All Episodes
Previous Next
April 26, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:08
April 26, 2016, Tuesday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
The views expressed by the hosts of this program documented to be almost always right, 99 point of the time, my friends, the views expressed by the host of this program are that high because what we do here is relentlessly pursue the truth.
And we find it and we proclaim it.
It's great to have you here, the telephone number, if you want to join us, 800-282-288-2, the email address, Lrushmo at EIB net.com.
So here, let me just summarize this again.
So that nobody's offended out there.
When when everything is finished with tonight, when all the results are in and everything is counted, what is expected and what has been factored into everybody's delegate projections in terms of whether or not Trump can get 1237, Trump is likely to win.
You know, just saying this is going to tick people off, but I mean it's what it is.
He's going to probably get less than 50% of all votes cast today, but will end up with between 57 and 72% of the delegates.
He's going to end up being around the 130 delegate range, and those delegates in a ballpark sense have been factored and added to his uh to his totals.
And we move on down the road to Indiana next Tuesday, and the remaining tenary contests, as everybody waits with bated breath to find out if Trump can get to 123, and if not, how close?
And depending on how close, then what happens to get Trump over the number?
Because I think one thing is fairly safe to assume.
If Trump shows up at Cleveland, a hundred delegates short, there are enough unbound delegates and unpledged delegates that between the California primary and the Cleveland convention in July, that Trump can wrap it up.
He can secure pledges from Unbound.
So it may not even be necessary to get all the way to 1237 beforehand.
This is what Cruz, however, is trying to head off at the pass with all of this uh delegate work.
And as we mentioned in the first hour of the program, Trump is now getting in that game.
Trump is going to start working the state conventions in Virginia and California and a number of other places yet to happen to try to shore up his position with uh with delegates in the entire selection process.
Okay, here's this Kelly Ripper situation.
What when I first heard about this, I I all of this comes to me as inside baseball.
I mean, this is a broadcaster.
And the program she's on is a program on the air, so she's it's it's a it's a it's an inside baseball story.
And I have always struggled to to uh not struggled, I've always worked very hard to make sure that as I grew older here that I did not become the old Fuddy Duddy, that I did not become a guy like my parents, who didn't like the Beatles because of the length of their hair and thought they were subversive.
And I wasn't gonna become that.
I wasn't gonna become the old guy yelling the kids to get off the front yard.
And I wasn't gonna be stuck in the ways of my world when I was young and how they were the best, and whippeding it's happened since is the equivalent of everything going to the dogs.
I wasn't gonna do that.
But I do have my own reality in this business.
What?
No, no, no, no.
I'm too famous to go on that show.
I've never I've never I've I I think I was on live with Regis and Kathy Lee once, but that was a s that was a strange circumstance.
Yeah, I was on her Christmas special one year, too.
But as I understand it, one day she shows up to work and finds out that her co-host Michael Strahan has been appointed or named to be full-time host at Good Morning America starting in September,
and that she was up that upset she Wasn't told in advance of this happening, and therefore considered it an act of profound disrespect not to have been told this before she found out about it on the air.
Now, folks, I got my my initial reaction, again, based on my numerous years in this business.
Is she the producer of the show?
Does she own the show?
What right does anybody have?
Or what what what demand does she have to be told what they're going to do with that show?
She's an employee.
She works there.
So what what why where is this expectation that this be cleared with her?
And if not cleared, where is this expectation?
It wouldn't in in in my day, uh, which it is still my day, of course.
Even here, I I show up some days and find out the engineer's not going to be here.
He's off antiquing.
We got a guest engineer.
Some days a call screeners now.
You deal with it.
You just you just deal with these things.
I I can't imagine coming here and going, the engineer's not here today, and nobody told me, and nobody asked me.
Oh, damn.
And then start talking about lack of communication in the workplace.
And then going home.
And then staying home.
I would have that's you get fired for that.
Um you used to.
You used to get fired for that.
And I'm no, see, this is I'm running the risk here.
I'm not suggesting that she be fired.
Don't misunderstand.
I'm just this is how I I I heard it all.
And then I couldn't believe it was a deal.
I couldn't believe it was a story.
I mean, so the guy's gonna go to Good Morning America.
Is she upset?
She didn't get the gig.
It is not her show.
It is it is not her show.
It is ABC show, and there was a guy in there working with her before Strayhan came along.
She's had she's been angering that show before Stray Han.
Strahan is gonna is gonna move over to Good Morning America.
On the other hand, there you you do develop a chemistry, there's a continuity, and as a matter of respect, if half the show is gonna leave and get a promotion, and they're not telling you about it beforehand.
I can understand where she would be upset, but I don't get walking off.
But frankly, there's no win talking about this, folks.
Um but yet it's a it's a big deal.
Now it's become a workplace respect um uh issue.
And she apparently feels like she's had this major victory now as a result of uh of having behaved as as she did.
It's all gonna end up fine.
Everything's gonna be cool.
They'll find somebody to come in there and replace Strahan.
Strayhan's gonna go to Good Morning America, do whatever happens at Good Morning America, and it'll be live with Kelly and uh Bradley.
Uh live with Kelly and uh whoever.
And the uh and the show will go on.
Uh Regis Philman thought it was his show too at one point, demanded a raise, and he's not there anymore, is he?
I mean, it's ABC's show.
It's ABC's show.
ABC owns the show.
Strahan doesn't own the show.
Ted Cruz doesn't own the show.
You know, way before this is all over, Cruz is gonna have had some hand in this.
You watch.
Cruz will be behind this before this is all, and Trump is gonna be the I'm surprised Trump has not ridden to the rescue on this show yet.
This was made the order for Trump to go swooping in there and solve this and soothe everybody's hurt feelings and come up with a solution and so forth.
Maybe a uh a bit of a missed opportunity.
Okay.
The cruise casick pact.
Uh Snartley just said, you do know that you've gotten yourself in major trouble.
Tell me how.
How have I yes?
I know I've, you know, you know how I know I've gotten myself in major trouble?
Just saying anything about it.
I'm gonna be in major trouble.
It doesn't matter what I would, the very fact that I'm weighing in on it.
It means I'm gonna be in major trouble.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, I I will I will not the proper sensitivity uh that I'm uh not taking the time to understand the deep feelings and hurt that has occurred here, and that I could have shown a lot more understanding and compassion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know it's gonna happen.
This that's why I say I it there's a no-win weighing in on this.
As I was saying, the Cruz Casick pact is now showing signs of strain, and in fact, it was showing signs of strain and fraying yesterday, and the politico has a story, you know.
You recall uh last week that there were all of these people saying that it was getting close to the moment in time where Trump was going to pivot and start becoming more presidential.
He was going to stop using nicknames, and in fact, in one of his acceptance speeches the other night, actually referred to Senator Cruz instead of Lion Ted.
And it didn't last very long.
The political has a long in-depth story here.
Trump rejects new advisors' push to make him presidential.
Frustrated with his hire, Paul Manafort.
Trump shifts some power back to Lewandowski.
The drive-by is not going to be happy.
The drive-by's hate Lewandowski.
The fact that Lewandowski is reclaiming some power is going to tick some people off.
But Politico says, and it's political, so you keep this in mind.
They say that Trump is bristling at efforts to implement a more conventional presidential campaign strategy and has expressed misgivings about the political guru behind them, Paul Manafort, for overstepping his bounds, according to several sources leaking to the politico.
Apparently, Trump became upset late last week when he learned from media reports that Manafort privately was telling Republican leaders that Trump was only projecting an image for voters with all this braggadocio and name-calling.
That was just an image.
That's not the real Trump, but he's going to start dialing this back.
Manafort was telling GOP leaders, don't sweat it.
Trump's going to dial it back.
He's just projecting an image.
He's going to start toning down his rhetoric.
They said that Trump expressed concern about Manafort bringing several former lobbying colleagues into the campaign, which did happen.
There were stories last week, all of a sudden all these lobbyists to the Trump campaign.
This story is to set the record straight that Trump was not happy about that.
And Manafort has not been fired, but his role has been reduced.
And Lewandowski has regained some power.
Lewandowski, Manafort would not talk to Politico.
So...
And share details of their thoughts on this for the story.
But apparently what happened is that Trump has reasserted control.
You know, I noticed yesterday.
And I made mention that the old Trump seems to be back.
He's out on the campaign trail with that same energy with the same modus operandi, the same personality, the kind of stuff that was drawing record crowds, attracting all this attention.
I think there were attempts to tone him down.
I think there were attempts to get him to quote unquote be presidential.
And those were never going to work.
You can't make somebody into something that they're not.
You can't turn somebody, especially an adult.
You can't transform them.
You can't make them into something.
You can't turn them into 24-7 actors.
The minute you start running around trying to suppress somebody's personality, because you're either embarrassed of it, you're afraid of uh what's negative fallouts going to result from it, uh, you're dooming that person.
And Trump, I think this is a good move for Trump.
Trump Finally realized what was happening and reasserted himself and had the confidence to say, look, I'm not embarrassed who I am.
I'm proud of who I am, I like who I am, I like the way I am, and I'm gonna be who I am, and screw all you people that think I need to be presidential.
Because the the point of this is that Trump doesn't come off as presidential.
He doesn't come off as insider, stayed, buttoned down, what have you.
It's one of the major points of attraction.
Anyway, you've got to take a brief time out.
I'm gonna come back and we will resume your calls right after this, folks.
Do not go away.
I'll tell you something else that could happen tonight, folks.
It could well be that Trump could outperform the expectations, could end up with a few more delegates that are being projected.
Remember, it's the same old say more.
We we're in a lull here, and all we have is wild guesses and projections, and tonight we're gonna have hard cold results, and it could turn all of this analysis upside down.
It could be totally different from what the projections are today.
And it could well be that Trump does even better than what people are projecting.
Could come in with far more than 50% of the vote, whereas the projections now are that he's gonna get less than 50% in all five of these states.
So we'll we'll just see.
We'll just measure it.
Because we're in this lull between primaries happens every week, sometimes for two weeks when there's nothing but predictions and fodder and Kelly Rippa and Strayhand to talk about.
But then we have the primary, then you have some hard cold results.
I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.
I know I uh I'm gonna get raked over the coals for what I said about it, and I doubt that anybody's gonna ever really fully understand what I said about it, but they're gonna make hay with it.
But the point is that Trump could do much better.
Hard cold results and whatever the results are then gonna flavor the next six, seven days where there's going to be projection, punditry, predictions, this kind of thing.
But hard cold results always change and have far more impact than anybody's wild guesses.
So we'll see what happens tonight.
Here's Allison and Brian, Texas.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Thanks.
Um, Rush Baby Ditto.
So one of my frustrations is hearing all of the media who it's their job, the political fund is their job.
How the delegation system works, how delegates work, how this whole system is supposed to work.
And yet they're acting like it's the weirdest thing that they've ever seen, like they don't know what's going on, it doesn't make any sense, they don't understand it.
And it's driving me crazy.
It's a good thing.
Hold on a minute.
I'm not sure who you're talking about.
Who who's upsetting you?
The people, the political pundits, like people in the media, or not you, of course, the other talk show hosts, are acting like they have never heard of how this system works and how it's suddenly.
No, I agree with you.
I I I totally agree.
That really does tick me off, folks.
I mean, you hear people talking about this like this is the first time this has ever happened, and like nobody has ever cheated like this, or nobody's ever gamed a system like this, or how do you have delegates without votes?
This is what happens every four years.
You just never see it.
No, no, I totally agree with you.
But again, that's part of pushing the narrative.
There's a narrative out there.
A lot of people zip it rush, just zip.
A lot of people get where they get by whining and moaning and crying and pretending or actually thinking that they are victims.
It is one of the things that actually worries me greatly about our culture.
We have the Democrat Party's willing to victimize anybody, willing to put as many people in whatever victimized group they can, because that immediately makes them helpless, and it renders them totally irresponsible.
They have no role in what happens to them.
Therefore, they're not subject to self-restraint, responsibility, anything of the sort.
Then when it comes down to uh the victimhood involved in being cheated, uh people carrying forth, it's not hard to figure out how this works.
It's standard operating procedure, delegate selection process, how delegates are appointed, how they're elected, how they must vote.
All of this has been around for eons.
And I agree with you.
It's irritating to have to listen to how people who don't understand it characterize it as cheating or gaming the system.
I'm not mean a lot of people, I'm not talking about just one campaign.
This is talking about generically.
Alex in Lexington, Kentucky, you're next.
It's great to have you.
Hello, sir.
Hi, Rush, thank you.
You are El Presidente and Chief Constable of Realville.
Well, thank you, sir.
Appreciate that.
My quick question is this, since you've already answered it, if Donald Trump cannot uh try to remake his image or appear more presidential without running the risk of losing some of his base in the general election, then how will he move it's tricky?
How will he move the polls ten points to beat Hillary?
That's my question.
You know, I am glad you asked that question.
Uh because that's a great springboard.
I will answer that when we come back from the break.
I've got a break coming up here in five seconds.
But I think uh that there's a uh pretty solid potential answer to your question there that's staring us all in the face, and nobody wants to admit it either.
Okay, if I understood the last caller's question, was was he asking if Trump is not going to become quote unquote more presidential, then how is he going to make up the ground against Hillary?
All right.
Are we not in new territory here, folks?
Trump is where he is, running away with the Republican nomination, precisely by being what everybody would say is unpresidential.
Can we agree on that?
Being unpresidential, not appearing to have much in common whatsoever with establishment politics is what has launched Trump.
So tell me why does that have to change?
Why just because we're talking about expanding a voter base and maybe bringing Hillary Clinton and getting some of Hillary Clinton's voters, why where is it written that Trump has to stop being what he is, which has gotten him where he is, and become something else if he wants to win.
It seems to me it's just the opposite.
There's a lot of conventional wisdom out there that I'm questioning, and I question conventional wisdom constantly anyway.
But one bit of conventional wisdom out there is that Trump cannot possibly win.
Negatives are too high.
But if you look over there, Hillary Clinton's negatives are just as high.
And if you look over there also, you find that they don't have any vote turnout going on on the Democrat side at all.
The Democrat side's four and a half million votes down from what they were in previous primaries.
There's literally no enthusiasm.
And whatever enthusiasm there is for Crazy Bernie is not making up for the loss of enthusiasm, the lack of it party-wide.
So where is this assumption?
Why do we have this assumption?
Every four years we get into this the same game where they can't be beat.
The Democrats can't be beat.
They outsmart us every chance they get every time we end up shooting ourselves in the foot or what have you.
And I just I always have trouble with that.
But clearly, folks, our culture is changing rapidly.
The old signs that we would recognize as decorum, propriety, sophistication, all that's out the window anyway.
We've and that's it's been out the window for I don't know how long.
I've been doing this radio program for 27 years.
Maybe it's under 28th now.
And for most of it, I keep waiting for that day, that week, that moment where we bottom out Culturally to the point where most Americans say yuck and say we're not going any lower and we get a rebound.
And we start becoming a little bit more refined, sophisticated, less profane, less coarse, but that's not happening.
It's just getting lower and lower and lower.
Now apparently some people think, yeah, but when you're talking about the presidential election rush, and we start talking about presidential politics, the American people still are very, very serious about it.
And they very, very, very concerned about policy.
I don't see I I'm used to be, yep.
But I I think we're in all kinds of uncharted, at least uh in the last two or three generations.
We're in uncharted territory here.
I I don't believe the conventional wisdom that A says Hillary Clinton can't be beat.
I don't accept the conventional wisdom that says Donald Trump can't win the presidency being who he is.
I reject all of this because we don't know.
And those kinds of predictions fly in the face of what is actually happening now.
Trump is winning.
Yeah, Rush, but he's only winning with 30, 40.
It's steadily climbing, folks.
NBC News is out, Trump is now over 50% in a lot of national polls.
Trump is continuing to grow.
He's continuing to expand the number of people who respond favorably to him when polled.
And Trump isn't changing significantly.
Trump is no more expert on the issues today than he was in June.
That's not even, you know, say that Trump's got to bone up on the issues and he's got to learn them and he's got to get why?
I mean, he hasn't needed that yet.
As people want to think that our politics can't have descended to that level where those things don't matter anymore.
I think if you believe that, you still don't understand just how many Americans are fed up with what professional, buttoned-down politicians, establishment types, are seen as having done to this country.
I I don't think even people who claim to understand this anti-establishment movement out there, I still don't think they understand the disconnect.
I still don't think they understand how deep it is.
And I'm not talking about just Trump voters.
I've had stories in the stack of stuff here for the past couple of days.
And actually the stories predate the past couple of days.
The suicide rate in middle class white America.
It's an actual story.
It's actually happening.
And sociologists and other social scientists are looking in and trying to figure out why is it happening.
Because it's a phenomenon.
And there are many reasons to explain it.
There are a whole bunch of possibilities.
And right smack dab in the middle of all of them is one word, economics.
There has not been in the middle class in this country, there has not been any real standard of living increase in a long time.
But there has been in other sectors of the population of this country.
And people see it.
And it's not hard to figure out.
With mass immigration and layoffs of domestic Americans and being replaced with immigrants who work for less money, Doesn't take long for people to figure this out.
You don't need a PhD.
You don't need to have gone to Harvard to see what's happening to you.
You don't need any kind of an education at all.
All you have to do is be conscious.
And I think it's it goes deeper than economics.
I think there is a growing number of people who believe that the so-called special people, the best educated among us, The best trained among us, uh, call them our betters, whatever terminology you want to use, they've screwed everything up, and people are now beginning to wonder, is it just that they're incompetent or have they done this on purpose and rigged the game for themselves?
My favorite example of this, my my favorite example to use as an illustration of what I'm talking about is the college education.
Since the Great Depression, the college education, a college degree, has been the ticket.
That has been the deal in this country, if you will.
During the Great Depression, the formative event from people who live through it.
The only way, the only possible way to avoid the economic disaster that was the Great Depression, the only way that you could get a job, which is how you avoided the economic disaster.
And even if you had a job, it wasn't a guarantee because nobody was paid much.
But you didn't even get a job if you didn't have an education.
And that's why parents who lived through the depression, who then became grandparents and great-grandparents, that's why the education of their children and their great-grandchildren or grant became the most important thing, because it was the ticket.
It was how this country, that was the American dream, was a rising standard of living, not just a house, but a rising standard of living.
And an education was the key to it.
Everybody believed it.
Everybody bought into it.
Parents bought into it, kids bought into it, students bought into it, educators bought into it.
And so everybody wanted to go to college.
Everybody thought they should go to college.
Well, not exceptions, of course, but I mean in terms of cultural norms.
Well, now what's what's become of this?
The college education no longer fulfills that promise.
And not that it was a guarantee.
Nobody, don't misunderstand, nobody thought it was a guarantee, but it was it was the it was something that if you were serious about improving yourself, you had to do it.
It was just required because everybody else was.
It was a competitive thing, it was a requirement, stay even with people of your generation.
And now look at it.
A college education has become a millstone around a graduate's neck.
And who's in charge of it?
Who runs colleges?
Who runs student loan programs?
Who's in charge of who gets into these universities and so forth?
If you don't have the connections, how do you get in?
All of this.
People see this as rigged as well.
People see this is stacked, people see this as connections, and what do you do if you don't have them?
Well, the college education was one of the great levelers.
It was one of the great ways to compensate for the fact that maybe your family didn't have connections.
Your family didn't know somebody in a position of power to grease the skids for you.
But now when you graduate from college with 200,000 is $60,000 in debt, how in the world are you ahead?
All you do is owe the government because that's who runs the student alone program now.
And by the way, the people running colleges, are you kidding me?
Look at some of the things people are getting degrees in.
They're absolutely worthless to producing an income.
They're worthless to a rising standard of living.
The ticket, I think it's one of the greatest examples of one of the many things, one and not deals, but one of the agreed-upon premises that has been corrupted, and there are many other examples like it.
The point of all of this is that there are many more people than just Trump voters and Trump supporters who are fed up and feel betrayed up against a corrupt system.
And they believe the people who are running the system have gamed it for themselves, Their friends, their families, their colleagues, what have you.
And so when we talk about ruling class and country class, it actually has become that in a lot of people's minds.
Therefore, all of this talk about presidential decorum and other behavioral things like this pale in comparison.
And I'll I'll tell you, I think you look at the polling data that surrounds Hillary Clinton, and the absolute that Democrat Party is a is an electoral disaster right now, just in terms of energy and vote turnout.
Now they still run all kinds of things in game systems and they have numbers in these electoral states.
I I understand how the Electoral College works and so forth.
I'm just talking to you in real terms of enthusiasm.
It's not like it was eight years ago with hope and change and Obama's the answers.
There's the people are depressed, people are disappointed, they're frustrated.
You think it's sad how many Americans think the country's best days are behind us.
And the real sad thing is that people who think that don't have the ability to affix the blame for it properly.
They just think it's a matter of evolution and time, and they just happen to be born at that moment in the universe where America's best days are behind us.
They haven't the slightest idea that it's Democrat Party and left-wing policies, and the implementation of those policies that has brought this about.
Anyway, I'm a little long in the segment.
I have to take a break.
But my only point is I I just I throw out all this conventional wisdom that says you have to behave this way in order to get elected here or there.
I think everything's being stood upside down and on its head right now, and a lot of people still haven't gotten their arms around it and still don't know where it's all headed.
And it's one of the reasons that makes it really exciting.
Yeah.
So I got a note from uh from my old buddy Seaton Motley.
Is that not a great name, Seaton Motley?
Not to be confused with Muttley, the wonder dog, Seaton Motley.
The solution here is live with Kelly and Peyton, as in Manning.
Live with Kelly and Peyton Manning.
Look.
I was insensitive.
I was rash.
I was brusque.
I was attaching my own broadcast standards as a patriarchal domineering male to the sad exploitation of Kelly Rippa.
And the very idea that her co-host Strahan would be promoted above her over to Good Morning America, and they wouldn't even tell her.
I feel really bad for Kelly Ripa.
It's an indignity that no one should be forced to endure.
And the ABC should apologize and let her have that show all by herself if that's what she wants.
Or if she wants Peyton Manning, or whoever.
Hey, folks.
No, I don't care.
That's the point.
I'm fully aware that people's lives are fraught with immense pressure and suffering, and far be it from me to cast judgment and opinion on it.
Clearly she was upset.
And nobody should have to be that upset who works on television.
It's just not fair.
So I apologize if anybody thought I was being brusque, insensitive, mean spirited woman to Kelly Ripper.
Yeah, I just I just wasn't thinking.
Nobody on television should have to suffer that kind of suffering and indignity.
You know, Regis pulled the same stunt when he retired.
He didn't tell her very much in advance, didn't give her much lead time.
So she's she's going to suffer this indignity twice.
I forgot about Regis doing it too.
▲
Export Selection