All Episodes
Previous Next
May 2, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:10
May 2, 2016, Monday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
And greetings and welcome back.
It's great to have you, Rush Limbaugh, executing assigned host duties flawlessly.
There are zero mistakes made each and every busy broadcast day.
Great to have you here.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882 and the email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
I swear, every time I think, every time I hope, every time I see evidence of cultural rot and decay, I keep hoping it's the bottom.
And every time, I end up being disappointed because I find evidence that I am wrong.
Have you ever heard of a baby box?
I need to ask first to find out if maybe I'm the last one to be up to speed on this.
Anybody never heard of a baby box?
Well, they just installed the first one in Indiana.
Ready for this?
A safe haven baby box.
That's in all caps.
Safe haven baby box.
Where mothers can drop off unwanted newborns anonymously with emergency help moments away is now available in northeastern Indiana.
It's just like mailing a letter.
It's just like returning a library.
Well, nobody today knows what returning a library book is.
It's just like, well, I was going to say returning the movie to blockbusters, but you don't do that anymore either.
So I'll go with just mailing a letter or dropping a box in the FedEx thing.
Padded climate control container, first one dedicated last week at the Woodburn Volunteer Fire Department, about 15 miles east of Fort Wayne near the Ohio state line.
It is on an exterior wall of the fire station.
The Knights of Columbus of Indiana will pay for the first 100 baby boxes, which cost between $1,500 and $2,000 each, said Monica Kelsey, a volunteer with the fire department who's been advocating for baby boxes in Indiana for several years.
A second one was dedicated Thursday in Michigan City.
The boxes are equipped with a security system that notifies emergency personnel when a baby is dropped off.
Emergency responders can get to the child within minutes.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia now have safe haven laws which allow unharmed newborns to be surrendered without fear of prosecution.
Indiana's law allows mothers to drop off newborns at police stations, fire stations, and hospitals.
I guess it's better than the alley.
Well, I know.
You look on the bright side of everything.
At least they're giving birth and at least dropping them off in the baby box.
This is not criminal, said Monica Kelsey.
This is legal.
We do not want to push women away.
The Woodburn baby box was actually installed April 19th, the anniversary of when Kelsey says her birth mother abandoned her at a hospital when she was just hours old.
And there's a picture of Monica Kelsey here standing smiling and proudly next to the Indiana Safe Haven Baby Box.
And it literally is, it looks like you pull the drawer out.
It's on a brick, brick wall, you pull the drawer out, drop the baby in it, you push the drawer back in, and you're gone.
You think Bill Clinton's wondering if there's a spouse box anywhere?
Just kidding.
No, I'm not.
Hey, you know, Limbach, I like that idea.
Baby box, I don't know.
It's past my time, but hey, yeah, how about a spouse box?
That'd be great.
So there you have it.
There's your cultural news of the day.
And of course, it's wonderful.
See, it's great news.
This is a wonderful story.
Oh, this is progress in America.
And sadly, it might be.
This is one of those things, I guarantee you, not to date myself, but my parents, what?
But could not relate.
You just didn't do this.
Okay, delegate selection is ongoing at state party conventions and Arizona.
Here is the headline in Politico.
Trump flops in Arizona delegate fight.
Donald Trump's campaign got burned again Saturday in the hunt for loyal delegates to the Republican National Convention, this time on turf where he'd recently trounced his rivals in primary elections.
Trump's campaign showed more muscle than ever in this primary, but he still walked away in defeat in Arizona.
Are you ready for this?
Trump, there were 55 delegate slots that were up for grabs in Arizona.
And again, I don't want to have to walk through this from the let me try it again for those of you still new to the program and may not have heard this explanation.
Here's what's happening.
State like Arizona has its primary.
During the election, the delegates to the convention who are going to go and act on the votes of the people of the primary are not known.
They're not chosen yet.
The primary usually happens in most states long before the state party convention.
State party convention then comes, which in Arizona was this past week.
The Arizona primary was weeks ago.
At the convention, they actually choose the people who are going to be delegates to the convention.
And that is an election.
It is an electoral process.
Some portion of the delegates are appointed because powerful positions are made available to elected officials to appoint people.
Not very many, but they're plum equivalent, I guess, of superdelegates in a sense in the Democrat Party.
But most of them are elected.
Most of them are average ordinary party people, or just average ordinary voters, maybe involved in party activities who want to be delegates to the convention.
They go to the convention, and the list or the field of delegates is called a slate.
And the slate of delegates is who goes to the convention.
And the way they vote on the first ballot is determined by who won the popular vote in that state's primary.
So Trump got the delegates in Arizona, but at the convention in Arizona, 40 of the 55 delegates chosen are supporters of Ted Cruz.
And the Trump people who do not understand how this works, and I predict because this is all going to get changed, both parties for the next presidential race, both parties are going to change this.
Even though this has been in place since before the Civil War, these rules, this is how Abraham Lincoln did it.
You know, Abraham Lincoln won the Republican nomination on the fourth ballot at his convention.
The same rules that Lincoln used to win the Republican nomination back then are what's going on now.
They are that old.
They are that traditional.
There is nothing happening here that's not happened before.
Because once you get past the first ballot, then the delegates can vote for whoever they want.
And that's why the candidates go to these conventions or send their emissaries to try to secure as many personal supporters in the delegate slate as they can get.
In most of these state conventions, Trump hasn't even said anybody because he either didn't care, didn't know, or didn't think it was ever going to be necessary because he's always thought he was going to win this before the convention, making all this moot.
And in most years, it is.
The last time any of this ever counted was 1976.
We get a nominee long before the convention because the nominee wins enough delegates in the primary that there isn't a second ballot because there's not a contested convention.
But since even now it is up for grabs whether Trump actually gets 1237, the people that are running against him hope to delay that, forestall that, forcing a second ballot, third ballot, and then hopefully they can win in a delegate floor fight, which is exactly how Abraham Lincoln did it.
So all of you Trump people who think that the Democratic process is being violated here, it really isn't.
It just, where it breaks down is you rightly know and conclude Trump won the popular vote in Arizona, so he gets the vast majority of delegates.
And on the first ballot, the delegates have to vote for Trump.
You were getting to a point here, and this could be interesting.
If we do get to a contested convention, it could well be that over half of the delegates on the floor of the convention voting for Trump in the first ballot are actually Trump or Cruz supporters.
So, yes, even though 40 of these 55 Arizona delegates are Cruz supporters, they have to vote for Trump on the first ballot.
But if it goes beyond that, then they're free to vote however they want.
That's why candidates have always gone to these conventions to try to influence who is selected as delegates.
And as I say, this whole system is as old as Abraham Lincoln's presidency.
It's exactly how he did it.
They are the rules.
But because so many people are only now finding out about it and can't digest it and don't think it's fair, the parties are going to change this.
I guarantee they're going to try to in the next four.
Don't you think?
By the time we get to 2020, there'll be a different way of doing this.
My guess would maybe not, because this is one of the ways the party keeps control over the proceedings.
Now, over the weekend, there were two separate stories out there.
One was in the New York Times, and I think the other was politico.
Okay, there were two stories, folks, fascinating stories.
You know what those stories are about.
These stories in both the New York Times and Politico are about how Cruz delegates are starting to maybe get cold feet because they're looking at Trump win everything.
The five states sweeping the Northeast, every county he won it.
They look at him sweeping everything.
All eyes are on Indiana now.
But these two stories made it look like that Cruz can't count on these delegates because the closer Trump gets to 1237 and all that momentum keeps on, the more frightened they are to stick with Cruz.
That was the point.
Even some of these delegates.
So they're letting it be known to some reporters that they're not locked to Cruz, even on the second.
And by the way, they aren't.
Second ballot, they can vote for anybody that's running.
Just because Cruz has gone in there and secured 40 of the 55 Arizona delegates as his supporters, he does not control them.
They can vote for Trump on the second ballot if they want.
That's an important feature that maybe some of the Trumpists have not been told.
The delegates are not bound on any ballot after the first.
So even though Cruz is getting the lion's share of them at these recent state conventions, except Florida has the first three ballots are mandatory.
See, that's another anomaly.
Florida has it.
And that was, they did that.
They said that they made that rule according to things that happened years ago that they didn't want repeated.
They had no idea.
If they could rescind that, they would do it probably.
But they can't.
So in Florida, the first three ballots, the delegates have to, all 99 of them have to vote Trump.
First ballot, second ballot, third ballot.
And Trump is on a trail.
He's out there.
He's talking about how all of this is rigged.
Grab soundbite number three.
This was on CNN today.
Chris Cuomo, speaking with Trump, questioned, Ted Cruz says that you're only going to be in it at the convention on the first ballot if that said he believes he'll stop you from getting at 1237.
And even if he doesn't, he said, look at Arizona.
He says he went in there with his organization, got the lion's share of delegates, even though the state went for you.
These delegates are going to be with him at the convention because they want him to win the presidency, not you.
What's your response to that?
The bosses are trying to run it.
You know, it's a rigged party.
It's a whole rigged situation.
The bosses, like in Arizona, the bosses, I win Arizona in a landslide.
I beat Cruz so badly, it's almost ridiculous.
And then the bosses have delegates that have a delegate, a crooked delegate system, where they go in and they try and get delegates so they can play games.
But I tell you what, the voters wouldn't stand for it when you win by millions of votes.
And that's what I've been saying.
It's a rigged system.
The bosses want to pick whoever they want to pick.
The purpose of going through the primary.
Well, look, he's right about something here.
Bosses, that's good lingo to keep your supporters all worked up into a frizzy.
But really, there are no bosses here.
This is just Cruz going in, working these delegates.
This is Cruz going and actually getting people supporting him to run as delegates.
And they do run.
There are only a very few who are appointed.
These delegates have to win elections themselves at the state convention.
And that's what Cruz has been trying to engineer.
However, the thing that Trump is right about here is that the bosses, not Arizona, but the bosses of the GOP do indeed, if they had a preference, there's no doubt in my mind it would be Cruz.
Now, you're seeing stories that the establishment's warming up to Trump.
You'll see a name here or a name there or a couple guys here, establishment types warming up to Trump, but and they are in those instances.
But overall, the GOPE, GOP establishment, would rather there be Ted Cruz the nominee and lose the race for the White House.
They figure that there's only one Donald Trump.
There's not going to be another guy like Trump come along, but there's all kinds of potential Ted Cruz is in the Tea Party.
And they don't want guys like Cruz coming back.
So the best thing they can do for their long-term planning, GOP establishment, their dream now would be for Cruz to get the nomination and then get shellacked in a landslide.
And then the established will be able to say, see, you conservatives, get the hell out.
Just leave us alone.
All you do, we lose landslides.
You Goldwater Cruz, we lose in landslides.
You know, you constantly tell us that our Northeastern liberal candidates like Romney and so forth lose.
Well, so do you.
Get the hell out.
That's what they want to be able to do.
I got to take a break here, folks.
Sit tight.
We will be back.
I don't want to be misunderstood.
When I say the parties are going to change the rules, I don't, I wasn't clear up here.
They're going to change the problem for the parties this year is that two outsiders have exposed the way they keep control of things.
The rules that are going to change next time make it tougher and tougher for outsiders to get anywhere.
They will try.
Four years from now, they'll write some rules.
Well, no, they'll write some rules next year based on what happened this year for the 2020 convention.
And the rules they write are going to be aimed at making it tougher and tougher for guys like Trump and Cruz to come along and do what they did.
They're not going to open the system.
That's how they keep control of it.
Don't doubt me.
Jan Brewer, the governor in Arizona, has been to every convention the last four or five conventions as a delegate.
She lost in Arizona.
First convention in four or five that she will not be a delegate at it.
She talked about this.
She had a press conference to talk about the election irregularities at the Arizona convention.
The Trump button was selected more than any other button.
They have stats on how many times people hit the button.
But when the button was hit, Jan Brewer's name was not selected.
My name didn't show up on the ballot.
At the same time.
People pushed the Trump button more than any other button.
And the Trump delegates did not win.
And the people of Arizona got cheated.
I got cheated.
And the Trump delegates got cheated.
That's right.
Jan Brewer is a Trumpist.
She's in there for Trump.
She wants to go.
She's been a delegate in the Arizona convention for, I think, I read the last four or five conventions, which is 20 or 25 years, because they're every four years, 20, 24, whatever.
16 or 20 years.
And she got aced out.
She can still go to the convention, but she's not going to be a delegate on the floor.
Those are, even though there's a lot of them, I mean, they're prime plum things.
Now, these people talking about hitting the Trump button and the votes didn't show up.
Folks, I'm telling you, what I just said before the break, it's not a theory.
I'm not guessing.
This is, if the establishment could write the script here, Cruz would be the nominee.
They want it demonstrated.
They think they're going to lose it to Hillary either way, folks.
You've got to understand that.
They think they're going to lose either way.
Therefore, the way they're thinking, better to lose with Cruz, because that would say forever, no conservative should ever get the nomination.
They lose in a landslide, be done with it.
And take the social issues with you, by the way, they'll say.
Hear what Trump said?
Well, that's like asking, hear what I said.
Trump said, I'm a conservative, but at this point, who cares?
We have got to straighten out this country.
Yep.
He's up a conservative.
Of course, I'm a conservative, but who cares?
What does it matter?
We have got to straighten out this country.
A lot of people think that conservatism is how you do it.
Here is Alfonso in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
How are you?
Hey, Rush, I love you, man.
I can sum up the Trump campaign in four words.
I hope he fails.
Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are like arsons that burn down your house.
Trump paid for the gas.
He paid for the matches, and he paid for the cab ride to your house.
Now he wants to turn around after your house is burned down and tell you, I'm going to make your house great again.
I can't choose between Hillary Clinton and a Hillary Clinton donor.
Trump says those are his old days, that he's going to eviscerate Hillary Clinton.
He's going to rip her to shreds in his campaign trail.
He's going to beat her.
He doesn't deny having donated to these people, by the way.
Well, you know, I just don't believe it.
Well, tell me.
I don't believe it.
I know how you feel about Trump, but why are you for Cruz?
Are there affirmative reasons why you are supporting Cruz?
Absolutely.
I voted for Cruz when I lived in Texas and he ran against Dewhurst, and they all said he couldn't do it and that he wasn't an outsider.
He is the epitome of the Tea Party.
He's not the establishment.
He's America.
He's the flag.
I'm against the establishment and everything they've done.
Trump wants to get things done.
Well, we've got $19 trillion in debt where the thing is getting done.
Frankly, I'd like them to not get anything done.
Don't play golf.
Go away.
So you don't believe Trump.
No, you actually don't believe Trump is going to do anything that he says he's going to do.
I do not believe Lyon Don.
Lion Donald.
All right.
Okay.
We got you.
Lyon Donald.
I'm not going to vote for a Hillary donor or Hillary.
I don't want that option.
Alfonso's thought about it out there.
And so this.
Well, Alfonso, thanks for the call.
I appreciate it.
Brian in Davenport, Iowa.
You're next.
Your turn.
Make it count.
How are you?
One common thread woven throughout the years of your political commentary, Rush.
Your values, your principles are steadfast and they are never changing.
You have already told us how to vote.
If people really listened to the values, the principles that you talked about on a daily basis, it's not that hard to figure out who you're voting for.
And I do hope you're voting.
You know, it's a liberal.
Of course I'm voting.
What do you mean, of course I'm voting?
I voted in the Florida primary and I'm going to vote in November.
Of course I am.
Absolutely.
I believe it.
You know, look, it's a liberal attribute to put your party first and then think about your values and principles of maybe if it's convenient.
But a conservative attribute is to look at your values, your principles, the things that you believe in, and then make an educated decision on that.
You know, an analogy I could use is how you talk about Apple all the time.
You've never gone out and told anybody what to buy for an iPhone or an iPad.
You've talked about your excitement over getting a new product.
You've talked about your disappointment when the battery goes dead, but then they fix it.
Oh, man, it's great.
So here I am.
I'm out shopping for an iPad because I'm thinking about getting one.
I don't know anybody that calls in and accuses you of being an Apple endorser.
Oh, they're out there.
Believe me.
All kinds of people think I'm shilling, but I'm not.
You're right.
I don't.
I just share my passions with people is all I do.
Right.
Well, I'm listening to the things you say about Apple.
I like the things that you say.
There's some pros or some cons.
But, you know, Rush, people, if they really listen to you, they'll know who you're voting for.
You have to.
People want you to tell them how to vote, but they don't want to sit down and look at the things that you believe in and the things they believe in and make an educated decision.
The same people that want to slam you every day for not endorsing their candidate, those hardcore people are going to be the same people that won't listen to you when it comes down to their candidate losing.
And you're trying to get everybody to rally against the Democratic Party.
Well, that is absolutely true.
And you obviously are very perceptive and sharp, and you listen deeply.
You're not somebody just catching the surface waves out there, if you will.
And I appreciate that.
And you're absolutely right.
To me, the objective is stopping the Democrat Party.
I don't know how else to say it.
They are the most destructive force in America today.
I could make the case that everything many of you think is wrong in this country can be traced back to Democrat Party or American liberal policies or power, power meaning power over education from K all the way up through the university level to power over the pop culture,
but everything that's happening, all the cultural rot that is called tolerance, all the cultural rot that is called modernization and so forth, all of this has origins.
And the origins are liberalism, socialism, Democrat Party, you name it, and they have to be stopped.
And there is, unlike our last caller, I don't think there's anybody running on the Republican side that comes anywhere close to the destructive nature.
You don't find, you know, you don't people on the Republican side that don't like America.
They're all over the Democrat Party.
The Democrat Party is loaded with people who have never believed in America's greatness and do not want America to be great because they hate capitalism.
They hate the founding, whatever.
They do not want this country to be great.
They do not want this country to be exceptional in any way.
They are delusional and deranged in many cases.
These people at one time were college students themselves back in the 1960s.
They happen to be running the country today in many ways, in many regards.
And to me, that is the ultimate objective, which is why I told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, he asked me in a trick question what I thought was going to happen when all this was over.
And I said trick question because it's the only one I didn't correctly anticipate that he would ask.
And I just gave the stock answer on unity that I think I hope that when the time comes, everybody's going to realize who the real enemy is.
But then it may not happen.
You just said that truly principled people put all of that before party.
Well, to some people, the party is the principle.
To the establishment, the party is everything because that's where they are.
That's where their careers are.
That's where their identity is.
That's where their own self-esteem is.
It's where their connections are.
It's where they matter as being in tight with that entire establishment.
So above all else, it must be preserved and held on to.
I think one of the biggest myths, if you will, is the idea that the Republican Party is a conservative party.
It hasn't been in a long time.
Really, you couldn't, compared to Democrats, maybe, but as structured, it never really has been a conservative party.
It has been where the conservatives in America are.
But the party itself has never really embraced conservatism.
It's been forced to accept it occasionally, with Rinaldus Magnus being an example.
And there are some others, of course.
But I'll tell you something, folks.
My theory about Cruz, and it's not a theory.
I don't know how many people in the GOPE would admit to it.
Did you see George Will's column?
Did you hear about George Will's column over the weekend?
I've never seen anything like this.
I have never in my life seen George Will actually said that the job of the Republican Party, if Trump is the nominee, will be to lose the presidential election by 50 states.
If Trump is the nominee, the GOP must work hard to lose all 50 states because the party and preserving it is paramount.
And going back to the theory that if Cruz is the nominee and the party wants him to lose, by the way, the party's got all kinds of different people in it.
There's not a unified position.
Some of them are more opposed to Trump than they are.
Cruz, but officially, if they had to pick, and it's not hard once this is explained, if Cruz versus Trump, you have the establishment deciding which one they prefer, you have to understand that they think that both are going to lose in a landslide.
You start with that.
Many in the Republican Party, in the conservative media, Republican media, many in the Republican Party have already given up.
They have already assumed that both these guys would lose and lose big.
So, given that that is a reality, they have then factored how do we benefit the most or how do we lose the most?
And the way they are calculating this is who would they rather never have to deal with again?
And that's Cruz.
Because there are a lot of Cruzes in the sense there are a lot of principal conservatives out there.
There are a lot of people that want to shake up the establishment.
There are a lot of Republicans who would like to follow in the footsteps of Cruz.
But there's only one Trump, meaning there aren't a whole lot of people out there who could be Donald Trump tomorrow if they wanted to be.
But the Republican Party is filled with potential Ted Cruzes.
So they don't think they have to worry about another Trump ever again, because he's the only one there is.
But Cruz, well, there's a lot of potential Cruzes out there.
And how do they get rid of them once and for all?
And the answer to that is Cruz getting a nomination and losing 50 states.
And then they can say, see, we told you, we told you that if you nominated this guy, it was going to be Goldwater all over again.
You keep telling us, they will say to us, you keep telling us that we pick these rhinos or these moderates, these Northeastern liberals like Romney or these moderates like McCain and Dole.
And you say they lose all the time.
Well, what happens when you guys lose in landslide?
You guys lose.
Just go away and take your abortion with you and take your gay marriage with you.
Take your social issues with you and just go away.
Because we can't win with you guys.
That's the dream.
And it's all based on the fact that there's a lot of potential Ted Cruzes.
There's a lot of principal conservatives out there.
But Trump, a genuine, you know, this outsider that they don't know how to deal with, has his own money, doesn't need any part of the apparatus.
They don't figure there's very many of those, if any.
So that's where I think they line up on all this.
And of course, the Cruz people think he can beat Hillary, and the Trump people think he can beat Hillary, and they think he can beat Hillary in a landslide.
We don't have any polling data that shows, but we do.
We just got a poll today that shows Trump beats Hillary by three.
First time that's happened.
But what a disconnect.
Party bigwigs think we are destined to lose big.
And the supporters of both Trump and Cruz think their guy can beat Hillary.
And I happen to agree with them.
And even if I didn't, I wouldn't go conceding anything in freaking May.
Back to the audio soundbites.
We got some Trumpsters here, and we got some soundbites from Ted Cruz.
This is Trump in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
We're up number five now.
Trump, Fort Wayne, Indiana, at a campaign event talking about our economy and the CHICOMs.
Don't forget, we're like the piggy bank that's being robbed.
We have the cards.
We have a lot of power with China.
When China doesn't want to fix the problem in North Korea, we say, sorry, folks, you got to fix the problem.
Because we can't continue to allow China to rape our country.
And that's what they're doing.
It's the greatest theft in the history of the world.
I hope he expands.
It's one thing to say China's raping us.
It's one thing to balance of trade.
I don't know how many people know why that matters and what the balance of trade is.
I mean, I, of course, do.
And I'm sure you know it's not good when we end up owing them more than they owe us.
But China is raping us.
I mean, they own how much of our national debt.
If they called in the marker on that, we've been a heat big doo-doo.
That's one of the things he's thinking about.
But that's for another time because there's one other bite that Trump has.
I want to comment on this.
I may have to continue to comment into the next hour.
This was on Fox and Friends weekend on Sunday morning on the Fox News channel.
Clayton Morris said in an interview last week, Hillary Clinton talked about how she would deal with a tough general election campaign with you.
And she said that she's used to men sometimes going off the reservation.
She knows how to handle them.
What do you say to that?
I thought it was a terrible answer.
She said, I'm used to dealing with, and what was the word?
She used a certain word.
Men that are off the reservation.
And I said to myself, that's a horrible expression.
Now, if I would have used that expression, maybe in the opposite form, it would have been a front page story.
She uses it.
She gets away with it.
That's a very demeaning remark to men, in my opinion.
And I don't even know.
Was she referring to her husband?
I think she was referring to her husband.
Well, you know, that's the interesting thing about this.
My original reaction to this was that she was referring to Bill because she's the most cheated on woman in America.
And folks, I don't care if that sounds crude.
It's just true.
At least in public life, she's the most cheated-on woman in America.
I mean, it might be close with.
No, no, no, it'd have to be Hillary.
I was thinking of a couple Hollywood starlits, but it would have to be Hillary.
But maybe she was talking about something else.
Maybe she's referring to all these men she's had to deal with in college, at the Rose law firm, in state government in Arkansas, the federal government.
Maybe she's all these men.
Let me expand on this when I have more time.
I'll be back here.
Yeah, because when you look at it, in terms of Hillary's career advancement, Bill has never been off the reservation.
He'd been off the reservation if the reservation is the bedroom.
But in terms of her career advancement, he's not been off the reservation.
So she might have been just telling us what she thinks of men in general, not to mention what she thinks of Indians.
▲
Export Selection