let's be honest.
He's playing what I believe to be the game in the political system that we're all sick of.
I got it.
Now I finally understand what it is you all think Cruz is doing.
I didn't.
I now get it.
And I'll address it when we get back.
Because I finally figured it out.
I have been so crystal clear on what Cruz is doing with the delegates.
And I have been beside myself trying to figure out how in the world can anybody disagree with this?
And how can anybody see any illegality in it?
And it took me three minutes, but I extracted it from the previous caller.
And now I you're still all wet, but I at least now understand it, which I will explain in due course.
I know exactly what.
This is such a discovery.
I feel like Columbus, except I know that I have landed in the West Indies and not America.
Means I know where I am.
He didn't, but he thought he was, I got it.
Okay, so to spell this out for you, a party has its primary, state has its primary.
We'll stick with South Carolina.
Trump wins, which means the delegates that he wins in South Carolina, who are not chosen at the time of the primary, nobody knows who they are yet, but whoever they end up being are required to vote for Trump on the first ballot.
Everybody knows, everybody agrees, no problem.
Sometime after the primary, the GOP in South Carolina has its convention, where many things happen, including the selection of the delegates that are going to go to the convention.
And the delegates can be inside party bigwigs.
They can be people that run for election as delegates in their local precincts, state counties, or what have you.
Or they can be appointed by Republican Party bigwigs, or they can be elected Republicans themselves.
It's a mixture of all kinds of different people.
You can have a guy from his farm out there next to somebody that owns an automobile dealership next year you're elected.
It could be any number of people.
And on the first ballot, they're pledged to however the people vote in the state.
But in the second and third and fourth and whatever subsequent ballots, they're free agents.
They can vote however they wish.
Ted Cruz has been going in and Trump has not.
Trump has been going, or Cruz has been going into these states.
At the time they choose the delegates, he has tried to participate in which delegates get chosen by having delegates that support him be chosen as delegates.
The delegates that are not pro-Cruz, he then tries to persuade them to be for him on the second and third ballot.
Sometimes he'll succeed, sometimes not.
That's it.
It's brilliant.
It's politics as it's been for eons.
There's nothing new about it.
There's no cheating.
There's no skullduggery.
There's nothing illegal.
And yet, I got all these people.
I can't believe you're full.
And I didn't know until just now that what Trump people think is happening is that Cruz is going in there and buying them.
And the reason that's bad is because that's how the establishment does it.
And this is what I was missing.
The Trump supporters think that Cruz is no different than your average lobbyist walking up to Capitol Hill and buying off a member of Congress to support open borders.
Instead, it's Cruz as the lobbyist who's going to the state convention and paying for or whining and dining or bribing these delegates.
Because after all, what delegate would support Cruz on his own, I guess is the assumption.
And because I did not include in my explanation of this the possibility that Cruz might be whining and dining them, it means I was either lying or being fooled and being duped for not realizing what Cruz was really doing.
But since that kind of thing is not allowed, and I know, go and chuckle if you want.
Technically, you can take them to dinner, but you can't promise them this and that.
All this talk about Trump flying them around on Trump Force One or putting up mar-a-lago.
It's people joking.
Look at the bylaws.
It's not permitted.
But wink, wink, you say, yes, we all know what happens.
As far as I know, Ted Cruz is going in there and selling himself and his conservatism.
Period.
There's nothing illegal about it.
But apparently some of you Trump supporters think that Cruz is so reprehensive, so horrible, so rotten.
The only way any delegate would support him is if he's paying them off.
And I'm sorry I didn't include that in the possibility in the procedure.
In some states, and this differs from state to state.
In some states, they are lobbying for Cruz supporters to be chosen as delegates, and it's the lobbying that rubs people wrong, right?
But it's been done, it's been, it's the way politics is.
It's not exclusively, that kind of behavior is not exclusively establishment behavior.
So now I guess I understand why so many of you Trumpists think I've sat here and lost it or am blind to obvious cheating when I haven't seen any.
It's because that has not been part of what I think is going on.
Now you may think I'm still being stupid and think that it is, but it's not.
Cruz doesn't have the money and he doesn't have the wherewithal to be buying enough of these delegates.
It's not how it's done in this stage.
I know you think it is and that's what this election is all about.
It's ridding politics of all of that establishment insider stuff.
And Cruz is engaging in it.
It is rotten to the core.
Let me tell you what happened in Colorado.
And this is a lost cause too.
Colorado got screwed in their minds in 2012.
The system in Colorado, they had a primary and their first ballot delegates were pledged to the guy that won their state, who happened to be Santorum, who happened to not be there at the end.
So Colorado's delegation had to vote Santorum on the first ballot in 2000, and they didn't want to.
And they resented the rules that made them do this.
So they came up with new rules that would have all of their delegates unbound.
Every one of the 34 delegates in Colorado this year, by virtue of their rules changed, was going to be unbound because they didn't like the fact that they were locked into somebody that didn't get the nomination in 2012, which in effect made the Colorado delegation useless and pointless at the convention.
And nobody wants to go there and not matter.
So they wrote rules suggesting that there wasn't going to be a primary and their delegates are going to be chosen and they would be unbound from the get-go.
Pennsylvania, the same way, for different reasons.
Blue in the face.
17 out of 71 delegates are pledged.
The other 54 are free agents up for grabs on the first ballot.
The automatic suspicion here of payoffs, bribery, cheating, lying, stealing is, I guess people assume that's going on because that's what politics is.
It's what they hate about the establishment.
And Trump, of course, clean and pure as the wind-driven snow is not doing any of that.
He's not messing with the delegates.
He's not denying anybody their precious vote.
So Trump is holier than now on this.
But Cruz, Kasich, and all the rest of these guys are monkeying in Colorado, monkeying with people's rights to vote and taking their privilege away from them and disenfranchising them and selling their votes to the highest lobbyist bidder and so forth.
I'm telling you that that's not what Cruz is doing.
And Trump could go into these state conventions and try to get these delegates on his side, the second, third ballot, if he wanted to.
He either – another thing.
I refuse to believe he doesn't know the rules here.
I think he's made a decision that he wasn't going to need to do that.
He was going to win this going away a month ago.
None of this was going to be necessary.
But now, since it is, and they're all going to be gathered in a single place for four straight days, much easier to have at them in Cleveland than travel all over the country, state after state, convention after convention, delegate selection process after delegate selection.
Why waste your time doing that?
Why staff up for that when it isn't going to be necessary?
Why have a ground game?
Well, if you don't think you're going to need a ground game, why have a ground game?
But Trump obviously chose not to have a ground game for the longest time.
And Cruz did.
But you know what this, what it adds up to?
This just illustrates how there can't be any unity.
Like our previous caller, Eric, said that the never Trumpists, the never Trumpers and the Never Cruises and the Never Never.
How do you bring them all together after this?
That's his point.
I'm not accomplishing anything.
Sterlie said, you're doing a great job by explaining it.
I'm not accomplishing.
Don't you understand?
I'm not accomplishing anything.
The fact this is what, my 23rd time explaining this, and I still have to do it?
How much am I accomplishing here?
No, that wouldn't be right.
If I mentioned that to him, it'd be frustrating.
That would tick him off.
I can't do that.
No, I can tell you exactly what happened on the Hannity show yesterday, but I wasn't going to do it until anybody asked, and nobody asked.
So no ex well, I don't have time to get To put this all in context, I'm home yesterday afternoon.
I get this text.
Boy, you won't believe how rude Hannity just was to Cruz.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
You've got to hear it.
You've got to hear it.
It was really rude.
Wow.
Okay.
So I listened to the clip thinking I was going to hear rudeness.
I didn't hear.
I heard a frustrated Hannity asking Cruz.
Look.
Look, my expectations on this are really raised up by all of this pre-hype that I heard about how rude.
But I frankly thought that Cruz could have done a better job answering the setup question.
Hannity asked him about the delegates.
Can you tell me – Hannity accused him of stealing delegates, essentially, and – And it was a setup question.
And then Cruz launched into some unrelated answer.
And Hannity got for, look, every time I ask you, you go off on a tangent.
Just answer the question.
And that's what people got mad at Hannity about.
But had it been me, had I been Cruz, this is one time I would have accepted the premise and I would have answered the question.
And I would have taken the time to explain that not a single delegate has been stolen and nobody's being denied the right to vote.
But not answering it wasn't helpful.
And to say that Trump is scared or that Trump is losing elections and we're winning elections, Sean, and that's what that's that isn't happening.
It was just what Cruz is doing is politically, professionally, legally, and brilliantly good for his strategy of second ballot, third ballot, delegate selection and support.
And I just think he could have explained it.
He chose not to explain it and instead kept talking about what he's going to do the first day in office.
He's going to rip up Obamacare and so forth.
And I just thought it was a missed opportunity.
Like today in Hershey, where he said that Donald Trump's running scared.
Of all things, Trump is.
I don't think he's scared today.
So I really think what is seen as a setup question by Hannity was actually potentially, if answered correctly, was a hanging curveball to knock out of the park.
Explaining how this delegate selection, romancing, whining, dining, whatever you call it, happens.
Anyway, if I had more time, I would say this in a way that didn't anger so many of you cruisers, which is never, ever my point.
Hey, look, we're going to do Open Line Friday on Thursday tomorrow because I'm not going to be here Friday.
So if anything happened today that you need further explanation of, or if you think that I'm still so full of it that I need to be told what's what, do it tomorrow.
800-282-2882, Open Line Friday on Thursday tomorrow.
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